Chapter Eleven
Varis
It’d been a week since he’d come to the mainland and found himself in a dragon prince’s bed.
He ate when he pleased, slept when he pleased, and caused chaos as he felt like.
Rydel was a thorn in his side, but Varis had a knack for dealing with people the uptight Saurian did not.
Varis was born into politics, and while Ghreid had been trained and made as a servant to his people, his father made Varis into a mouthpiece for agendas.
As Ghreid sat behind his desk that morning, Varis sat at his side, leaning on the table with his hands folded. The waste management people had dually elected the man before them, a skilled mason fallen on hard times.
“What you’re offering is more than fair. I understand, but it feels…” The man gestured his hand and coughed, the rasp in his throat a painful mark of a sick man.
“Too good to be true?” Varis nodded sagely. “But there’s something else you’re not saying. I’m reading your face. Don’t be shy.”
“The… The previous regent. We had an agreement for a great deal of work on this estate and—it bankrupted us. I lost everything. All the things you recouped from their estates, was there anything left? Even my tools went missing, and last I heard, he’d sold them off.” The man wrung his hands.
“What was owed and the value of the tools?” Varis pulled a sheet of paper from Ghreid’s blank pile and flicked a pen over it, creating a few meticulously straight lines where he could do some arithmetic.
“I’m not even sure anymore of market value on the tools…” His stuttering voice fell quiet as he muttered a number. “Eight-hundred gold in labor for me and my employees.”
“Outline what each employee is due.” Varis tallied down rather honest numbers—if not understated. But they were pre-war numbers. He tapped his pen and sighed.
“William, I’m going to be bluntly honest. This is terrible. And as the acting regents, we should do our best to make amends on the accounts of our subordinates. And I imagine that you’re not alone in your predicament.” Varis leaned back and sighed.
Varis elbowed Ghreid and glanced over as he sketched something on the corner of a page of paper he’d written countless notes and comments on.
He offered a 2 percent stake in the incinerator profits as the first union representative and new official head of the masonry guild.
He also wrote 40 percent of labor owed to him and 80 percent to his employees that he named.
Ghreid had no duty to pay the previous regent’s debts, but doing so was an inexpensive way to earn loyalty. Legal, too.
“Provide Rydel a list of equipment needed. Do you have an apprentice?” Varis tapped his pen a few times.
“No, I do not.” William the mason coughed again. Ghreid made a note that Varis peeked at.
“Send your employees that are owed money to us. We’ll pay what they’re owed at 80 percent.
To you, we’ll pay 40 percent, arrange for Rydel to have tools assigned to you on a semi-permanent basis.
As long as you work for the incinerators, they’re yours to use.
You’ll also agree to take in two apprentices of our choosing.
We’re breaking up a large number of noble estates with children and servants that have nowhere to go and no life prospects.
” Varis stared the man down and smirked when his face lit up so brightly.
“Truly? That’ll be enough to repair my home… I can send my boys to school to read. My wife is going to be so pleased—I’ll need to buy her something nice on the way home.” He took hard, ecstatic breaths.
Rydel cleared his throat. “Might I get an estimate of your wife’s sizing?”
William made some general hand gestures in the air, and he nodded. “On your way out, do come with me. I’ve been unpacking the dry storage of the prior lady of the estate and have some rather fetching baubles and dresses that might not be missed.”
Varis had seen the findings—most of the jewelry hadn’t been valuable for gold or jewels—the stone’s low quality and gold an amalgam of lower quality metals. He’d wanted precisely none of them.
“Good, now before you leave, allow your lord regent to use his magic on you. That cough is concerning.” Varis waved the man off, and Ghreid rose and walked off with the man to aid him. Varis should have wanted to watch, but trying to focus while his mate put his hands on another man, was hard.
Rydel escorted the male away to get his money, and Ghreid returned, wiping his hands on a handkerchief. A somber expression dominated his glorious features. “The man acts as if we gave him twice what he was missing.”
“He came expecting nothing. You’d have given him it all, but if it was that easy, he’d not have appreciated it.
You’d be on the hook for everyone ruined by the previous regime.
This was extended to him as a courtesy for his work for you.
It comes off to him as a payment he was owed, but kind of conditional.
It puts him back in the green without giving him the means to flee.
” Varis gave Ghreid a look as his somber face turned wicked, a hint of those sharp teeth in his smile.
With a gentle flick of his tail, the door clicked shut.
“Put the teeth away, Lord Dragon. We’ll end up in our bedchambers again and fall behind schedule.” Varis huffed, despite the fact he so very dearly wanted to go back to their bedchambers.
“Oh, but Rydel will be a few moments…” Ghreid wrapped his arms around Varis’s chest, hands migrating south as they shuffled awkwardly toward his desk.
Varis couldn’t help his submission, leaning forward to brace himself as Ghreid grasped his hips and circled to run a hand over his groin. “I don’t know if I can be quiet or quick, Lord Dragon.”
“Then let Rydel learn to kno—” Ghreid flinched as the door flung open, slamming on its hinges.
