Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Illanya moved first.
Not with magic. Not with fire. With her fist.
She crossed the threshold faster than thought, faster than I could track, and slammed her knuckles into Baz's jaw with a resounding crack that made my teeth hurt. He took the hit, rolled with it, and came back swinging with big-ass deadly claws that hadn't been there a second ago.
“Mine,” Illanya snarled, ducking under his swipe. Scales rippled across her skin like armor. “She's MINE.”
“Not anymore,” Baz growled back, and the sound that came from his chest wasn't remotely human. Deeper. Older. Something that knew how to fight dragons and could possibly even win.
They collided in a flurry of feral growls and claws.
Illanya's talons raked across Baz's chest, shredding his shirt and drawing blood. He grabbed her wrist, twisted, and threw her into the wall hard enough to crack the plaster. She laughed. Actually laughed.
“A bear?” She pulled herself out of the Illanya-shaped dent, brushing drywall dust from her shoulders. “You left me for a fucking BEAR?”
“I didn't leave you for anyone,” I managed to say, though my voice came out shakier than I wanted. “I left you because you're psychotic.”Her eyes snapped to mine, and the temperature in the room jumped twenty degrees. “Psychotic? I LOVED you.”
“You tried to burn down my apartment!”
“It was an accident!”
“An accident when we were arguing about you trying to burn down my PREVIOUS apartment!”
“That was also an accident!”
“That was the third time! “
Baz used our argument as a distraction, moving with that eerily silent grace big men shouldn't possess. But Illanya wasn't stupid. She spun at the last second, catching his throat with one hand, her fingernails shifted to shiny, obsidian claws.
“You think you can protect her?” She squeezed, and I watched Baz's face start to turn red. “You think your little mate mark means anything? I CURSED her. She's mine until the day she dies.”
That's when my magic decided to help.
I say help in the loosest possible sense of the word, because what I meant to do was hex Illanya. What actually happened was I hexed the whole damned house.
The entire cabin groaned, shuddered, and then came alive with the kind of vindictive fury usually reserved for acrimonious divorce proceedings.
The floorboards buckled under Illanya's feet, trying to swallow her whole.
Cabinet doors swung open with force, then slammed closed, repeatedly.
The ceiling fan spun fast enough to achieve liftoff, and every piece of furniture in the room appeared to be in rabid agreement that Illanya was the enemy.
A coffee table went for her knees. The couch tried to consume her. Even the innocent-looking lamp shade launched itself at her head and descended like an angry hat with delusions of grandeur and a penchant for violence.
“What the…?” She released Baz to fight off an aggressive ottoman. “What the hell kind of hex is this?”
“The kind where I have no idea what I'm doing!” I shouted, ducking as a picture frame sailed past my head to join the assault.
Baz stumbled back, rubbing his throat, but I caught him grinning. “You hexed my house to attack her?”
“I was aiming for her! The house just…took friendly fire!”
Gary's voice rang out from somewhere near the ceiling. “Even the foundation has opinions! Who knew?”
Illanya roared. The deep, rumbling sound was so intense, it made my bones ache.
Her form rippled and shifted as her scales spread across her skin like wildfire.
Then her fingers lengthened into proper claws, and wings started to sprout from her back.
But the house wasn't having any of it. The doorframe grabbed her by the wings and pulled, the walls pressed in, and the floor absolutely refused to let her achieve full dragon form.
“Stop it!” she screamed, fighting off a particularly vindictive bookshelf. “This isn't how magic works!”
“Tell that to my magic!” I yelled back, trying desperately to control something, anything. But the house had taken my hex and run with it like a dog with its favorite stick.
The kitchen decided to join in on the party. Pots and pans came clanging out like a demented percussion section. Wooden spoons formed a tiny army. The pepper shaker upended itself in Illanya's direction, which seemed somehow particularly personal given her dragon sensibilities and pepper allergy.
“ENOUGH!” Illanya's eyes flared with inner fire, and she did a combination sneeze-exhale, shooting a blast of flames that should have incinerated everything.
Should have.
Instead, the house ate it. Just…sucked in the fire like a sponge absorbing water. The walls glowed briefly, the airflow became something akin to a wind tunnel, and then the house burped.
A little puff of smoke emerged from the chimney with what I swear was a satisfied sound.
Illanya stood frozen, staring at the ceiling in complete bewilderment. “Did your house just…digest my dragon fire?”
