Chapter 3 #4
“Break a dragon curse? There are only two ways to break a dragon curse, and we both know you're not capable of either.”
“I could kill you,” I said quietly.
“Could you?” She moved closer still, close enough that I could smell her perfume, cinnamon and smoke and something indefinably her. “Could you really kill me, Tansy? After everything?”
I wanted to say yes, and I wanted to mean it. But we both knew the truth. I'd loved her for years. You don't just turn that off, even when the person becomes a literal monster.
“That's what I thought,” she said softly. Then her voice hardened again. “Which brings us back to my offer. Come with me now, and I spare the town. Stay, and I burn it all.”
“There's a third option,” Baz said, speaking for the first time. His voice was steady, controlled, but I could feel the tension radiating from him. “You could leave and never come back.”
Illanya looked at him like she'd forgotten he existed. “The bear speaks. How novel.”
“I'm not just a bear.”
“No?” She circled us slowly, predatorially. “What are you, then? Besides a convenient meat shield she's using to make me jealous?”
“I'm her mate.”
The word hung in the air like a challenge. Illanya stopped circling.
“No,” she said simply. “You're not.”
“The mark says otherwise.”
“The mark is a lie.” She stood directly in front of us, eyes flickering between human and dragon. “I can smell it on both of you. Companionship? Yes. Lust? Definitely. But not a true mate bond. That requires something neither of you has given.”
My heart was pounding so hard, I was sure everyone could hear it. She was right, of course.
Or am I deluding myself because I don’t want to deal with the reality of the situation?
I didn’t deserve someone like Baz. And I’d only left Illanya as a means of self-preservation. Every day I spent with her, I felt more of myself slipping away. I was becoming someone I didn’t much like.
“But let's say you were mates,” Illanya continued. “Do you know what that means, bear? Even if you’re strong enough to withstand the curse, it means that when she dies from it, you die too. Mate bonds are reciprocal. Her pain becomes your pain. Her death becomes…”
“My death,” Baz finished. “I know.”
“And you're okay with that?”
“Yes.”
The simple certainty in his voice made everything stop. Even the butterflies froze mid-flutter.
Illanya stared at him. “You'd die for her? Why?”
He looked at me then, and something in his expression made my chest tight. “Because she's worth it.”
The curse went wild. Pain exploded through every nerve ending, and my magic responded in kind. But instead of chaos, instead of butterflies or hexes or random transformation, something else happened.
I spoke in rhyme.
“My mate speaks true, his heart laid bare,
Your hateful words may fill the air.
You think you own me, think I'm yours,
But love's not kept behind locked doors.”
Oh FUCK
I gasped, slapping my hands over my mouth.
Illanya's eyes widened. “Did you just tell me off…with poetry?”
“Across the years we've danced this dance,
You never gave real love a chance.
You held too tight, you burned too bright,
And now you've lost the right to fight.”
Stop talking!
I begged myself to stop—the embarrassment alone could kill me—but the hex had taken hold. Every word came out in perfect rhyming couplets.
Gary laughed. “She's magicked herself into a Shakespearean tragedy!”
I tried to say, “This isn't funny!” but what came out was:
“The snail finds joy in my dismay,
While dragon's fire keeps love at bay.
But know this true, you scaled disaster,
I'll never be with you now…or after.”
Illanya's expression went through about seventeen different emotions before settling on incredulous rage. “Stop it!”
“My magic's weird, this much is true,
But still it's better than serving you.
You say you love but only take,
And that's the curse I'll never break.”
“ENOUGH!” Illanya roared, and actual fire exploded from her mouth. The house absorbed it again, but this time it seemed to give it indigestion. The walls groaned ominously.
“You have until tomorrow night,” she snarled. “Twenty-four hours to decide. Come with me willingly, or watch everything burn. And bear?” She looked at Baz with pure venom. “When she chooses me, and she will, I'm going to enjoy making you watch her beg for me to take her back before I kill you.”
She turned to leave, then paused. “Oh, and Tansy? Nice poetry. Really drives home what a fucking disaster you've become without me.”
She walked out, leaving scorch marks on the floor with every step.
We all stood in silence for a moment.
Then I said, “The dragon leaves with threats of doom,
While I'm stuck rhyming in this room.
Someone help me break this curse,
Before I speak another verse.”
“I don't know,” Baz said. He was clearly trying to hide a smile. “I kind of like it.”
“When next you sleep, I'll hex your hair,
Turn it pink with flowers there.
This isn't funny, this is bad,
I sound completely fucking mad!”
