“What am I looking at here?” I asked, trying to keep my distance from the slime.
“Look!”Kizzi insisted, shoving me closer.
I sighed. I couldn’t avoid the slime forever, it seemed. I leaned in.
The first thing I noticed was how gorgeous the eggs were, as per usual. They were scaled and richly colored. Perfect and beautiful. And so, so powerful. I resisted the urge to gnash my fangs. My protective instincts were in overdrive.
The second thing I noticed was the crack.
I screamed, and the sound startled a few sprites off of their perches. Even Hex flinched reflexively. “No way! No way, no way, no way!”
“I told you! It’s happening! The eggs are finally hatching!”
“What do we do?” I asked, only slightly panicking. We had been trying to hatch the eggs for weeks, but part of me thought it would never actually happen. I acted like I expected them to open, of course, but deep down, I never really allowed myself to hope.
And now, it was actually fucking happening. And I had no idea what to do with myself.
“I don’t know!” Kizzi shouted, clearly as bewildered as I was.
“You’re the Hand of the Dragons, isn’t this your entire job?” I asked.
“That’s a phony title and you know it!”
“It was given to you by the witch dragon egg saleswoman. It had to mean something.”
“Hex won’t let me pick it up!”
I huffed. “Hex is your gods damned familiar. Make them.”
She glanced at me nervously. “Okay. I’ll try. But let it be known that I warned you.”
Before she could sink her fingers into Hex’s surface, the door flew open. In charged a vampire, an orc, and a faun. Redd had returned, and he brought Tandor and Ginger with him.
Kizzi straightened. “Redd! We told you to grab Tandor!” She glanced at the faun woman. “No offense, Ginny. You know we love you.”
Ginger leaned casually against a table, crossing her hoofed feet at the ankle. “No offense taken. But I overheard, and there was no way in Hell’s Realm I was going to miss this. I can keep a secret.”
Kizzi shrugged. “Fair enough. But brace yourself, it might not be pretty.”
Ginger smiled warmly. “Consider me braced. Just let me know if you need another set of hands.”
Kizzi reluctantly turned back to the cauldron and started muttering under her breath. “Okay, Hex. I mean it this time. Let me take the egg, or I’ll smear you along the cobblestones outside and leave you there to freeze.”
A tiny gasp echoed from somewhere overhead. I smothered a laugh.
Tandor and Redd lingered with Ginger a few paces away from the cauldron. Smart folk. They were staying out of the splash zone.
I patted Kizzi’s shoulder reassuringly, relieved that the witch was here to spare me from touching Hex myself.
She sunk her hand in. She flinched when her fingers made contact, and then shook her arm as though relieving an ache. I could smell magic drifting off of her in gentle waves. It battled with the charged ice and cinnamon scent of the shop.
She went in again, this time gritting her teeth and pulling her eyebrows down into an impressive glare. If she had fangs, shesurely would have been snarling with them. “I. Mean. It. Get.Off.”
Hex tightened again, nearly obscuring the eggs from view. A swell of panic squeezed my chest.
“Oh, no you don’t!” Kizzi gritted out, before using her other hand to send a small bolt of magic into the slime. Immediately, Hex relented, shrinking in on themself and retreating to the corner of the cauldron where they hissed and spat tiny chunks of slime into Kizzi’s face. If she noticed, she didn’t react—she was too focused on carefully grabbing the red egg and pulling it into her arms.
I let out a strained breath, nearly deflating with the weight of it. I leaned over to drag my fingers over the egg’s rippled surface. It sure was a crack. And it wasn’t a tiny one, either, barely perceptible like the lines I had previously noticed on the eggs. These wererealcracks.
