A distant beep from down the hall had me twitch, flinching when Aster steadied me. “Easy.”
I tried to sit still, but the scent of food—junk food—had my mouth watering.Jalapeño poppits!I scribbled on my pad, and Aster glanced over with a smirk.
It wasn’t but a moment later when Marcus returned, cupped hands holding one of those cheap mixing bowls from the dollar store, loaded with goodness. Aster, turned, staring at Marcus with something complex in his face, before gesturing. “Come and look at his hair, Marcus.”
I sat still, swallowing the drool pooling around my tongue as Marcus approached and Nula yowled, running circles around his feet until he held down a mozzarella stick, steaming hot and a little burnt on one end.
The hatchling snatched it with eager paws and ran off into the play structure as Aster finger combed my hair and moved my towel to the side. “He’s nineteen.”
Why that was important, I didn’t know, but I sighed deeply when the next touch that met my skin was Marcus’s. It made me want to purr, my body warming as I longed for more. His hands felt good, and I didn’t even flinch that time. Marcus didn’t respond, but his breath caught.
“I have questions,” Aster said, and Marcus’s hand left me, the bowl shifted, crisp food jostling within, and in a moment, he was gone, footsteps stumbling as he did so.
Maybe I still smelled bad?
Aster pushed my towel back into place and offered me the bowl. “Eat, dear. You need it.”
Some might have thought it odd, but I immediately grabbed a steaming piece and stuffed it in my mouth, relishing the heat as its own flavor. My tongue never burned on anything.
“Honey, lemme try something.” Aster leaned over my shoulder and took one of the mozzarella sticks and blew on it, white-hot flame dancing from his lips as the thing split at the edges and burned slightly. “There.”
He handed it to me and smiled. “They’re better hotter, right?”
I nodded and ate it whole, my teeth sharpening involuntarily as I sank them in. Practically on fire, my saliva sizzled and I let loose a soft sigh of pleasure.
“There we go. You like it burning.” Aster snickered. “Share with Nula. Have him make yours all toasty. He’s good at it.”
Nula, upon hearing his name, popped his head out of the play structure and blinked, licking his reptilian lips. He scrambled out, wings flitting as he hopped into my lap once more, chubby little tail swishing as I offered him a jalapeño poppit. He spat flame at it and shoved it in his mouth still onfire with a chirp and rumble of pleasure. When I offered another, he did the same but offered it up to me, and I took it happily, trading one for one with the little one as Aster finished my hair.
We continued eating together until the last morsel of fries remained, nibbling them cold as we licked our fingers.
“Alright. What do you think?” Aster handed me the mirror as he did something with his magic that had all my fallen locks of hair swirling through the air, flame engulfing them in white-hot little spirals that one by one extinguished with a little curl of smoke. I couldn’t focus on myself, only the dancing flames that took away a part of me that had made me miserable for months. And when they all went away, my eyes trailed not to the mirror but the doorway where Brae stood with an older dragon who stared at me as if I were something interesting.
He elbowed the dragon and grinned. “Morris. This is Whisper.”
The dragon at Brae’s side had black hair—no, hair such a dark and rich blue that it looked black at first. His eyes, like starlight itself, white and piercing, laced with a gray so fine it could have been spiderwebs holding his irises together. “Well, well, well. Fitting name.”
Dragons aged funnily. Their age was not a measure of their external appearance but in their presence alone. The bigger a dragon seemed in your mind, the older they were. Marcus was small, so I knew instinctively he was under a century old. Likely under half a century.
The babe was practically miniature, the fire in him new and kindled like a newly stricken match. A smell about him, like magic, still held the sulfur of the strike of life that made him.
I swallowed hard as the old dragon stared me down and approached, reaching for me as if we were acquainted. And like Aster, he touched my shoulder, fingers tracing my freckles,toward my spine where they grew dense. “Little one. Do you know what throwbacks come from?”
I shook my head.
He grinned wickedly, his face a catlike stretch of thin lips and teeth, eyes squinting almost cruelly. But I knew it for what it was, cleverness. A very pleased dragon. “My mate was like you, you know? A throwback.”
I stared, waiting for him to finish his story. People always added extra pauses when they told you things, like they wanted you to say something. And for me, I couldn’t. So, it was only awkward silence.
His hand circled my shoulder, and fingertips traced my neck, claws forming as they curled under my jaw and tilted my head up at an awkward and almost-painful angle. “How the stories of ages die so quickly. So much fire in you, little diamond.”
I glanced at Brae and Aster for assistance but only got a glance of Nula as he snagged my shirt in his maw and shook it with a little growl that slapped me a few times. “They come in threes, you know?”
Morris, the dragon staring me down, nodded his head toward Nula. But he was the only pup in the place. “The last time, Lyphus, Olson bore eggs as well as one in our sister clan.”
Brae’s face twisted with unease, as if something he said pained him. And Lyphus had adopted Marcus, so something bad must have happened to his child.
“Morris.” Aster whispered his name, but only earned a stern look that made him back down, head lowered.
