She rolls her eyes. “No, no, that’s a pregnancy thing for humans. They always say pregnant women glow.”
“No.” I shake my head. “Not like this.”
“Yes, really. It’s a weird thing for women who are having babies, so I bet what’s inside of me isn’t an egg.”
I take her hand gently, and I tug her out of bed, where she’s clearly ready to sleep, and I pull her until she’s followed me to the bathroom and she’s finally staring right at the full-length mirror in the bathroom she hasn’t had time for. “You’re actually glowing, like, light emanates from you and disperses.”
She frowns at herself in the mirror. “That’s just the weird lighting in here.”
I point back at the room we just left. “There was no light in there. You could see me and the room. . .because of the light that’s shedding off of you.”
She turns back to look, and her mouth drops open. “What did Jörð do to me?”
I bite my lip.
“Axel. What’s going on?”
I shrug. “You know I look different now when I shift.”
“You look different all the time. You’re all shiny even in this form, but as a dragon, you’re a bunch of different colors.”
“I have an affinity to all the elements of my people. I haven’t practiced really, but I think maybe that was always inside of me. Killing Veralden Radien, or surviving when he tried his hardest to kill me, made it stronger. But this is. . .what’s happening with you is something different. I think. . .” I cough.
“What?” She pins me with a stare. “What do you think?”
“I think she finally let go, and she left everything she had, everything she was, to you.”
“She willed her magic to me? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I’m not sure what I’m saying,” I say. “But I think she sent it to you.”
She looks up at the ceiling and groans. “Why can’t we just have a normal, everyday few weeks? Is that really too much to ask? Without any glowing and special powers and just. . .” She stomps her foot.
“What?”
“You have to get out.” She points. “Because now, as if today hasn’t been strange enough, I have an upset stomach.”
“You need to poop.”
Instead of laughing, she blushes bright red. “Axel, get out.”
“We’re entwined. I know what it feels like and sounds like and even what it smells like when you expel excrement.”
She’s so red she looks almost like she’s trying to turn into a flame blessed, but I don’t say that. I just scoot out of the bathroom and try not to listen as she turns on the exhaust fan she insisted we install in the bathroom. I’m just realizing that she thought that fan blocked what she has to do from me.
Which is strange. It’s just what human bodies do. There’s no reason for her to be embarrassed or kick me out. It’s no more or less disgusting than when the blessed have to process our intake and expel our waste, even if we do it in a more efficient way, consolidating it about once a week. I’m contemplating whether this might be a good time for me to process my waste when I hear Liz shriek.
I was giving her space, but I open up the bond at the same time as I rush into the bathroom.
“I killed our baby!” She’s pointing and hollering, and I look into the toilet.
Where there’s a beautiful golden egg.
And I start to laugh. “It’s fine. That’s a water laying.”
Her eyes are as wide as saucers. “A what?”
I’m laughing so loudly now that I can’t seem to stop. “Oh, Liz. You just laid your first egg.”