“Good morning, Brother! I’ve come to meet y—” A rather purple-hued vision of a dragon male stood in the doorway, black eyes with violet irises flicking from Ghreid to Varis. “Disgusting. Not even a towel laid out. Ugh.”
Ghreid hissed, and the male turned his back, violet scales glinting over high cheekbones and temples beneath beautiful obsidian horns that nearly glittered over dark hair. Ghreid gripped Varis tighter. “Lapryda. Nice to see you. Can I please have five minutes with my mate?”
“And no decorum, either. You could have chosen a better brother, fair creature, if this one thinks five minutes will sate you.” Lapyrda gestured over his shoulder as he waited and Ghreid pulled away with a huff.
“The mood has gone foul. Welcome to my new home, Brother.” Ghreid gently coaxed Varis from his bent posture over his desk. “Never mind him, he’s been neurotic since his bedservant returned.”
“I heard that, and I’m not neurotic! I allowed myself to become a touch attached, and that’s not doing me any favors. I’m depressed, not neurotic.” Lapryda turned back around and stared Varis down, his eyes full of violet glee. “Now distract me with something to alleviate me of my mourning.”
He draped himself dramatically over the chair William had been in minutes before and sighed as if the last fuck he had to give had curled up and died.
“It is a pleasure to meet you,” Varis said. He cleared his throat and held his head aloft, as if he’d not been interrupted in the prospect of coitus.
“You’re not as fun as Asha. He blushes and stammers and runs off when I interrupt him and Rath.” Lapryda huffed. “When I find my mate, they will adore being seen under me. I assure you.”
“I’m new to the whole dragon thing, I’ll be honest. And I’m not ashamed. I’m flustered and attempting to start off on a good foot with my brother-in-law whom has denied me my day’s first arrival.” Varis glared at the male and earned a glorious smile, full of pearly fangs and bright eyes glittering.
“Oh, Ghreid! He’s perfect.” Lapryda rose to his feet and slid over, hands extended to cup the male’s cheeks, lifting Varis’s face up for a long stare. “Kalimanian! Those cheekbones… Dead giveaway.”
Varis raised a brow as Lapryda turned his face left and right. “Before you find your dragon, do us all a favor and have Slathar paint you, fair creature.”
“I’m not very fair complected at all.” Varis waved the male off as Ghreid beamed, the broad smile making Varis’s heart warm.
“No, but you are delicate in such a fine way I wish to have captured. Such clothes I will find for you, beautiful new brother.” Lapryda lifted Varis’s hand for a sweet kiss and raised it high for a twirl and pat of wandering hands that made Varis huff with surprise. “And what a seat you have.”
“Excuse me?” Varis pulled away, cheeks heating.
“Lapryda is rather handsy. He means nothing by it. It doesn’t raise my jealousy… I rather like him admiring my treasure.” Ghreid pulled Varis into his side for a nuzzle to the top of his head.
“Can he admire me without his hands, please? You may not mind your brother touching me, but I do. I feel immensely…uneasy. It feels as if I am committing some form of infidelity.” Varis shuddered.
“I admire with my eyes. I measure a body with my hands. My touch was perfunctory, I promise. I merely happen to eke sexual deviancy by breath alone. It is my curse.” Lapryda grinned.
“That’s Falustus. You’re appropriating the wrong sin, Brother.” Ghreid laughed.
“What is pride but appropriation of the talents of others?” Lapryda flicked his tongue in a way that should have been sexual, but the gesture seemed rather flippant, perhaps a social gesture that Varis would have to grow accustomed to.
“Wait, so all your brothers are sins? What abou— Oh.” Varis puzzled. Surely one of the brothers… Galatan? “Gala—”
“Gluttony.” Lapryda took a seat once more and examined his nails and hems as if the travel there had done great damage to them.
“Gala—ton—” Varis puzzled over the syllables and made sense of it.
The shift of things from Elander to Kalish in his mind was near seamless.
After all, he could even think in Elander, which was the sign of a language mastery, but some nouns still eluded him.
Surely he couldn’t know anything, and even Elander speakers found new words daily for things? Varis banished the thought.
“I am not naming a child after a sin.” Varis waved them off. “If this is tradition, it ends with you.”
“We are each born in tradition and from seven great dragons, our souls came. We took not their names as mantle, as some do, but their embodiment. The thing each of us bears a skill with. I am skilled with pride, and your mate with greed. We take sins and make blessings.” Lapryda sighed fondly. “And I make sins look good.”
“They should have named you Arrogance.” Varis smiled and did not find any malice in the gesture. He genuinely liked the brother, as he felt like kin in his heart.
“But you are Avarice.” Lapryda’s grin was sinful in and of itself.
“Then what is Asha to Rath?” Ghreid huffed.
“A healing balm to his massive ego.” Lapryda waved his hand and deepened that grin, eyes glimmering. “But still… Let’s go see these mysterious silks!”
Varis’s heart skipped a beat. He wasn’t sure why he still wanted to focus on the things. The moment he had Ghreid, they seemed pointless, had fallen to the back of his mind. But there Lapryda was, ready to open them. “As you wish, Lord Dragon.”
“Please, young one. Call me brother.” Lapryda rose to full height and held his hand out to escort the male away. Ghreid followed in tow.