Chapter 21 Chance #2
I tried to put her at ease. "The trick with flying? Don't overthink it. Your dragon already knows how. It's baked in, total instinct." I grinned. "You just have to trust her."
Fifi snorted, but her arms hugged her middle. "What if I crash?"
"Then you get up and try again. We heal very fast."
Mom watched this with mild amusement. She still wore her "perfect family matriarch" mask, but out here, she shed some of it. On our land, with the sun on her face, she was almost relaxed.
"Best to show her, I think," Mom declared. She didn't wait for a reply. The air shimmered, and in a blink, Lyra stood in her place. A white dragon, flawless, scales gleaming like pearls.
Lyra dipped her head to Fifi, a full show of respect.
Then she unfurled her wings, translucent at the edges, catching every stray ray of gold.
She launched herself up, smooth as silk, barely mussing the grass.
She hung there, coasting on thermals nobody else could see.
Then she did a lazy loop, a double spiral, and a textbook landing, soft as a dandelion.
Fifi's jaw dropped. "Holy crap."
Mere watched in delight.
I stretched my arms, letting the dragon bleed through.
Caden had waited long enough. My skin rippled.
Scales overtook it, bones stretching, every inch of me warping into what I really was.
The shift came easy after all this time.
Tash had seen it, the twins had survived it, and nobody in this family was about to faint over a dragon.
I let Caden stretch, wings flaring. Jet-black, all obsidian, with a shine that sucked up light instead of bouncing it.
Fifi watched, mouth an O. She squared her shoulders, then, determined, let go.
Her shift came in pieces, not all at once. Copper flashed behind her lashes first, then in her hands, then everywhere. Skin melted to scales, arms thickening, back cracking, shirt vanishing as wings punched out. She teetered, but I braced her with my own scaled flank, steadying her with a rumble.
Flora, Fifi's dragon, was much smaller than me or Lyra, maybe four feet at the shoulder. Her wings glittered, fine and thin, but she had power. She flexed, shimmered, then clung to the ground, nervous.
Mere whooped. "You look awesome, Fifi!"
Flora snorted, a little puff of smoke, and tried to act cool. But her tail whipped the grass like she'd never used it before. She hadn't, not really.
We nudged her gently. Ready to fly, Flora? Caden asked her.
A second's hesitation, then she braced, wings arching. Instinct jumped the gap. One, two, three wingbeats, and she caught air. Not clean, not a pro, but she was airborne.
Lyra joined her, close enough to keep the kid from panicking. I let Caden take over, focusing on pure movement. If Flora drifted, I nudged her back in line. If she dropped, I matched her pace, never letting her fall further than she wanted.
Together, we circled the compound, always keeping within the boundary line. Caden liked the view. He liked the way Flora trusted her wings more with every loop.
Then, we noticed a flicker. A shimmer of metal in the trees, near the north border.
Caden went rigid. Two silver specks darted in and out of the blue. Drones, both sporting SkyArc's signature casing and with too many cameras. They hovered close, never crossing into my airspace, but the message was clear. They were here to watch.
Roast them. Scare the hell out of whoever was watching. Caden was not happy about this at all.
But Maeve and her mother's and grandmother's spells were sunk into our land, safeguards to prevent outsiders from seeing us as dragons. Maeve had told me that nowadays, we looked like bald eagles. The bird was large, flew fast, and protected.
And people would watch them for hours.
Even still, Fifi and Flora didn't know the boundary yet. Time to nudge her to the ground before we crossed the border.
She deserved better for her first flight. But she was also getting tired.
We signaled Lyra, a pulse of dragon-thought. Time to go home.
Lyra got it instantly. She corralled Flora, using her wing as a soft barrier, and led her back in a slow, gentle arc.
I hovered, holding position just long enough to burn the images into memory. Dragon-sight logged every serial number, every pattern of the SkyArc logo, even the weird little lens flare that gave away where they'd parked the operator's truck behind the tree line.
Satisfied, I coasted home.
Fifi and I hit the grass in tandem, wings slicing the air with the satisfaction of a job well done.
My scales vanished first, bones squeezing back into my human frame, but Fifi still had her claws out when she slammed down beside me.
She didn't pause, but went full sprint for the door, leaving gouges in the grass as her claws reverted to feet.
For half a second, I wanted to chase her inside, show off what we'd pulled off, maybe raid the fridge myself. But something, a nagging sense of unfinished business, kept my boots planted in the yard.
That's when I saw Mere.
She was perched alone on the low stone wall circling the firepit, knees drawn up.
