“I—What?” Braern stammered, eyes wide. He had been with Adrissu in the study, reading aloud from a book of poetry, but had taken a short break to brew a fresh pot of tea, still steaming on the table next to them. “My room?”
“Yes,” Adrissu said, scanning the sky. He did not see the dragon, but felt them approaching as surely as if he were tracking the movement with his eyes. “Until I can find out who they are and why they’re here. They can sense me too, surely. And if they know what’s good for them they will turn around and pass by Polimnos, instead of cutting over it, but...” He could not finish the sentence. If some dragon had truly come for nefarious purposes, being behind a locked door in a tower was unlikely to protect Braern more than Adrissu’s presence—but the thought of Volkmar and the cruel way Naydruun had looked at him entered his mind’s eye, as freshly as if it had only happened a day ago instead of a century.
The sense of the approaching dragon did not grow any smaller or go away. Behind him, he heard Braern get to his feet, but then sensed how he hovered nervously in the doorframe, as if trying to think of what to say.
“Adrissu,” he finally said, a worried edge to his voice. Adrissu could practically see the way his brows knit together in concern, even with his back turned. “Why would a dragon come here?”
Countless possibilities were already going through his head. The most likely, Adrissu thought, was that either Naydruun or Heriel had come for some reason: to take back the bowl they had given him, or to express some dissatisfaction with his choice of mate, the way Naydruun had when they first met. But it just as easily could have been one of his ancestors, come for some reason still unknown to him. It was less likely, but not impossible.
“I don’t know,” he finally said, still peering through the window. “I’ll get you as soon as I know it’s safe.”
Again Braern was silent for a long, lingering moment. “Okay,” he finally said, and Adrissu could hear his padding footsteps head through the hallway and up the stairs. He listened intently until he heard the door close and the lock click into place above him, before hurrying out of the study and heading down the stairs. Vesper started following him; he pointed at her with an unspoken command to protect the tower, and Braern above all else, and did not need to look back at her to sense her understanding.
The dragon was not leaving, it seemed, so he left the tower, locking the heavy wooden door behind him. Like Braern’s room, if some wayward dragon truly wanted to try and attack him, or claim his hoard, a locked door would do little to stop it; but the thought of leaving it unlocked felt somehow more vulnerable.
Whatever this dragon was, they evidently were not flying, so Adrissu stopped looking toward the sky and peered down the hill into the campus grounds that he could see from his home. At this distance, he couldn’t make out any specific figures, though he did see a few people walking around; his eyes flickered between each of them in turn, until they alighted on one he recognized, heading for the path that would lead up to his tower.
It looked like a tall human woman with short-cropped blonde hair. Heriel. Adrissu sighed, irritation and unease making his heart leap up into his throat. His last encounter with a dragon, Naydruun, had been a disaster; though over a century ago, for this meeting to be with their mate, turning up unannounced on his doorstep, did not bode well.
She seemed to catch sight of him as she started up the stone path up to his tower, but did not slow down. He folded his arms across his chest, silently watching her approach. Now that she was inhisterritory, he hoped she felt all the discomfort and nervousness that he himself had felt when he had presented himself at her home, nearly two hundred years ago now.
“Heriel,” he said curtly, as she got within earshot. She took a few more steps, but stopped a sizable distance from him.
“Zamnes,” she replied evenly, and he had to stop himself from flinching at the name. “Forgive me for the... unannounced visit.”
“Can I help you?” he asked brusquely. From the way she hesitated, he knew that Naydruun had told her about their stilted interaction so long ago. Though whether her visit was due to this, or some other reason, he had not quite determined. He had no idea why else she might be here, but he would entertain the thought until she proved otherwise.
“May I come in?” she asked, gesturing toward his tower, and his eyes narrowed.
“No,” he replied. “Whatever you have to say to me can be said out here.”
Heriel sighed, looking irritated. “I allowed you into my home.”
Adrissu scoffed. “You allowed me into the facade of a home. It was an empty room, hardly a home.”
She frowned, but clearly had no rebuttal. So after a beat, she leaned back with her arms folded across her own chest, mirroring his body language.
“I had hoped to come speak with you,” she said slowly. “My mate Naydruun told me some... disturbing things when they returned to me from their travels.”
This time Adrissu did not stop himself from rolling his eyes. It was his home, after all, and she was the one who had to be respectful; he was under no such obligation. “Is that so?”
“I wanted to see for myself what the truth was,” she said. Adrissu raised an eyebrow and gestured for her to continue. Her eyes were dark and searching, as she seemed to consider what she would say, then she pressed, “Naydruun told me your mate was a human.”
Adrissu sighed, leaning back on his heels, considering what to say. To lie would be pointless, but to tell her that his mate was, in fact, now an elf: that felt like giving too much information to someone who likely did not have his or Braern’s best interests in mind.
“My mate was human at the time, yes,” he finally settled on. “Although Naydruun’s presence caused a... sequence of events that eventually killed him.”
A series of expressions crossed Heriel’s face all at once, but she caught herself quickly, reining in her expression, until only lingering hints of surprise remained. “Did the ritual work, then? On a human?”
Adrissu scowled. “It did.”
“A human,” Heriel repeated, and this time the revulsion was obvious in her voice. “To think a dragon would debase themself in such a way.”
Anger flared in Adrissu’s chest, hot and bright. “I did not lie when I told you we were a fated pair. I didn’t expect it to happen with a human, either, but it did. And as long as you’re here, inmyterritory, you will not use that tone for my mate.”
Her mouth clamped down into a tight line, her eyes becoming hard and cold. He wanted to kill her then. She was disrespectful, and shewasin his territory, so he would be entirely justified under draconic custom to attack her now. Two thoughts stilled the rage pulsing through him: shehadgiven him the dwarven beryl bowl that allowed him to perform the ritual in the first place; and the more pressing thought, if they started to fight now, all of Polimnos would see two dragons scuffling at his doorstep. That was the last thing he needed on top of everything else. So he stifled his anger, but maintained his cold glare down at her.
“Give me my bowl back,” she finally said, a forced coolness to her voice. “You don’t deserve to keep it.”
