19. Elara
Elara
The walk back is short. Not nearly short enough to come up with anything better than seven prepared deflections and a plan to die of embarrassment quietly, at a reasonable hour, in private. Gerald rides Rayner’s shoulder the whole way like a tiny scaled general reviewing his troops.
Nobody’s even looking at me.
Which should be a relief. It is not a relief. Now I’m embarrassed and ignored.
The kitchen is a whirlwind. Bags on the table, cabinets closing, Erik wrapping something in cloth, Leif giving quiet orders — every one of them moving like the morning has a deadline I wasn’t told about.
“What’s going on?”
“We have to leave,” Leif says.
“What? Why? You haven’t even explained—”
“We’ll explain on the way.”
“To where?”
Vick steps up. Pressed, precise, hands behind his back like he’s about to give a briefing, because apparently he is.
“As leader of the ásp Móra, Leif here—”
“Muffin,” I say.
Vick stops. Looks at me. Looks at Leif. And the smirk that crosses that man’s face should be illegal in several of these realms they keep talking about.
“Muffin here,” he continues, “should have taken you directly to the Vestry.”
Leif groans.
Worth it.
“Vestry?”
“Think of them as the— what does your realm have…” He considers. “President. If he got to boss around everybody. Like that, only more of them.”
“Ohh.” Then it lands. “Wait. Seriously?”
“Yes. Your Muffin here — all of these men make up the most respected military unit in this realm.”
I look at them. Military. The most respected military unit in the realm. Which, fine, would explain several things I had personally attributed to gym memberships.
“Even…”
“Yes, even my son,” Vick laughs. “The Vestry sent them to find Erik. Which they did. And now they need to report back. As fun as I’m sure the idea was, hiding out here with their recently found… mate…”
My face goes fully red. Great. Wonderful.
“Protocol and all that,” he finishes.
“I don’t like it.” Brock, from the counter, arms crossed. “This isn’t a good idea. They knew she was there and couldn’t name what she was…”
“They’ll want to see her too,” Rayner says.
“Oh.”
“Ohhh. That— no. No, I’m just me. Just a journalist from Chicago.”
“You’re a hell of a lot more than that,” Vick says.
“Oh yeah, the whole dragon thing.” I wave a hand. “Right.”
He looks at me for a long moment. Then he bends down to my level, which takes a while, because there’s a lot of him.
“I know it’s hard to believe. So let me put it another way.” His voice goes quiet and exact. “I am seven hundred and sixty-five years old. And I have never seen a female dragon.”
Seven hundred and sixty-five.
I do not ask what that makes anyone else in this kitchen. I am not ready for that math.
“Well, maybe you weren’t looking hard enough.”
He chuckles.
“My father, and my grandfather before him, both lived to be almost fifteen hundred. They never saw one either.”
That stops me. Cold.
The math runs whether I want it to or not. Twenty-five hundred years. Twenty-five centuries of looking, of nobody, and then—
Me.
Me, who cried over a houseplant an hour ago. To be fair he’s not really a houseplant anymore.
“That’s a long time,” I say.
“Too long.”
I’m still standing there processing when Rayner comes up beside me.
“I knew you were special,” he says, quiet, just for me, and bends down and kisses my cheek, and my face goes warm in a completely different way than before.
And Gerald takes the opportunity to launch off his shoulder and land on mine — and shrinks on the way, mid-air, until he’s exactly the right size for the landing, little claws settling in like he’s done it a hundred times.
Okay. He can change size. Adding it to the list of things about my not houseplant.
“What the hell is that thing?” Vick says.
“Oh!” I grin. “It’s Gerald! He’s like a pangolin — that’s what he looks like to me, anyway. And he’s adorable.”
“He’s a familiar,” Gunnar says.
Every man in the room stops moving.
“A what?”
Nobody answers me. They’re all staring at my shoulder like Gerald just got promoted.
“No shit,” Brock says.
Vick stares longest. “Well. I’ll be.”
I don’t have it in me to ask right now.
They finish packing around the stunned silence, and we move outside into the morning light.
“We’ll use my switch,” Vick says.
“A switch?”
Erik scoffs. “It’s cheating. It opens a mini crossing — takes you anywhere you want inside the realm.” He shakes his head. “Like I said, it’s cheating.”
“Wait.” I hold up a hand. “You mean we never had to walk? I did three hours of forest. In flip-flops. There were blisters, Muffin. Blisters.”
“Oh no,” Leif says. “The ásp Móra don’t use the switch. Never have.”
I walk over to him.
“Muffin.” He looks down at me. “Muffin. Yes, you do.”
“We don’t.”
I move closer.
“You will now.”
He opens his mouth to argue. Then he stops. Sniffs — one small breath, like he caught something — and looks at Gunnar. Then back at me.
And Leif, commander of the most respected military unit in the realm, goes red to the ears and nods.
I don’t know what just happened. I know I won.
“Just what I thought,” I say.
Leif looks like he’s not entirely sure what just happened to him either.
Gunnar grins, then flat-out laughs. Brock is grinning too — he’s clearly trying not to and losing.
“What’s wrong, Erik?” Gunnar calls. “Don’t like sharing?”
I look over, and Erik is red — but he doesn’t look angry.
He looks a little sad.
I cross to him before I decide to. “Hey.”
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing—”
I raise an eyebrow.
“It’s nothing. I’m fine.”
“Okaaay. If you say so.”
It’s not nothing. I know it’s not nothing. I’m coming back to that after this Vestry nonsense.
Then a sound rolls through the air behind me — low, tearing, familiar in a way that makes my skin prickle — and I turn as a crossing opens in the middle of the yard. Vick’s doing. He didn’t even move.
He looks at me and inclines his head, offering his arm like we’re at a ball.
“Ladies first.”
“Oh, absolutely not, Pops.” Gunnar jogs up, hooks my arm through his, and grins at both of us.
And walks us straight through the hole in the air.
I don’t even hesitate.
Choosing not to examine that either.
At least I didn’t fall through it this time.