Chapter Twenty-Nine
Varis
Shifting into his human form seemed…banal. He was in a superior form, strong and dedicated to his clutch, and with family at his sides, he was rather pleased with himself.
Asha, his hapless brother-in-law, two little dragonlings, and a rather sleepy Slath sat contentedly in bed as sunlight filtered in over them.
The whole nest being a private-affair thing seemed almost vulgar.
Nesting was for all little ones. Nesting was for eggs and family.
It surprised Varis that the brothers didn’t engage in a little cuddle once in a while.
Having two warm humanoid forms draped over his side and snoring while two petite hatchlings snuggled into his chest next to three burning-hot and alive eggs made Varis want to sing and soar.
In the days since their laying, they’d grown, filling out into taut, hard shapes.
Their third egg, which they waited for news about, hummed with pleasant energy, its presence a convoluted and ethereal sort of thing.
The soul in it was less robust than the others, but not in a bad way.
It needed more care, more love, and more attention.
And not because it was weaker, because it was…
Varis couldn’t define it. Because, of course, eggs were new.
They were only just laid. They were newborn, but something about this egg shined like a newly minted coin.
Well-wishers came by occasionally, drawing Ghreid into business and discussions that kept him away from the nest. Varis appreciated it. Ghreid made him feel things other than egg-related parental feelings. Slath and Asha, however, didn’t.
Varis snoozed on and off as the little ones crawled around, making mischief with the odd tassel. For creatures as curious and strong as they were, they were remarkably careful and considerate.
From somewhere in the estate, a bell rang and Asha rose with a yawn, gathering his little ones under each arm with a beaming smile that never dimmed. Slath followed, getting doors for him before turning. “Want me to have food sent in?”
Varis blew a flick of steam and curled tighter with his eggs. They needed protection. His babies. They needed him. They—
Varis wasn’t sure how long it’d been since his nephews and brothers-in-law had left, but the door cracked open with a polite tap, a familiar face pushing a skirted cart—Falustus’s little pet that had come as a piece of the temple’s furniture.
He slouched, as usual, swimming in robes too big for his frame, the ruddy fabric unflattering and stinking, not that it wasn’t clean, but that pious odor had permeated every fiber.
Varis snorted a cloud of steam and stared the male down.
He stank of fear, shaking almost, the joists on the cart rattling as it drew nearer.
Wild eyes flicked from the cart to Varis, and he raised his head, a rumble of interest purring free of his lungs.
Lurin? Varis was usually good with names, but he was instinctive with demeanors, and something seemed different. His posture, still stooped, coiled with fear that he shouldn’t have had near a dragon. Falustus should have ensured it—but it appeared he’d reinforced it.
Varis resettled himself in his nest and adjusted himself, ready to shift into his more human form to bring him relief.
A soft whisper halted Varis. “Don’t.”
Varis froze in place as wild eyes pinned to him. Lurin moved to reveal a domed platter on top of the tray, something roasted and delicious beneath it. He lifted the lid and tilted the dome toward him.
Inside the lid were jagged scrawls in rather juvenile and clumsy Kalish. Their words slowly disappeared as the steam from the lid dried up, as if the words had been traced in oil or grease. Poison. Danger. Please do as I say.
Varis snorted, hovering over his eggs protectively. Lurin muttered words in practiced but halting Kalish. “I hide eggs.”
He pulled the skirt back on the cart and pulled free a rough cloth sack before gesturing to the space beneath. “I put in closet.”
Varis nodded once, tensing hard as the earnest truth glimmered in eyes that held something strange in them, magic?
Surely not. He didn’t feel like an ashen, not that Varis had met many.
Part elf? They were rarer than a red moon in Eland.
Varis had met a half elf before and they hadn’t had that glint.
With harried urgency, he gestured toward the edge of the nest and approached.
Varis, one at a time, helped to move the eggs onto the cart and watched with growing tension as he moved the domed platter to the ground and wheeled the cart into the closet and shut the door with the slowest and painfully gentle gestures.