“I think it liked it,” Baz said, steadying himself against the wall. His chest was bleeding more profusely from her earlier attack, but he looked more proud and amazed than hurt. “Tansy, what did you do?”
“I have absolutely no idea,” I admitted in an incredulous whisper scream. A throw pillow sailed past, attempting one last attack on Illanya's dignity by bopping her in the back of the head. Not surprisingly, it didn’t faze her in the least. “But I think the house is on our side?”
The floor beneath Illanya suddenly became a travelator, dragging her directly to the destroyed front door.
She tried to dig her claws in, but in the end, the wood won that battle as well.
It rapidly picked up speed like a jet on the runway, and, with a very undignified squawk, my extremely pissed dragon ex-girlfriend was unceremoniously ejected from the cabin like a bowling ball spat out by a ball return.
The doorframe tried to reform itself, managed about half a door, then gave up with what sounded like a wooden sigh.
We all stood there in the sudden silence, staring at the half-hearted door and the dragon-shaped hole, complete with dragon, in the front yard where Illanya had landed… Hard.
“Your house,” Gary said slowly, “just yeeted a dragon.”
“Yeeted?” Baz raised an eyebrow.
“It's what the kids say,” Gary sniffed. “I'm hip. I'm current. I know the lingo.”
Illanya roared furiously as she pulled herself out of the crater.
Her perfect hair was now decorated with bits of grass and dirt.
Her designer clothes were torn to shreds and smoking.
Honestly, she would have been hot if I’d been in a better mood, and not on the receiving end of her ire, but right now, she looked less like a dangerous mythical creature and more like someone who'd lost a fight with a blender.
I started laughing so hard, I doubled over. Baz, Gary, and the house soon followed.
“This isn't over!” she shrieked, pointing a shaky finger at us. Or trying to. The house chose that moment to slam a window shutter, making her flinch. “I'll be back! And when I am…”
The garden hose turned on by itself and sprayed her in the face.
She stood there, dripping, her mouth opening and closing like a fish who'd just received shocking news about its parentage. Then, with as much dignity as she could muster while soaking wet and covered in lawn debris, she turned and stalked away.
Well, tried to stalk. The ground had other ideas. Every step she took, the earth seemed to grab at her designer heels. By the time she reached the tree line, she'd face-planted twice and lost a shoe.
“Should we…follow her?” I asked.
“No,” Baz said, his hand finding my shoulder. The touch sent literal sparks racing down my arm. “She'll be back. But not tonight. She needs to recover her pride first.”
A creak from above made us all look up. The house settled with what sounded distinctly like satisfaction.
“Did you know you could do that?” Baz asked me.
“I didn't even know houses had feelings,” I said weakly. “Is your cabin…sentient?”
“Not before today.” He looked around at the destruction, furniture scattered everywhere, scorch marks on the walls, that sad half-door still trying its best to glow up. “But I think you changed that.”
“I'm sorry about your house,” I said with a voice full of regret. My post-battle high faded into the classic look-what-I-fucked-up-now feeling I was much more used to.
“Are you kidding?” He turned to me. His eyes were bright with something dangerously close to delight. “My house just won a fight with a dragon. This is the best day ever.”
The ceiling creaked in what sounded like agreement.
“We should probably ward better,” Gary suggested. “Before she comes back with her pride taped together.”
“Can't,” I said, gesturing at my hands, which were still sparking randomly. “My magic's gone completely feral. I might hex us all into oblivion.”
“Or,” Baz said thoughtfully, “you might hex something useful again.”
“That's a terrible idea.”
“It worked once.”
“By accident!”
“So have another accident.”
I stared at him. He stared back, completely serious despite the blood still seeping through his torn shirt and the fact we'd just been sneak-attacked by my dragon ex in his suddenly sentient cabin.
“You're insane,” I told him.
“I'm practical. Your chaos magic just defeated a dragon. We should probably lean into that.”
A suspiciously familiar picture frame fell off the wall and bonked him gently on the head.
“I think the house agrees with me,” he said, rubbing the spot.
I looked around at the destruction, at Gary making himself comfortable on the one free-standing shelf that had somehow survived unscathed, at Baz standing there bleeding and grinning as if Christmas had come early.
The curse in my chest pulsed with heat, reminding me that this was far from over.
But for just this moment, I could relish the fact we'd won.
Sort of.