13. Alani
THIRTEEN
ALANI
The text from her mother arrived Wednesday, which was suspicious because that day was reserved for her afternoon facial, her standing call with the foundation’s development director.
Marisol did not interrupt this time for anything short of a family emergency, a philanthropic crisis, or intelligence she considered too time-sensitive to hold.
MARISOL: Anak, your brother has invited his business partner to dinner Friday. The gentleman from Silverscale. I assume you have no objections?
Alani stared at the message from the back seat of a cab stuck in Midtown traffic.
The gentleman from Silverscale. As though Chaos Silverscale were a visiting professor and not a nearly-eight-hundred-year-old dragon king who had been leaving priceless artifacts on her desk and looking at her with molten-gold eyes while admitting his dragon found her worthy.
She called Crystal.
“My mother has invited Chaos to Friday dinner.”
“Your mother or your brother?”
“My mother is claiming Royce invited him, but Royce doesn’t invite anyone to family dinner without clearing it through Mom first, which means Mom orchestrated the invitation and used Royce as the delivery mechanism, which means—”
“Your mother is running reconnaissance.” Crystal’s voice carried the calm of someone who had married into this family and understood its operational structure. “She wants to evaluate him in person. At the dinner table. With food as a weapon.”
“Crystal, she’s going to make lumpia. She only makes lumpia from scratch when she’s conducting an assessment.”
“How many varieties?”
“She didn’t specify. If it’s two, she’s curious. If it’s three, she’s serious. If she breaks out the lumpiang sariwa with the homemade crepe wrappers—”
“Then she’s already decided he’s a candidate and the dinner is a formality.”
Alani pressed her forehead against the cab window. The glass was warm from the September afternoon. Her reflection stared back—composure holding steady, personal life crumbling like wet cardboard.
“He’s going to walk into a Nores family dinner. Crystal. He has dined with actual royalty. He has survived eight centuries of power politics. And my father is going to ask him about compound interest while my mother serves arroz con gandules and evaluates his chopstick technique.”
“He uses chopsticks?”
“He lived in Japan for forty years in the eighteen hundreds. I assume he uses them beautifully, because he does everything beautifully, and my mother will notice, and then she’ll switch to Tagalog to discuss him with my aunt on speakerphone while he’s still at the table, and he probably speaks Tagalog because he’s EIGHT HUNDRED YEARS OLD and has had time to learn every language on Earth. ”
“Does he?”
“I don’t know! That’s the problem! I don’t know what he speaks or what he eats or how he handles a dining room full of Noreses operating at maximum volume, and I am going to have to sit across from him while my entire family conducts a coordinated evaluation of the man whose dragon is—” She stopped.
Breathed. “—courting me with rare collectibles from his personal vault.”
Crystal was quiet for a beat. When she spoke, the warmth cut through the teasing. “Lani. Do you want me to run interference?”
“You married my brother. You ARE the interference.”
“I mean real interference. I can redirect your mom. I can keep Royce from going full protective-older-brother. I can make sure Isla doesn’t do the character-study thing where she narrates everyone’s subtext out loud.”
Alani closed her eyes. The cab lurched forward. Somewhere above her, forty-two stories up, a dragon king was reviewing convention logistics in his penthouse and had no idea that in forty-eight hours he would face the most comprehensive interpersonal evaluation of his very long life.
“No,” she said. “Let them do what they do. If he’s going to be in my life—” The words caught. She hadn’t said it out loud before. In my life. The implication spread through her ribcage. “—he needs to survive a Nores dinner. Consider it a stress test.”
“For him or for you?”
“Yes.”
Friday evening. The Nores townhouse. Upper East Side.
Alani arrived an hour early, which was a tactical error she recognized the moment she walked through the front door and smelled three kinds of lumpia.
Three. She made three kinds. The crepe wrappers are out. This is not a dinner. This is a tribunal.
The kitchen was in full operation. Marisol commanded the space—three decades of hosting had distilled into a conviction that bordered on religious: every significant life evaluation should be conducted over a properly set table with food made from scratch.
