Chapter One #2
He makes it halfway across the room before stopping beneath the thermostat. "Sixty-eight degrees. Soren, have you finally decided to kill me?"
I open the refrigerator and survey my options for lunch. "If I decided to kill you, Mikael, I'd come up with something more efficient than central heating."
"You say that as though hypothermia isn't a perfectly respectable cause of death." He pulls the robe tighter around himself and heads for the fireplace. "Some of us are cold-blooded."
"You're a vampire, not a lizard."
"I fail to see how the distinction helps me."
"It means you're being dramatic."
"I'm freezing."
From the couch, Ronan glances over his shoulder. "I like it at sixty-eight."
Mikael stops and looks at him for a long moment. "You sleep on the floor by choice. Your opinions on civilized living have been revoked."
Ronan shrugs and turns back to Grath, untroubled by losing his voting rights.
"There's a perfectly good fireplace," I point out.
"There's also a perfectly good thermostat, yet someone insists on using it as a weapon."
Mikael lowers himself into the armchair closest to the fire, gathers the silk robe around his legs, and tucks his feet beneath him.
For a creature who can bench-press a sedan, Mikael occupies furniture like a disgruntled housecat.
Evander is at the stove, his broad minotaur frame taking up most of the space in front of it as he stirs a simmering pot.
His horns nearly brush the range hood. Bread warms in the oven, filling the kitchen with the smell of butter and rosemary.
He cooks more often than not, and the rest of us have learned to stay out of his way and show up when it's ready.
"Give it another ten minutes," he says as I lean over the pot.
From the couch, Ronan lifts his head. "Is the bread ready yet?"
"No."
"How long?"
"The same ten minutes I was just told."
Ronan considers this. "What if I only take one piece?"
Without turning from the stove, Evan picks up the wooden spoon and points it in his direction.
Ronan settles back into the couch. "Ten minutes is ten minutes, asshole."
Kiran arrives before the argument can develop, bringing a wave of heat with him from the temperature room. He crosses to the fireplace and coils himself on the rug. Fifteen feet of naga should take up more space than he does, but Kiran has a talent for arranging himself wherever it's warm.
Mikael reluctantly lifts his feet as the end of Kiran's tail passes his chair. "If you touch me with that thing, we're going to have a problem."
Kiran gets comfortable in front of the fire. "You'll survive."
"I shouldn't have to survive my own living room."
"You've survived six hundred years of your shitty personality. I have faith in you."
Corvin turns another page.
I hide a smile in the refrigerator.
By the time I straighten, Godric has appeared behind Corvin's chair. I didn't see him come in. He's perched on the back of the couch behind Corvin, gray wings folded neatly against his back, watching the room.
Corvin doesn't even look up from his book.
This is how most Saturdays end up when nobody has somewhere else to be.
Someone cooks. Someone argues. Mikael complains about everything.
Godric appears from somewhere. Eight men who bought an old estate together and somehow turned it into both a business and a home eventually collect in the same room.
The temperature drops before Gael reaches the doorway.
Mikael groans. "Absolutely not."
Gael ignores him and walks in with a tablet tucked beneath one arm and a cup of tea in her other hand. Her charcoal suit is immaculate, as usual. I've spent years trying to work out if she owns twenty identical versions or uses fae magic to keep one perpetually pressed.
"Booking confirmations." She sets the tablet in front of me and holds out the stylus. "Sign."
I take it. "Good afternoon to you too."
I'm halfway through the confirmations when Gael glances toward the couch. "There was fur in the boudoir, which one of your idiots left it there?"
Ronan immediately looks up. "Not mine."
Gael doesn't blink.
Ronan holds her stare for three seconds before the wolfman's ears flatten slightly. "Probably not mine."
Still nothing.
"Fine. I'll vacuum."
"You'll deep clean it. I left a checklist on the door."
I hand the stylus back. "Did Helen's payment come through? I booked her for the same slot next month."
"It cleared before she left." Gael takes the stylus and taps something on the screen. "I also have a new intake that may suit you. I haven't finished screening her yet, so don't get excited."
"I wasn't."
"You're a dragon. I find it safer to manage expectations."
"I'll try to contain myself."
