She gasps like I just revealed the ending of her favorite cartoon. “Oh no—I forgot the chompers!” She bares her teeth and growls, a tiny, ridiculous attempt at intimidation.
My chest swells. I shouldn’t feel this soft. I shouldn’t feel anything like this. But the sound she makes—it is exactly the noise I made the first time Tayani shoved a hunk of sunrise grain dough at me and told me to knead it.
Pepper laughs at her own growl and flicks glitter at me. “You make one.”
I raise a brow. “You want me to make a dragon?”
“Yes! WITH TEETH.”
She grabs my wrist like she owns it, and for some reason, I let her drag me across the set to the craft table. Crew members pause, staring. Nobody has ever pulled a Reaper. Nobody has ever dared.
Pepper doesn’t know that yet.
The craft table smells like glue and paint and childish chaos. She slaps a marker into my hand. “Draw!”
I stare at the blank paper. “Reapers don’t draw.”
“Yes you do,” she says, hopping like she’s made of springs. “You carved things in the prop room yesterday.”
I snap my head toward Liora before I realize I’m doing it. She’s watching us from beside the monitor, arms crossed, trying to look composed. But her eyes—her eyes are molten. Soft. Terrified. Beautiful.
I turn back to Pepper. “Fine. A dragon.”
She cheers. I start sketching. It’s clumsy—too many straight lines—but Pepper looks at it like I’ve given her the galaxy. When I add oversized fangs, she gasps dramatically and claps her painty little hands over her mouth.
“TOLD YOU YOU CAN DRAW.”
I grunt. “It’s acceptable.”
“IT’S AMAZING. You’re a funny man with sharp teeth.”
I choke. I actually choke. “Sharp… what?”
“Teeth!” She taps her mouth, then mine. “Like you!”
A crew member overhears and chokes on a laugh. I shoot him a glare, and he immediately finds something very important to adjust on a camera.
Pepper beams and adds, “You’re funny.”
I have never, not once in my entire life, been called funny.
I bark a laugh. “You think so?”
“Yeah!” She leans in close and whispers—loud enough for everyone within ten meters to hear, “Mommy likes you.”
My breath catches. I don’t let it show. I just clear my throat.
“Well,” I say roughly, “your mother is complicated.”
Pepper shrugs like that’s the most normal thing in the world. “So are you.”
Later, Liora finds me in the prop room.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
Pepper is climbing the rigged battlements—fake stone, foam cores, but tall enough to break a human child’s ankle. Liora’s voice tenses as Pepper scrambles higher. “Is this safe?”
“She has claws,” I say.
