He stands slightly apart from the other two, speaking with Tiana. Dark hair cropped short, violet eyes, rigid posture.
Theres a confidence in him that never existed before and it’s honestly hot as fuck. He always had this intelligence to him. This air of awareness. But now? It’s like the nerd who grew a backbone.
Then a streak of blue slams into my cheek.
“Whispen—”
He hits me like a small warm sun. I’m not going to say I missed the whisp. But I did and all his poetry antics.
Whispen nuzzles into the hollow beneath my ear, his glow cycling through gold to violet to something between that I’ve never seen. A color that doesn’t have a name in any language I speak. Then to blue.
“Little queen.” His voice is barely a whisper. No riddles. No rhymes. Just two words.
My hand comes up to cup him before I think about it. He’s warm and buzzing and here and something in my chest that’s been listing sideways for days rights itself with a click I swear I can hear. It reminds me of when I climbed out of a tree hollow to see him nuzzling Morrigan.
“Hey, trouble.”
Then Whispen pulls back, needle-teeth flashing, and the moment shatters into Whispen-shaped chaos.
“Much changed! Much grown! Much—” He zooms a full circle around my head, trailing sparks. “The hair, root-born. Pink? Pink and green? You look like a garden that sneezed.”
“Thanks.”
“The eyes, though.” He settles before my face, hovering, head tilted. His glow goes warm gold. “No more hiding. Good. Good, good, good.” He taps my nose with one translucent finger. “I hated the hiding.”
He zips away before I can respond, materializing beside Dagda in his adult form. The shift is instantaneous. One second a fist-sized orb of chaos light, the next a full-grown male leaning against a god’s shoulder.
The adult form is still deeply unsettling. He’s chosen to look like, I swear on every thorn I’ve ever grown…
“Is that?—”
“I have no idea what you’re referencing.” He examines his fingernails with studied disinterest. “I simply selected a pleasing arrangement of features. Any resemblance to earthside entertainment figures is purely coincidental.”
“That’s Jason Momoa’s face,” I tell him.
“Sounds made up.” Dagda doesn’t even blink. Clearly I know where his loyalty lays.
“Oh.” I turn back to the god, grabbing onto the shift in energy with both hands because the alternative is sinking back into the darker thing waiting at my feet. “The BBQ sauce. Did you?—”
“Put the pot on before the glamour work.” He crosses his arms. “Do you have any idea what goes into feeding a dragon? Do you?”
“I genuinely do not.”
“I pulled out the dragon pot. The dragon pot, Ashlynne. Hasn’t been used in centuries. I welded it shut after the incident with the lindworm and I had to pry it open with a crowbar and prayer.”
“A crowbar.”
“And prayer.” He’s fully ranting now, divine composure abandoned for the particular fury of a cook who hasn’t even met the guest yet and is already exhausted by them. “Three goats. A whole elk. Seventeen pounds of root vegetables that I grew myself, in enchanted soil, with my own divine hands.” He holds up said hands like they’re evidence in a trial. “For a dragon I haven’t met. Because you asked.”
In my defense I was pretty sure BBQ sauce was nothing more than ketchup and some spices.
“She’ll appreciate it.”
“I don’t need her to appreciate it.” He points at me. “I need her to deserve it. There’s a difference.”
From somewhere behind me, Kieran says, very quietly, “He’s not wrong.”
I turn.