She wore cream silk, gold earrings, her hair swept into the low chignon that meant she was operating at formal capacity.
The kitchen smelled like garlic, vinegar, coconut milk, and the living heat of a home where love was expressed through volume and portion size.
“Anak.” Marisol kissed Alani’s cheek without breaking her stirring rhythm. The pot of arroz con gandules was already fragrant—the Puerto Rican side of the menu asserting itself beside the lumpia. “You’re early. Set the table. Eight places. The good china.”
“The good china? Mom, it’s a business dinner.”
“It’s a dinner in my home. We use the good china in my home.
” Marisol’s smile was the gracious-steel version Alani had inherited and weaponized for convention negotiations.
“Your father is in his study pretending to read the Journal. He’s been checking the window for the last thirty minutes.
Royce and Crystal are on their way. And your sister—”
“I’m HERE.” Isla burst through the kitchen doorway in a cloud of rose perfume and energy that made the overhead lights feel brighter.
Twenty-seven years old, fresh off a press tour for her action franchise, and vibrating with the specific excitement of a younger sister who had been briefed on the situation and was treating the evening as live theater.
She wore a fitted black dress that she’d clearly selected for maximum sophistication, which was undermined by the fact that she was also wearing fuzzy socks because the Nores household had a shoes-off policy that even A-list actresses respected.
“Tell me everything.” Isla grabbed Alani’s arm with both hands.
“Royce said he’s seven hundred and ninety years old.
Crystal said he left you a first-edition manga.
Giselle sent me a spreadsheet. A SPREADSHEET, Alani, with a section labeled ‘courtship artifact timeline’ and a column for estimated retail value. ”
“Giselle sent you the spreadsheet?”
“Giselle sent everyone the spreadsheet. Mom has it. Dad printed it out. He highlighted the financial data.”
Alani gripped the edge of the kitchen counter. “Dad highlighted the—”
“In three colors. I think green means approval.”
“Oh my God.”
“He also ran a background check. Through the firm. He told Mom it was standard due diligence for the production deal, but we all know he was evaluating your dragon’s portfolio.”
“He’s not my dragon.”
Isla’s face achieved the expression she reserved for scenes where she knew the audience could see the truth the character was denying.
Wide eyes. Gentle tilt of the head. The microscopic smile that had earned her a Screen Actors Guild nomination.
“Ate.” The Tagalog term of respect for an older sister, wielded here as a weapon of devastating tenderness.
“He left you an eighty-year-old film reel because you mentioned it in a meeting. He is absolutely your dragon.”
Marisol’s spoon paused over the pot. “Film reel?”
“A 1944 original print of The Woman in the Shadows,” Isla reported. “One of three playable copies in the world.”
“Dios mío.” Marisol set the spoon down. Her expression cycled through three distinct phases: maternal calculation, cultural assessment, and the pure, undiluted satisfaction of a mother whose matchmaking instincts were being validated in real time.
“Gerri said he was serious. I didn’t realize she meant museum-grade serious. ”
“Gerri? Mom—did Gerri Wilder—”
“The china, anak. Eight places. And use the crystal water glasses.” Marisol returned to her stirring with the serene efficiency of a woman who had disclosed exactly as much as she intended and not a syllable more.
Alani stared at her mother’s back. The pieces rearranged themselves: Gerri’s matchmaker network, Marisol’s foundation board seat, the Silverscale Convention hire that had seemed like career advancement and was starting to look like the most elaborate setup since the Trojan Horse.
You have been managed. By your own mother. In collaboration with a professional matchmaker and a twelve-hundred-year-old dragon matriarch.
She opened the china cabinet. The good china—white porcelain with gold rims that Marisol had brought from a shop in Intramuros during their last family trip to Manila—waited in precise stacks. Eight settings. The gold rims caught the kitchen light.
Gold rims. For a dragon whose eyes turn gold.
“Mom.”
“Hmm?”
“Did you pick these plates on purpose?”
Marisol’s spoon didn’t pause. “I don’t know what you mean, mahal. They’re our best china.”
Alani carried the plates to the dining room and did not throw any of them, which she considered a significant personal achievement.