Chapter 15 #2
I snort. “It’s not like I’m spending any time here.”
“I see.” Nomi sits on the edge of the bed. “Do you want to put on clothes before we talk?”
“Didn’t you bring some?”
“No. I lied. It was a plausible excuse to talk to you alone for a minute.”
Ha, I was right.
“Zan won’t be fooled,” I tell her. “He knew both of us leaving his room would get your attention.”
“The point isn’t fooling him. The point is a polite fiction so people don’t feel obligated to talk about things face to face if they don’t want to.”
I roll my eyes. “Yes, I’m familiar with the concept. It just wasn’t actually necessary.”
“And I had no way of knowing that,” Nomi pointed out, “but neither do you, since you don’t actually know what I want to talk to you about.”
“You mean it’s not Zan?” I ask skeptically.
“You’re really not going to put on clothes first?”
“Will that change what you’re going to tell me?”
Nomi huffs. “No. Fine, then. Are you aware Zan has been here—at Celestial Sanctuary Temple specifically, I mean—from the beginning?”
“Of course. He met Tasa when there were still dead bodies on the ground.”
“He was here even before that,” Nomi tells me seriously.
I frown at her. “He wasn’t here when I created the Quiet. I’d have known.”
She shakes her head. “After that. From things he’s said, I believe he had visited the temple after you created the Quiet, but before Tasa climbed the mountain for the first time.”
I’m not following. “So? I created the greatest magical working of our lifetime. Why is a dragon showing up to investigate it noteworthy?”
“Because he showed up when there was no one else on the mountain but you, and he has kept showing up for five hundred years, Yora. Had you met before?”
“No. Just glimpsed each other once.”
“That you know of,” Nomi says.
I shake my head. “No. I can always feel when Zan is close.”
“More so than other dragons?”
I narrow my eyes. None of her business. “What are you getting at?”
“Zan has never—and I do mean never, because how to deal with the dragon we’re dependent on is something Guardians pass down to each other—taken a direct interest in a sage,” Nomi says.
“He always holds himself apart. It’s not that he doesn’t let himself become close, it’s that he’s not interested in it.
He’s like a passing wise man in a fairy story, dropping knowledge and addressing any issues we can’t and then vanishing again.
We know him, but we don’t know him. Do you see? ”
See that Zan has deliberately made himself a mystery?
See that even the people who should know Zan don’t see him as a person?
I start, “If you’re worried that Zan getting close to me is going to risk whether you can count on him—”
“I’m worried Zan has an obsession with you,” Nomi cuts me off. “I’m worried that he has held himself at a remove because he knows—because he’s taught us—that dragons are volatile, and that he has no practice doing otherwise and is not going to be able to control himself.
“I’m worried that you know too little of the world to recognize what it will look like if he starts controlling you, especially because you have no framework for reference other than the Order controlling you and it will look different with Zan.
I don’t think he’ll mean to—I’m confident I know him better than that, at least.
“But he wanted to get you set up himself, a thing that he has never done for another sage, rather than allowing me to do my godsdamn job. He is still staying up here with you instead of letting you find your own footing. He let himself be seen with you yesterday, tying the two of you together in the Order’s view.
“I’m worried he’s trying to keep you close to the point where you’ll become isolated—”
I laugh bitterly, and only then does Nomi stop.
“You have it wrong,” I tell her. “He’s doing everything he can to not keep me close. I’m the one holding onto him.”
I’m the one putting myself in front of the Order when he’d have literally given his life to hide me.
I’m the one telling him I want him here, and only then does he feel like he can acknowledge that he wants it too.
I’m the one insisting he allow himself to have a home.
I’m the one who has never and will never have anything to fear from the strength of his feelings.
And apparently I’m the only one.
Nomi’s brow furrows. “It can feel like that, sometimes. It gets twisted, and you think you’re fighting for a... loved one, when they’ve manipulated you into it precisely for that reason.”
My patience for this well-intentioned caution vanishes. “I’m not stupid—”
“It is absolutely not about stupidity—”
“And I am not unable to see manipulation, blatant or otherwise. I may not know this world, but you know little of how I was trained. Zan is absolutely trying to manipulate me, but it’s because he thinks he’s bad for me, not the other way around. Why, I still don’t know.”
