I sighed. “Of course you do. Fine. Go ahead. Hit me with it.”
“Ooooo, hear me now, Sam of Wilds. The dark man in shadows is moving. His plan has changed. His fingers stretch over the surface of the world, and in his blackened heart, he looks to the consumption of magic to—”
“Hold up,” I said. “Let’s curb the theatrics for a moment. I know about the whole magic-eating thing already.”
“Noooo you doooooon’t,” the star dragon said. “You’re hearing it for the first time from me. Lo and behold! For I bring you tidings of great warning.”
“Legit, you are telling me something I already know.”
The star dragon deflated. “Dammit, I thought that would work. Why can’t you be more susceptible? Humans are normally so stupid when it comes to the gods. I regret this. I regret this whole thing.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t quite have the specifics behind it yet.”
“Strangely, no, that doesn’t make me feel better.”
“Oh. Well. Sucks, dude.”
“I can’t give you the specifics.”
“Right. Because of the whole impartiality thing. Which you guys aren’t very good at.”
His starry eyes widened. “Oh! I know something you don’t.”
“That’s… kind of a given. You’re a god.”
“The mated pair. The mountain dragons.”
That caught my attention. “What about them? Do you know them? Could you put in a good word for me? Dude, you have no idea how much easier it would be if they’d just come over to me and, like, be my friends or something. That way we wouldn’t have to go through the whole song and dance that I went through with Kevin. And with Zero. I’d really rather not be chased. They probably have gigantic teeth. And honestly? Me and gigantic teeth really don’t do well together, especially when they’re snapping in my direction.”
“I can’t do that,” the dragon said. “But I can give you a hint.”
I scowled at him. “Your hints usually suck balls.”
“Take it or leave it.”
“Fine. Hint away.”
“The mated pair are both… female.”
“What,” I said flatly, because what?
“The mountain dragons are female.”
“Uh, yeah. Got that the first time. I don’t know what that’s supposed to help me with. Hints mean help. Did you not know that? That’s sad that you didn’t—holy fucking shit, lesbian dragons!”
The star dragon preened.
“That’s… so fucking cool,” I breathed. “Are you being serious right now? Lesbians are amazing. This is going to be a piece of cake! We’re family! I’ll just walk in, talk about how I love penis, and they’ll love me!” I paused, considering. “Okay, maybe that plan needs some fine-tuning, but I’ll figure it out. But that makes things so much easier. Lesbians love me for some reason. But that’s okay, because I love them too. It’s all good in the hood. Finally, something going my way—”
“Who are you talking to?” Randall said from the top of the stairs.
Since I hadn’t expected him to be there, I spun around and screamed.
The room had some pretty killer acoustics, which taught me that I sounded significantly less masculine than I thought I did when I screamed out of fear. It was crushingly disappointing, to say the least.
“My word,” I said, hand at my throat. “Why are you sneaking?”
He arched an eyebrow at me.
“The star dragon.”
He looked around the room slowly. “There’s nothing here.”
I looked over at the far wall. Sure enough, only ice remained.
“He was there!” I exclaimed, turning back to Randall. “He totally was!”
“You sound like a heretic.”
“I sound like a sexy heretic.”
“That’s not even remotely a thing.”
“I’m making it one.”
“You’re going to be loud the whole time you’re here, aren’t you.”
“You can always send me back,” I said hopefully. “Then you’ll get five weeks of blissful silence until we get here.”
“The thought has crossed my mind.”
“Thank the gods.”
“But then I realized that seeing how far you’ve come is more important than my comfort levels.”
“Damn the gods.”
“However, we can still have blissful silence during this time.” That didn’t come out sounding like a request.
“It’s like you don’t even know me.”
“No,” he said. “I could never be that lucky. You do realize that seeing the star dragon is exactly what happened to Vadoma, correct? You can no longer doubt any aspect of her when you’re capable of the same thing.”
“You just had to go there, didn’t you?”
“Are you ready to discuss your secrets?”
“Are you?” I snapped back without thinking. I wanted to take the words back as soon as I heard them echo around the foyer.
Randall’s mouth thinned to a bloodless line. “Eight in the morning, Sam of Wilds. Not a second later.”
Then he turned, robes swirling, kicking up little shavings of ice, before he disappeared down a hallway. A door opened and closed a moment later.
Chapter 9: No More Secrets
“THE LAST few passages seem as if they were written rather… hastily,” Randall said, a little sneer curled on his lips. He was flipping through my Grimoire down in the labs of Castle Freesias, and it was the first time he’d spoken in almost ten minutes. I had been trying not to fidget as I stood on the other side of the large wooden table, tracing my fingers along the runes and arcane symbols carved into its surface. “Did you just complete these yesterday?”
“Maybe?” I said, refusing to be embarrassed. What I’d written certainly hadn’t been my best work, but I’d been distracted by the star dragon’s visit and the implications behind it. The star dragon had repeatedly insisted that it had no favorites, but then always did something to contradict that. And unless it was doing something similar for Myrin—which I highly doubted—then it would seem I had at least one god on my side.
Too bad I thought it was kind of an idiot.
But then it was a dragon, and all the dragons I’d met so far had been idiots.
But lesbian dragons. Who were mated.
I couldn’t fucking wait to learn their names.
They were going to be something amazing, like Adalinda and Chumana, and they were going to want to help me because they’d think I was an adorable twink they wanted to love and protect for the rest of their days. I so had this.
“I’ve been… busy,” I said because Randall looked like he was waiting for more.
“Have you now.”
“Yes?” I asked. Or said. I didn’t know. I was starting to squirm a little. “In case you’ve forgotten, there’s been a prophecy, and I’ve been kind of wrapped up in that.”
“You spent weeks traveling to the desert.” He flipped toward the beginning of the Grimoire. I hoped he would ignore the RYAN FOXHEART IS SO DREAMY written in purple ink. I knew I wanted to ignore it. And this whole conversation. Forever. “You could have spent time updating it then.”
And he had a point. But then Ryan and I had never had sex on sand before and spent most nights trying it out, coming to the conclusion that yes, sand did get everywhere if you let it. “Um, I was performing… experiments? For science.”