"I'd appreciate that." Her attention returns to the tablet. "I'll send you the file once she clears screening."
"All right."
New intakes come through often enough that I don't give it another thought.
Gael retrieves the tablet, but pauses before leaving and glances toward the hallway. "And the candles in the boudoir—"
"I put them out, they weren't mine, and yes, I know they're a fire hazard, so don't give me that look."
Her gaze drops pointedly to my hands before returning to my face. "I said nothing."
"You didn't have to."
The corner of her mouth almost moves. She leaves with her tea still untouched.
I've known Gael for three centuries and can't remember ever seeing her drink it.
I've also never seen the cup empty. There are questions worth asking an ancient Unseelie fae and questions that only make your life more complicated.
I learned the difference a long time ago.
Evan starts filling bowls before the bread is out of the oven, and whatever remains of the afternoon disappears into the usual noise of the house.
Grath is halfway through his second serving before Ronan finishes his first. Mikael declares the soup "acceptable" with the gravity of a royal food critic, then holds out his bowl for more.
Kiran cradles his between his palms, soaking up the heat while Evan pretends not to notice Ronan tearing pieces from the loaf instead of cutting them like a civilized person.
I eat at the counter and listen to them argue.
It's comfortable. Familiar.
When I'm finished, I rinse my bowl and put it in the dishwasher, then add the one Grath abandoned beside the sink.
Ronan has left his spoon in the pot, which means the leftovers are now his.
I transfer the leftover soup into a container, put it in the refrigerator, and load the pot into the dishwasher with the rest of the dishes.
After wiping down the counter, I leave the kitchen before I find something else that needs doing.
Upstairs, the house grows quieter.
My rooms are on the third floor in the east wing, far enough from the session spaces that very little noise reaches them. The hallway warms as I walk, the temperature climbing until I reach my door. Most of the others complain about it. Kiran considers it the only civilized part of the house.
I open the door and warmth settles over me.
My nest takes up most of the bedroom.
The bed sits at its center beneath layers of quilts, throws, and blankets collected over more years than I care to count.
Bookshelves cover two walls and overflow onto every available surface, paperbacks wedged sideways wherever I could make them fit.
The reading chair sits beside the window in the exact patch of afternoon sun that reaches the room for two hours each day, with a worn velvet ottoman in front of it that I liberated from a hotel lobby in 1987.
They were renovating.
It was going in a dumpster.
I maintain that this means I rescued it.
A blanket hangs over the chair. Cashmere throws cover the bed. There are enough pillows to make Mikael complain every time he comes up here, although that has never stopped him from trying to steal one.
Other dragons collect gold, jewels, artifacts, land. Things with obvious value.
I've never seen the appeal.
Gold is cold.
I toe off my shoes and sink into the reading chair, stretching my legs across the ottoman as the last of the afternoon sun catches my shoulders. Heat gathers beneath my skin in response, and somewhere deep in my chest my dragon settles with me.
This is my hoard.
Every blanket has the right weight. Every chair has been worn soft.
The books are ones I loved enough to keep, even when newer editions came along and the bindings started to crack.
There's a ridiculous cloud-shaped pillow on the bed that I ordered at three in the morning and will defend if questioned.
The room has taken decades to get exactly right.
I should be content.
And most days, I am.
Downstairs, someone laughs loud enough for the sound to carry faintly through the floor. A moment later comes a crash, followed by Grath shouting something I can't make out.
I wait.
No one calls my name.
Not my problem, then.
I reach for the book on the table beside me, but my attention drifts across the room instead.
The afternoon light has almost left the windows, stretching shadows over the nest and the bed at its center.
It's unnecessarily large, even for me, although I've always justified the size on the grounds that a dragon should be allowed to take up as much space as he damn well pleases.
Tonight, the excuse feels thinner than usual.
I open the book and try to read, but after making it through the same paragraph three times without retaining a word, I give up and set it aside.
The house below me is full. My calendar is full. My work matters to me, and the people downstairs are as close to family as I've had in centuries. I built this life deliberately, piece by piece, until there was very little left in it I would change.
Still, some evenings I come up here and the nest feels too large for one person.
I pull the weighted blanket over myself and close my eyes.
Tomorrow, it probably won't bother me.
But tonight, it does.