Because volatility sure as fuck isn’t it.
I’m the Sage of Wrath, gods take it.
“Could he be right?” Nomi asks quietly.
I’m about to snap at her, but I take a breath instead.
Make myself think about it.
Clarity.
“No,” I say simply. “Not about this.”
“Hmm.” She doesn’t look convinced. “Even if he has an obsession?”
I shrug. “Might be mutual to be honest.”
Frankly, it gives me a little thrill.
Also a liiittle anxiety, because that’s a lot of years of expectation to live up to, but—
I’m not exactly one to back down from a challenge.
And Zan, of everyone, has seen me clearly.
Nomi blinks. “Oh. That’s... probably not any healthier, honestly.”
“If we’re happy together, I don’t particularly care or see how it’s anyone else’s business,” I snap—then pause. “Other than the Order, who will try to murder us, but they’ll be doing that anyway, so...”
Nomi snorts. “Okay, I take your point. I just wanted you to have some more context to make your decisions with care. And to tell you that if at any point you feel like you need help, or if Zan is making you uncomfortable, that I will take care of it.”
Her voice is sheer steel.
A guardian of sages indeed.
I’ve never had a person who would go to bat for me before, I realize. And now, in only days... now I have three, I think.
What a world.
And this time I don’t even need it.
Without a word, I tug another dress on. If Nomi’s backed down, I no longer need to use social expectations of nudity to put her off-balance the way she was trying to put me, springing this conversation on me.
At her considering look, I lift my eyebrows archly.
I am really not unschooled in manipulation, and she should know that.
I’d never have survived my first lifetime otherwise.
I sit next to her on the edge of the bed. “What if I need the other thing?”
It takes her a moment.
I don’t want to make Zan back away. I want the opposite of that.
“You’re serious?” Nomi asks. “He’s a dragon.”
Scathingly I reply, “Believe me, I am aware.”
Her eyebrows rise at my tone, and she considers me for a moment. “You had better be serious,” she finally says. “Because Zan doesn’t do things casually.”
A man who has spent five hundred years denying himself anything and everything to support an underground rebellion? You don’t fucking say.
I say wryly, “Neither do I.”
“So what are you asking for, exactly?”
I blow out a breath. “I don’t know. Support? Can you make him be less stupid?”
Nomi barks a laugh. “Definitely not. I can bludgeon him until he takes you seriously.”
I wave that off. “I have bludgeoning covered already.”
She snorts again. “I’m sure you do. In that case, there are some herbs you should start using, at least until you’re confident both of you aren’t being stupid.”
Herbs? Why—
Ohhh.
She means babies.
Yep, that is definitely a consideration for Future Yora.
And Future Zan.
“Thank you,” I say, and I am proud that my voice comes out even and not strangled at all.
Babies.
With Zan.
I have been awake for less than a week and only just kissed the man for the first time yesterday, it is definitely too soon for babies.
“You’re welcome,” Nomi says. “Now finish getting dressed.”
I nod, then look at what I’m wearing.
Hmm.
Maybe I should wear something that will distract Zan as much as just looking at him arrests me.
“Do you want some... other types of clothing, too?” Nomi asks.
I turn back to her. “Other clothing?”
“Clothing for Zan’s eyes only,” she clarifies.
Aha.
Once I realize what she’s implying—sexy underwear has existed forever, as far as I know, not that I ever had any—I’m about to reject the offer, because I can always just take off my clothes to get his attention, right?
But then I remember telling Zan that I don’t care about nudity.
A miscalculation, in retrospect, even if I meant it.
I meant it before his gaze on me stole the air from the room.
I also remember how Zan reacted even when I was clothed, just differently, and I think if I want to be absolutely clear about my intentions... she has a point.
I’ve never tried to look, or feel, sexy before. I wonder if I can even do it.
Maybe being with Zan will make the difference.
“Then again,” Nomi muses, “if what you want from that old dragon is more brainpower—”
I burst out laughing.
“Oh no,” I say, with a grin that’s a little wicked, “I think short-circuiting his current way of thinking may be just the thing. Yes, please.”
I’m still mad at him, of course, but now I have a plot.
With an accomplice, even!
And a whole day that he’s going to spend with me, and ice cream.
The day is looking up.
Now to make the most of it.