“Are you all right?” Fen asked, worried.
Then the penny dropped. He’d made that exact same gesture the last time they’d come close to making out. She’d taken it at face value, given that he’d been repeatedly hit over the head. But it was deeply suspicious that these headaches came on only when she tried to get close to him.
Had she been right about him all along? Was he the sort of immature playboy who’d fake a headache rather than be straightforward with a woman?
Stiffly, she said, “If you’re not interested, just say so. Don’t pretend you have a migraine.”
“Stop it!” Carter yelled.
She stared at him. “Excuse me?”
He let out a groan, his hands dropping from his head. “I wasn’t talking to you. I mean—”
Before he could finish his sentence, a strange sound pierced the air, halfway between a birdcall and a windchime. Something golden darted down from the dark sky.
Fen had seen it before; she recognized both the color and the movement. She’d thought it had been a drone, and Carter had said it was a helium balloon.
It was neither. The golden thing was alive. As she stared, incredulous, taking in the gleaming golden hide, the slim body, the four clawed legs, and the translucent bat-like wings, she couldn’t deny that she knew exactly what it was. The impossible little creature was a dragon the size of a cat.
“That’s a…” Fen began, but her voice trailed off. Even though it was right in front of her, she couldn’t bring herself to actually say the word“dragon.”
The tiny golden dragon held something shiny in its two front… paws? Hands? Feet? With a squeak Fen couldn’t help but hear as triumphant, it released what it was holding. Carter automatically opened his hands, and the thing smacked into them. It popped open when it hit, revealing that it was a beautiful brass compass. A piece of plastic followed the compass and bounced off it, landing somewhere in the weeds.
“What the actual fuck,” said Fen, finding her voice at last.
Carter found his voice as well. “She’s not mine!”
Fen stared at him. She’d thought that he, like herself, had been struck dumb with the sheerwhat the actual fuckof it all. But his words, not to mention his expression like he’d been caught with both hands in the cookie jar and chocolate chips falling out of his mouth, gave her an unpleasant sinking feeling, as if the island was floating after all and had just sprung a leak.
“Why would you say that?” she inquired.
He recovered quickly, but she knew what she’d heard. Brandishing the compass, he said, “It did give me a present.” Meeting her icy stare, he hastily said, “Kidding! It dropped the compass and I caught it automatically.”
The dragon was flying in circles above them, squeaking. The firelight gleamed off its golden flanks and shone through the translucent membranes of its wings.
“It’s a dragon,” said Fen, distracted from Carter’s perfidy by sheer wonder. “A tiny baby dragon. They’re real.”
“No no no,” he babbled. “There’s no such thing as dragons. It’s a… flying swamp lizard. I think I read about them inRanger Rickwhen I was a little—”
She only realized that he had been subtly edging away from the tiny dragon when the little creature gave a frustrated squeak and darted at him. He tried to duck away. Fen, thinking he was being attacked, lunged to try to grab it. The tiny dragon dodged her and landed on his shoulder. But rather than attacking him, it nuzzled his neck, making happy chirruping sounds.
“Shoo!” Carter commanded.
The little dragon responded by nuzzling him harder. Also by licking his neck, wriggling around on his shoulder, and generally behaving like the world’s smallest golden retriever. With wings.
“It knows you,” said Fen.
“No. No, absolutely not. Of course it doesn’t. How could it?”
He pocketed the compass and gave the golden dragon a desperate push. The little creature clearly thought this was a game. It leaped onto his other shoulder and playfully booped his cheek with its nose.
“Umm,” he said. “It’s friendly, isn’t it? I think I remember that those flying swamp lizards—”
His words lit a fire within Fen. More precisely, they lit the fuse of a stick of inner dynamite. She had no idea what was going on and she hated not knowing what was going on. Carter was lying to her, and she hated being lied to. And to think that she’d kissed that dragon-owning liar! In her mind’s eye, she saw the dynamite exploding in slow motion, blasting him into the middle of next week.
“You liar!” Fen prided herself on never yelling—it gave men an easy excuse to call her hysterical—but if ever there was a situation that justified screaming, it was this one. “You absolute, barefaced, shameless LIAR! You said it was a helium balloon when you KNEW it was a dragon! You never read about any flying swamp lizards because THERE’S NO SUCH THING!”
“Shhhh!” Carter hissed. “There’s people hunting us. We don’t know how far away they are.”
