“Yeah,” I said. “Let me tell you about that guy. I get the feeling he doesn’t know exactly what he’s doing.”
“Blasphemy,” Pat hissed.
“But most likely true,” Leslie said.
“Leslie!”
“Oh, stop it,” Leslie said, rolling her eyes at her mate’s anger. “He was a bit of a loon. You can’t deny that. For a god, he was rather… ungodly.”
I decided Leslie was my favorite.
“He still deserves respect,” Pat snapped.
“Pishposh,” Leslie said, bumping her nose against Pat’s jaw. “You’re just upset that you like the human too, even though you’re trying so hard not to show it.” Leslie looked at me and winked. “She tends to be such a grouch sometimes. Have to keep up appearances, you know?”
“I don’t know why I put up with you,” Pat muttered.
“You love me.”
“Only the gods know why.”
Leslie smiled. “I’m sure they do.”
“I want to hug you both so bad right now,” I breathed. “Like, you don’t even know. Lesbians are so awesome.”
“Touch me and you’ll lose an arm,” Pat said, snapping her teeth.
“Finish your story so that we can tell it we’ll help it,” Leslie said, nudging her mate.
“Leslie!”
“Oh, hush. You know we will. Look at it. It’s so tiny!”
“Gods, I can never take you anywhere.”
“So she asked Kevin about you—”
“I will tell it. You know how I like telling stories.”
“Do I ever.”
Pat turned back toward me. “Do you know what he said about you?”
I squinted at her. “Is this a trick question?”
“No.”
“Um. Okay. Did he… talk about my ass?”
“Yes, but only for seven minutes. And then he talked about the unicorn graphically for sixteen minutes. I mean after that.”
“Younglings,” Leslie said. “Remember when we used to be that way? Why, I remember when we could go days without leaving the cave.”
“Lesbian dragon sex,” I whispered. “I’m hearing about lesbian dragon sex.”
“Leslie,” Pat hissed. “Now is not the time.”
“How I love you,” Leslie purred.
“As I was saying,” Pat said to me. “I do not take the word of a human. The star dragon said that we had a choice. That we could choose a side or remain neutral. That we could turn our gazes away from the plights of men and let the land around us burn. I do believe we are high enough in our snowy mountain to avoid the worst of the fallout should the man in shadows rise.”
I swallowed thickly.
“And then you were here,” she said, cocking her head at me. “After all this time. And you were not what I expected. The star dragon said you were to be a grand wizard, capable of things this world has never seen before. But all I saw in front of me was a little smudge against the snow.”
“I don’t even find that offensive,” I assured her.
“No? So be it. We followed you down the mountain to see what you would do. You showed… ingenuity. Resourcefulness. Cunning. Qualities I do not care for in a human. Because they can lead to wrath and destruction if not tempered. I have seen the worst of men. Once they came for my beloved. They tried to take her from me. Do you know what happened to those men, apprentice?”
I had a pretty good idea.
“I ate them,” Pat said, tongue flicking out of her mouth. “Because I would not let them lay one filthy finger upon her feathers. No one should be able to touch them except for me.”
“I can see why,” I said quietly.
“Can you? I should hope so. Do you know what your Kevin said about you?”
I shook my head.
“After extolling your… assets, he grew quiet for a time. Then he looked down upon us and said that because of you, for the first time in his life, he was no longer scared.”
Oh, how my heart ached at that.
“He said that he’d been hurt before. That they had come for him, trying to take his hearts and blood, that he’d been trapped in their spells, unable to move. He had known fear then, true fear. Somehow he managed to escape. And he fled, looking for a place to call his own. He traveled far and wide and only settled when he found an abandoned keep that had easy access to sheep.”
I laughed as I wiped my eyes. “Yeah. He likes them because he’s a weirdo.”
“And he was okay, for a time,” Pat said. “He was able to catch his breath. But then he chanced upon a wizard near a castle, and it scared him. Because they were all the same, Darks or not. He fled, but not before taking a pretty.”
“The Prince.”
She nodded. “But then he found you again, one day. In a field. And even though he knew he should be scared, he… wasn’t. He said you were loud and annoying and you threw up on him.”
“All of that is pretty much true,” I agreed.
I thought I saw the ghost of a smile on her face. “I thought it might be. He doesn’t know how it happened. Did you know that? He doesn’t know the moment he began to see you as his home.”
I hung my head.
“He thinks it might have been the moment you two bonded atop the keep under a field of stars, but he cannot be sure. He remembers that night quite vividly. He said it was the first time he’d ever seen a human heart break up close. He knew then that he wanted to keep you safe. He may not have understood why, but he did. And when you spoke of your castle to him, when you told him he could go with you, he said that he believed that you would keep your promises. That even though you were young and would sometimes make mistakes, you would always try and do the right thing.”
“He has a lot of faith in me,” I said. “I don’t know that I deserve it.”
“Those who do rarely think they should,” Pat said, not unkindly.
“Why was your heart breaking?” Leslie asked. “He said that was your story to tell.”
I laughed wetly. “I was in love. A choice was made to follow an oath rather than a heart. I thought Ryan was choosing the Prince over me.”
“Your cornerstone?” Pat asked, sounding surprised. “He loved another?”
I shook my head. “Not loved. It was duty. But I was so hurt that I couldn’t see the difference.”
“But now?”
“My heart was struck by lightning and made whole again. He keeps it safe.” Even if he was angry with me at the moment, I truly believed that.
They were silent, and I looked back up to find the feathered dragons staring at each other, as if they were speaking without words. They must have come to some kind of agreement, because Leslie nudged Pat, who sighed before she turned back to me.
“Dragons have magic,” she told me. “You understand this, yes?”
I nodded slowly. “You are dreamwalkers. Zero can grow an entire forest.”
“Truly?” Leslie asked. “And you have seen it with your own eyes?”
“He grew a tree right in front of me. It was beautiful.”
Leslie sighed. “How lovely.”
“And Kevin… well. We don’t know exactly what Kevin can do.”
“He’s young yet,” Leslie said. “It’ll come.”
“I don’t know that it matters,” I said honestly. “He’s… enough as it is. More than enough.”