“So long as they don’t believe that you pose a threat to me,” I reply. “They will likely follow my lead.”
Marcello nods, but his eyes are on something beyond me. I look over to see Drekki peering through the trees outside the Werma’s hut. There is a snap of a twig behind us, and I turn to see the Worm has climbed onto the Werma’s roof. His tail swishes anxiously.
I let out a short low whistle and Worm jumps down. Drekki also strides forward, they draw close, but I notice that they keep their distance from Marcello and that their eyes are on him at all times.
I reach into my pocket and pull out a dead rat. I found it in one of the Werma’s cupboards. It looks as if it was recently killed and is still intact, bones and flesh and all. Just the way my dragons like it. I wonder why she had those rats there, but then perhaps she saw my coming and killed them for my dragons.
I don’t like that thought, imagining the Werma waiting expectantly for me. After all, it was she who left. I don’t owe her my presence and I don’t appreciate feeling guilty over the fact that I haven’t seen her in so long.
I find myself wondering what she meant when she said that we won’t meet again. I wonder if she was alluding to my death, but surely, she would know that I’d work to change that? If my fate was truly so bleak, I doubt she would have tried to give me a way out. No, this is one of those future events that still carries the possibility of change, and I will see to it that my fate is changed.
She had not said that if I failed, we would not see each other again, she had only said that we would not see each other again.
I shake my head, jarring those thoughts away. I cannot dwell on the Werma’s cryptic statements and half-truths; they will only drive me mad.
I toss the rat in the air and Worm lunges up, snapping it up. I let out a series of clicks with my tongue to communicate to Drekki that he will get one as well when he hisses. Then I turn to Marcello.
“Hold out your hand.”
He looks at me confused, but then slides the satchel up his arm so that he has a hand free. I reach into my pocket pulling out two more rats.
He wrinkles his nose. “This is disgusting.”
“Throw them to the dragons.”
“Ah, so I am to bribe myself into their good graces then.” He weighs his hand, staring at the rats. “This is my father’s tactics.” He pulls back his hand, lobbing one rat to Drekki and then the other to Worm. They both snap at their treats, and he turns to me, wiping his hand on his sleeve. “Hopefully my attempt will be more effective than he was.”
“Don’t expect them to fall in love with you,” I say as I stride forward. Worm is already at my side, nuzzling my pocket while Drekki’s tongue snakes out and checks my hand. “But if you treat them with respect, they will at least tolerate you.”
“Better to be tolerated than eaten,” Marcello replies. I cock my brow at him. I wonder at his ability to be upbeat; it doesn’t seem to be forced or fake. Although it is wholly imprudent.
This is not a happy world; one should not enter it thinking that it is. That would be a way to get yourself killed. Marcello’s mother saved his life when she put this immortality on him, he would not have made it this far without a curse that kills literally anyone who would try to slay him.
Marcello lowers the satchel and holds out his hand palm up. He moves very slowly. Drekki watches him for a second before deciding that he isn’t a threat and going back to snuffling through my pockets. Worm moves closer to him, sniffing his hand. The dragon’s tail swishes, stirring up the settled snow and whipping it into a small, isolated flurry.
Marcello laughs slightly as the Worm’s tongue snakes out over his fingers, likely trying to see if he has more rats. “I had a cat back in Imperialis, her tongue was rough like this.”
Worm finally seems to decide that Marcello has nothing left to offer him and moves away.
Marcello watches him move with sad eyes. “I had to leave my cat with my younger cousin, Claudia. I know she’ll be well taken care of, but I do miss that hairball.” He sighs heavily and turns to me. “Your dragons are beautiful. Now that I see them up close, and I’m not so scared that they will eat me, I can see that they are truly magnificent creatures.”
I allow myself a small smile as Drekki nudges my leg, almost knocking me off balance. “Dragon hatchlings imprint on the first being they see as their mother.” I suppose that with the way I have cared for them, I have begun to consider them something like children of my own.
“How interesting,” Marcello murmurs. “So, if you’re their mother, does that make me their father?”
I snort, bending over and picking up the satchel. I whistle a command to Drekki for him to hold still and I begin tying it around his neck, lodging it between the scales on his spine to keep it in place. “You could try telling them that, but I don’t think they’ll see it that way.”
“They wouldn’t be the only ones I suppose.”
I glance at him out of the corner of my eye to see him standing there with his arms crossed. “Am I supposed to know what that comment means?”
He sighs. “It’s just… you’re still considering divorce, aren’t you? You don’t even want to give it a shot?”
“Give what a shot?”
“Being married.”
I pause in tying the final knot and glance over to him. “We were both forced into this, is it so bad to want to seek a way out?”
