Lurin ran into the nest and grabbed Varis’s face, staring into his eyes. “Tear my face.”
Varis snorted in confusion and reared his head back.
For his part, Lurin remained eerily calm and made a claw-handed gesture, raking his face to show what he meant.
Varis lifted a clawed hand, nails drawn. Lurin closed the gap and grabbed for Varis’s enormous claw, drawing it to himwith surprising strength. In his broken Kalish, he whispered, “I accept what happens.”
Varis stood there, breath held. The nauseating odor of the innards and detritus combined with the horrid imagery of broken eggs. “Roar and make it believe.”
In the moment of distraction, Lurin drew the claws down the side of his face, screamed, and kicked the domed platter he’d brought in, sending the roast chicken beneath it splattering across the floor, loud and jarring.
“Filthy fucking beast! Unnatural creature!” Lurin’s screams bore none of the hatred that the words themselves contained. “This is the wrath of Baltheir! This is atonement for your sins!”
Varis roared at the top of his lungs, and footsteps raced down the hall, light, padded ones, haughty and full of prideful purpose.
Lurin rushed toward Varis, blindly swinging something in his hand before slamming it against his neck. Blood dripped everywhere and smeared across his scales. Varis swatted him away and spied the handle of a dagger protruding from his neck, blood that wasn’t his own dripping from it. When Varis caught scent of pine pitch and realized the dagger handle had no pain, he slumped over and eyed Lurin who stumbled back, coated in his own blood.
A few silent moments passed, and the door to their bedroom swung open to reveal a small passel of pompous clergymen.
“Acolyte—or should I say, Bishop? Quite the jump in station, no?” A fat, balding older man opened wide arms, expensive robes swaying about his feet as the fetid scent of far too many expensive fragrance oils followed him like a cloud. Following him was the scent of bog oil and smoke. And only then did Varis notice a faint glow of fire flickering in his windows, ones that should have only faced the sea. Varis didn’t move for fear of being found. His eyes, slitted almost closed, took everything in.Unease passed between the clergymen standing there, but their gazes locked on Lurin alone.
“I have done as you ask in the eyes of Baltheir,” Lurin said, making a pious gesture. “The heretic demons are punished. The foreign slut has been slain and the abominations have been shattered.” Lurin spit on the floor and staggered a step. Varis’s hearing fine-tuned as thousands of thoughts raced in his mind.
Where is my mate?
Where are my new brothers?
Are their children safe?
Why nobody had come, Varis wasn’t certain, but Lurin shuffled forward, head lowered, as five or six men stood in the doorway, beckoning him with wide grins of welcome and open arms.
“You have done so well, Lurin. We shall find you an appropriate name of a house to adopt. Perhaps they won’t mind your face. Razus, don’t you have a niece that’s blind? Perhaps she could stand his f—”
Lurin stood to his full height and jerked, slamming the door closed behind them, and almost faster than Varis could register, he drove a blade right into the gut of the priest.
Shouts of confusion rang out until Lurin shouted, “Varis,eat.”
Varis balked at the idea, but his dragon answered for him.Gladly.
Two men ran for the window, throwing open one as black, oily smoke rolled in, that same bog oil, bringing with it the sound of shouting people, the beating of dragon wings.
The alkaline scent of mortar ash rained from the sky as a great white dragon cut through the smoke above, talons clutched to a leaking barrel of powder. Frantic roars and shouts rang in Varis’s ears, and when the first male got half his body out of a window, instinct took over.
The first one earned his fangs in a snatch, and he shook his head until things snapped and he swallowed, the taste of incense and blood lingering on his tongue.
Varis had spent too long in his greater form; the food they sent was plentiful, but not enough. He understood, then, how Draenvir spoke about eating a whole cow. Especially when five fat human cows sauntered into his lair so readily.
The second went down with a chomp, the third and fourth falling beneath his claws, screaming the entire way until teeth silenced them, and he swung wild eyes onto a shaking Lurin who sank to his knees in time for the bedroom windows to shatter inward, crumbling stone as a great golden head peered in with a spit of fire that had Lurin shielding himself.
Varis shifted as fast as he could, holding up his arms as he swatted away the sticky knife handle that left a raw patch on him. “Stop!”
Ghreid’s fire flickered out, wild eyes darting from the nest to Lurin, taking in the facsimile of smashed eggs, the ruin of the room, blood everywhere.Our young!
The words made Varis wince; profound sadness in them.
Lurin, smattered with burns, collapsed to the floor, breath shallow. He’d known it was a risk, but why?
“Our young are safe. Lurin saved us. Pottery shards, see?” Varis reached down and clinked two pieces together.