Gary was now laughing so hard, he was crying. Actual tears were coming from his eye stalks. “Please, please keep talking. This is the best thing ever.”
“Gary, shut your slimy face,
Or I'll hex you to a different place.
One with salt and no escape,
You'll shrivel like a tiny grape!”
“She's threatening me in iambic pentameter,” Gary wheezed. “I'm being linguistically assaulted by a walking sonnet.”
“Tetrameter,” Baz corrected without a second thought as he slowly approached, hands up like he was trying to trap a wild animal. Which was fair enough.
“How do we fix this?” he asked.
I opened my mouth to answer and quickly shut it again, shaking my head violently.
“You might have to keep talking to break it,” he said gently. “Some reversals require verbal components.”
I glared at him, then sighed:
“To break this hex, I need to find,
The opposite of rhythmic bind.
Speak backward, maybe, or in prose,
But everything just rhymes and flows.”
“Try singing,” Gary suggested, because he was evil.
If he were a human, I’d be going to jail for assault right about now, but unfortunately, the suggestion took hold. I opened my mouth and out came:
“ I'm cursed to rhyme and now to sing,
This magical disaster thing,
Has turned me to a Broadway show,
Please kill me now before I go,
Into a full choreographed number,
What a horrible f’ing blunder! ”
I even did jazz hands at the end. Completely voluntary jazz hands.
“Okay,” Baz said, clearly fighting laughter. “That's enough. Come here.”
He pulled me against him, and the contact shocked the hex like a reset button. The rhyming stopped. The urge to burst into song faded.
“Oh, thank the goddess,” I breathed. “That was horrible.”
“That was hilarious,” Gary corrected.
“That was informative,” Baz said pensively.
We both turned to look at him.
“Your magic seems to automatically respond to emotional extremes,” Baz said, still holding me against him. “When you're angry, you might hex things into chaos. When you're frightened, you might create defenders. And when you're frustrated…”
“I turn into Doctor Seuss's revenge,” I finished miserably.
“The point is, it's predictable in its unpredictability. We can use that.”
“How is turning into a bad walking limerick useful against a dragon?”
“Because,” he said as he leaned down. His breath was warm against my ear when he finished in a very sexy whisper, “She won't expect it. Dragons prepare for fire and fury. They don't prepare for…whatever that was.”
“Aggressive poetry?”
“Vulnerability. Honesty.”
I pulled back to look at him. “That's not a thing.”
“It is now.” He tucked a strand of my color-changing hair behind my ear. It was currently a mortified purple, along with those telltale sparks. “Your magic doesn't follow rules, Tansy. It makes its own. And Illanya can't fight what she can't predict.”
“She predicted I'd come back to her.”
“Did she?” Baz asked. “Or is she hoping? That ultimatum wasn't confidence. It was desperation.”
I wanted to argue, but he had a point. The Illanya I'd known for all those years didn't give ultimatums. She took what she wanted. The fact that she was giving me time to choose meant something had changed.
“She's scared,” I said slowly, as it dawned on me.
“Of what?” Gary asked, finally done laughing at my expense.
“Of me choosing someone else.” I looked at Baz. “Of me choosing you.”
The curse flared again, but this time, I was ready for it. I let the pain wash through me without fighting it, and something interesting happened. Instead of exploding outward, my magic settled down a bit instead of flaring up uncontrollably.
“Did you just…” Baz started.
“Accept it,” I finished. “Yeah. Hurts like hell, but at least I'm not rhyming.”
The house rumbled in approval.
“We have less than twenty-four hours,” Gary said, bringing us back to reality. “What's the plan?”
“We could run,” I suggested half-heartedly.
“She'd follow and burn the town anyway out of spite,” Baz said.
“We could fight.”
“We barely survived round one.”
“You could actually mate,” Gary suggested innocently. “Complete the bond for real. Dragon curses get weird around true mate bonds.”
The temperature in the room dropped about twenty degrees.
“That was a joke,” he said quickly. “Obviously. Who would suggest something so…practical?”
Baz and I very carefully didn't look at each other.
“Right,” I said too loudly. “So that's off the table. Obviously. Because that would be…crazy.”
“Insane,” Baz agreed.
“Completely inappropriate.”
“Totally rushed.”
“We've known each other for like a week.”
“Barely eight days.”
“Definitely not long enough to—” The house stopped me by dropping a book on my head. A very specific book. I picked it up and read the title out loud. “Fated Mates: A Guide to Inevitable Connections.”
“Your house is trying to play matchmaker,” Gary observed.
“Our house needs to mind its own business because the curse would probably strike us both dead the moment we bumped uglies,” I told the ceiling.