“I'm very sorry, Mr. Brand,” came the voice from behind the door. “I will be entering imminently.”
Wally watched in horror as the doorknob twisted and the door opened a crack. The beta attendant who had escorted him to his room—Carsons—poked his head inside. The man was elderly, his skin leathered by time and wrinkled by experience, but his dark eyes were kind. When he spotted Wally, he smiled. “There you are.”
Wally said nothing. Air was hard to come by. It was worse than when he’d been stuck at twenty thousand feet in a tight airplane cabin with the scheming, rakish Drake who’d brought him here. At least then he'd known that nothing would happen to him. Dragons were forbidden from revealing themselves in public, and Wally was fairly certain that the human population at large looked down on men who publicly punished their charges. Treatment like that was reserved for private spaces where doors could be locked.
“I've been instructed to bring you downstairs for dinner.” Carsons opened the door and entered the room. A smart pair of slacks and an Armani shirt were draped over his arm, which he held as though he were a legionnaire carrying a scutum. “Mr. Drake insists you must join him.”
By all rights, Carsons wasn't intimidating. He was a slender, wiry man with thin white hair and a charming smile. The suit he wore was well-fitted to his body, and his leather shoes had been polished to a shine. Still, Wally's heart hammered in the same dreadful way it would have if Carsons had bashed the door into splinters and rushed toward Wally with murder in his eyes.
In an attempt to distract himself, Wally watched Carsons’ shoes. A thin strip of light illuminated the toe. It seemed that whatever glossy finish Carsons’ used as polish was adept at picking up even trace amounts of sunlight.
“Are you quite alright, Mr. Brand?” Carsons inquired, taking another step into the room. His shoe sank into the carpet. Wally winced. “Are you injured?”
Words wouldn't come, so Wally shook his head.
“Is there something disagreeable about the furniture?” Carsons glared at the nearby chaise as if, in another life, it had said something particularly insulting about his mother. “I'd instructed housekeeping to properly steam clean the furniture, but Gloria is, at times, heavy-handed with the fragrance. Is the smell too offensive?”
“No,” Wally murmured. He threaded his fingers together nervously. “Sir,” he added as an afterthought, still not certain about where he stood.
Carsons thinned his lips and narrowed his eyes the way one might when trying to decide what, exactly, the invisible crust on the kitchen counter might be, then shook his head and sighed.
“Very well,” he said after a moment spent scrutinizing Wally, who was feeling more crusty by the second. “Mr. Drake has provided you with a wardrobe for tonight's dinner. You are to change into it, then follow me to the dining room.”
“Yes, sir.” Wally's voice was too small for his mouth, and the words were almost lost on his tongue.
Carsons gave Wally a pitying look, exacerbated by a soulful frown that made Wally feel worse about his station.
It would’ve been better to have stayed at the empty cloister.
Carsons laid the clothing on the bed. “While you change, I'll wait in the hall. Please, don't be long.”
“Yes, sir.”
Still, Wally waited until Carsons had left the room until he climbed to his feet and approached the bed. He stared at the clothing, noticing its fine textile and even stitching, and thought that it was quite nice.
At last, he dared touch the fabric. It was every bit as luxurious as he'd imagined it would be.
There was no way out of this mess. The Amethyst dragon waiting for him downstairs had forced his hand. Whether he disobeyed orders and refused to change into such finery or donned the outfit despite the fact that it was too rich for his blood, he would be punished. But staying in the room would do Wally no favors. If he was going to learn how devious Amethyst dragons really were, then he’d need to put himself out there, as terrifying as it was, so he could learn their tricks.
Wally changed for dinner, careful to make sure his cuffs were of identical lengths and his collar was just so. Before he left the room, he caught a glimpse of himself in the full-length mirror and came to a stop, then blushed and looked away. In clothing like this, it wasn't a stretch to imagine himself as a hopeful young academic—one Giles might want to take under his wing. Thoughts like that were foolish, of course, not to mention destructive. No matter what Grimbold Drake said, Wally's place was not with the cast ofBuffytheVampireSlayer. He'd been born a Disgrace, and for the rest of his life, he would serve dragonkind, not the Slayer.
“Are you ready, Mr. Brand?” Carsons inquired from beyond the door, jolting Wally from his thoughts.
“Yes!” Wally fumbled with the doorknob, heat rising in his cheeks. “Yes, sir!”
Time would tell what horrors awaited him in this dragon's home, but until then, Wally took comfort in thoughts of a world that would never be his own, and the fictional man who made that world worthwhile.
3
Grimbold
Geoffrey was right. The boy spoke very little at dinner and seemed to only push his food around on his plate. Grimbold had tried to get his guest to open up, even a little, and had been met with a very polite, yet all too solid, wall of noncooperation.
“Is the food not to your liking, Walter?”
The boy jumped in his seat and his fork clattered to the floor. The look of horror and shame he gave Grimbold was chilling. “I'm so sorry,” he said. He leapt to his feet, making the chair tip back precariously, then he disappeared under the table. That was certainly odd behavior for an omega. What was odder was when Walter didn't reappear.
Grimbold put down his own cutlery, stood, then bent down to look under the table. The boy crouched in the middle, his bent legs hugged to his chest. “Walter?”