Her hoodie swallowed half her face. Only her hands moved in tiny dancer's flicks, spinning a dead matchstick between her fingers, tapping it against the blackened ash of last night's coals.
Three feet away sat a split log pile, neat as a funeral row, and a scatter of kindling dust coated her sneakers.
I was already moving when Caden prodded me. Go, idiot.
She didn't look up when I stopped a pace away. Just spun her match, flicked it off her thumb, caught it, reset. Over and over.
I went blunt. "You didn't look impressed. You hate flying, or just dragons showing off?"
The match made a quiet snap as she bent it, but her mouth didn't twitch. "It's cool. Just not my thing. Somebody has to keep the ground from catching fire when the big lizards get mad."
That was a little funny, if you squinted. I liked her style.
I slumped onto the wall beside her. Not close enough to crowd, but close enough the stone sucked the last of the heat from my jeans. My skin still tingled from the wind, all that adrenaline fizzing and nowhere to dump it.
Mere didn't shift her posture, but I caught the way her eyes tracked the embers in the pit. Hungry, then cautious.
She thumbed the match head with her nail. "Maeve says I'm not supposed to practice without supervision. Like Fifi and flying."
I raised my eyebrow. "Did she tell you the risk?"
She snorted, barely there. "Nope."
Then, as if to prove she couldn't resist, she snapped her fingers fast as a card trick. A tiny flame danced on the spent match. It lasted maybe a heartbeat, just enough orange to light the tips of her hair, before she snuffed it out, pinching the ember dead.
"See?" A quick, guilty glance sideways, then back to the pit. "Control isn't a problem."
Damn. Oh boy. She had more discipline as a teenager than Maeve ever did. I didn't think it was the time to tell stories, though.
I nodded at the match. "Did she mention you're the brakes?"
Mere wrinkled her nose, mock-aghast. "That's boring. So I'm just the end of the ride, the killjoy? Dragon babysitter?"
I couldn't help it. I barked a laugh so short it hurt. "You're a dragon, Mere. And brakes stop crashes. Engines are useless without them. Trust me, I've been the idiot with foot on the gas and nothing in reserve. It's a bad idea."
She studied me, like maybe I was the test subject, not the other way around.
Fine. I could play that game.
I dug back, found the memory. Funny and crazy and potentially lethal.
"My first shift? Damon and Xavier corralled me in the upper pasture.
I was so hyped to show off, I torched a full-grown maple the second I was in dragon form.
Nearly set the valley on fire. Damon yelled for ten straight minutes, Xav threatened to drop me from a thousand feet up, and Maeve promised she'd spike every drink I had with mint for a decade. "
It was funny now. It had sucked then.
"You win," she said, "I only kept my sister's dragon from coming out."
The quiet pain hiding in the words hurt me too.
I jabbed at the dying embers in the pit with my boot. The shadow crawled right up my shin, painted both our faces in flicker-dark. "The point is, ‘control' isn't boring. It's what keeps us from disaster. Sometimes I wish I'd had more of it, younger."
She fiddled with the match. "You learned, though."
"Yeah. I'm still learning. But you?" I didn't sugarcoat it. "What you did, back there with Fifi? Holding her dragon back so she didn't blow the whole house sky-high? That's big magic. Bigger than my ‘yay, I can fly' show."
Her fingers whitened on the match. She mumbled, "I made it worse. Maeve said—"
I cut in before she could finish the self-hate spiral. "Maeve said you were making it worse at that moment. There's a difference. If you hadn't been there all the other times, Fifi might've gone off with no warning. You bought your family time. That's the kind of power that matters."
Her hand tensed more and I thought she'd snap the match in half. Instead, she let it rest easy, shoulders relaxing just enough to signal she heard me.
A few more stars came out.
I shifted to practical. "Here's what I'm thinking. Next time Maeve is here—" which would be soon, because she was always up in our business—"I wanna see what you can do without holding back. Not chaos. Not dumb stunts. Just...maybe there's tricks we can share. Are you up for that?"
Now, her focus sharpened. That flat, puzzle-solver stare I'd seen on her face once or twice. "So," she said slowly, "you want to run experiments?"
I actually laughed at that. "Yeah. Something like that."
She mulled it over, twisting the match until it left a splinter against her thumb. "Not afraid you'll end up unable to change?"
"Not if you're on my side."
I left it hanging there for a moment. Then added, "You're mine, too, you know. Not just Fifi. If something comes after my witch, I burn it first. So make sure you have your fire extinguisher spells handy if you ever want to date."
The words barely echoed before the night swallowed them. But they were real.
She cracked a wry smile. Barely there, but I saw it. "I'll study hard then."