He walked back to the nest and reached into his sack, pulling out a strange assortment of thin pottery shards, tossing them over the side of the nest, then withdrew a leather bladder from within the sack and dumped a sickeningly foul batter over the shards, a mixture of chicken egg and innards.
He snarled and halted at Lurin’s gesture.
It was only then Varis realized what the mess was for.
The facsimile of smashed eggs. Varis’s head spun and his dragon began to hyperventilate, huffing hard, tears stinging his eyes.
Lurin ran into the nest and grabbed Varis’s face, staring into his eyes. “Tear my face.”
Varis snorted in confusion and reared his head back.
For his part, Lurin remained eerily calm and made a claw-handed gesture, raking his face to show what he meant.
Varis lifted a clawed hand, nails drawn. Lurin closed the gap and grabbed for Varis’s enormous claw, drawing it to him with surprising strength. In his broken Kalish, he whispered, “I accept what happens.”
Varis stood there, breath held. The nauseating odor of the innards and detritus combined with the horrid imagery of broken eggs. “Roar and make it believe.”
In the moment of distraction, Lurin drew the claws down the side of his face, screamed, and kicked the domed platter he’d brought in, sending the roast chicken beneath it splattering across the floor, loud and jarring.
“Filthy fucking beast! Unnatural creature!” Lurin’s screams bore none of the hatred that the words themselves contained. “This is the wrath of Baltheir! This is atonement for your sins!”
Varis roared at the top of his lungs, and footsteps raced down the hall, light, padded ones, haughty and full of prideful purpose.
Lurin rushed toward Varis, blindly swinging something in his hand before slamming it against his neck.
Blood dripped everywhere and smeared across his scales.
Varis swatted him away and spied the handle of a dagger protruding from his neck, blood that wasn’t his own dripping from it.
When Varis caught scent of pine pitch and realized the dagger handle had no pain, he slumped over and eyed Lurin who stumbled back, coated in his own blood.
A few silent moments passed, and the door to their bedroom swung open to reveal a small passel of pompous clergymen.
“Acolyte—or should I say, Bishop? Quite the jump in station, no?” A fat, balding older man opened wide arms, expensive robes swaying about his feet as the fetid scent of far too many expensive fragrance oils followed him like a cloud.
Following him was the scent of bog oil and smoke.
And only then did Varis notice a faint glow of fire flickering in his windows, ones that should have only faced the sea.
Varis didn’t move for fear of being found.
His eyes, slitted almost closed, took everything in.
Unease passed between the clergymen standing there, but their gazes locked on Lurin alone.
“I have done as you ask in the eyes of Baltheir,” Lurin said, making a pious gesture.
“The heretic demons are punished. The foreign slut has been slain and the abominations have been shattered.” Lurin spit on the floor and staggered a step.
Varis’s hearing fine-tuned as thousands of thoughts raced in his mind.
Where is my mate?
Where are my new brothers?
Are their children safe?
Why nobody had come, Varis wasn’t certain, but Lurin shuffled forward, head lowered, as five or six men stood in the doorway, beckoning him with wide grins of welcome and open arms.
“You have done so well, Lurin. We shall find you an appropriate name of a house to adopt. Perhaps they won’t mind your face. Razus, don’t you have a niece that’s blind? Perhaps she could stand his f—”
Lurin stood to his full height and jerked, slamming the door closed behind them, and almost faster than Varis could register, he drove a blade right into the gut of the priest.
Shouts of confusion rang out until Lurin shouted, “Varis, eat.”
Varis balked at the idea, but his dragon answered for him. Gladly.
Two men ran for the window, throwing open one as black, oily smoke rolled in, that same bog oil, bringing with it the sound of shouting people, the beating of dragon wings.
The alkaline scent of mortar ash rained from the sky as a great white dragon cut through the smoke above, talons clutched to a leaking barrel of powder. Frantic roars and shouts rang in Varis’s ears, and when the first male got half his body out of a window, instinct took over.
The first one earned his fangs in a snatch, and he shook his head until things snapped and he swallowed, the taste of incense and blood lingering on his tongue.
Varis had spent too long in his greater form; the food they sent was plentiful, but not enough. He understood, then, how Draenvir spoke about eating a whole cow. Especially when five fat human cows sauntered into his lair so readily.
The second went down with a chomp, the third and fourth falling beneath his claws, screaming the entire way until teeth silenced them, and he swung wild eyes onto a shaking Lurin who sank to his knees in time for the bedroom windows to shatter inward, crumbling stone as a great golden head peered in with a spit of fire that had Lurin shielding himself.
Varis shifted as fast as he could, holding up his arms as he swatted away the sticky knife handle that left a raw patch on him. “Stop!”
Ghreid’s fire flickered out, wild eyes darting from the nest to Lurin, taking in the facsimile of smashed eggs, the ruin of the room, blood everywhere. Our young!
The words made Varis wince; profound sadness in them.
Lurin, smattered with burns, collapsed to the floor, breath shallow. He’d known it was a risk, but why?
“Our young are safe. Lurin saved us. Pottery shards, see?” Varis reached down and clinked two pieces together.
Still, Ghreid snarled, shifting as he clawed through the window, arms still draconic, body stuck in an alarming half-shifted state as he snarled. Eyes, billowing with golden fire, flared until Varis walked him to the closet, opened the door, and lifted the skirt on the cart. “Safe.”
Ghreid fell to his knees, body a messy smear of ashes, soot, and grease. One by one, he held the eggs to his chest, listening to them. “My babies.”
His hoarse whisper of a breath brought tears to Varis’s eyes, and he choked on a sob. Lurin tried to sit up with a whimper and collapsed once more.
A second dragon came up to the window, clinging to the cliff face as his great head thrust into the shattered remains of their windows, sultry red scales glittering in the distant flames where it appeared the water itself was on fire, every pass of Asha’s great dragon ebbing the flames a little more.
Betrayal. A snarl of hatred curled from Falustus’s maw, fire sparking behind bared teeth.
“I’m not sure what it was, but he saved me and our babies.” Varis held his hands up, still bloody with the evidence of what his dragon had done.
With a snarl, Falustus stared at the dead priests that Varis hadn’t consumed and snatched one up to devour as easily as a hawk might a mouse. He grabbed the body of the last one and retreated, flying off as the snarling of two bickering dragons came to an abrupt halt.
“What’s going on out there? What’s going on in here?” Varis strode to Lurin and touched at the claw marks on his face, the burns over his neck and chest. So much of his ruddy hair had been curled and singed.
Lurin grabbed for Varis’s hand and squeezed, but he didn’t speak.
Varis wished so dearly that Lurin could or would speak.
He also wished that he knew more about his magic so he could possibly heal the young male.
A young male that, when laid out like he was, was surprisingly solid.
He looked so stricken in the robes walking about, and that confused Varis more.
The claw marks on his face had ceased to bleed, already healing at the very edges. “What are you?”
“My very naughty pet, it appears.” Falustus stormed in, a set of priestly robes draped over his shoulders and nothing else. He stood standing over Lurin, staring down at the boy. “I knew he was… I’ll see to fixing everything he broke, Brothers. I apologize.”
“He saved me, Lust.” Varis glanced up and blanched at what hung at right about eye level. “Alim bei dinna’r!”
The swear to Alim’s name was such a foreign thing to Varis. It’d been years, but gods alive. “Put that thing away, Falustus! You should have to register it as a weapon. Fuck!”
Varis covered his eyes and scooted away as Falustus scooped the boy into his arms. “Tell me what happened.”
“He came in, warned me that something bad was about to happen, hid the eggs—” Varis told the story in quick detail. Falustus stared down at the boy with a complicated expression.
“Interesting.” Still, that complicated expression stayed.
“Find Graylan. He needs a heal—”
“Graylan can’t heal humans. His magic is very dragon specific.” Falustus took a deep breath. “I’m going home, Brothers. I’ll care for the boy and return come morning. I’ll do my best to save him.”
Ghreid, holding an egg in his arms, stood and gave Lust a nod of appreciation.