“Not like that,” Astrid echoes. “I’m not convinced you absolutelyneedto marry. It might not change anything. It might just make things worse, because now the only chance a caveman has of ever having a wife is killing a married man and hoping the widow will choosehim. But I will say this, because it’s just obvious: Being married has made all the girls much happier than they were before. Including me.”
“It sure seems that way,” I say with a little smile as I get up and put the mug on the table. “Thanks for the experimental drink. I think it could be decent enough with ten ounces of sugar in it.”
“You think ten would be enough?” Astrid asks, swirling the liquid in her mug. “I was thinking twelve. And six big strawberries. Now all we need is to find a sugar mine and a strawberry factory. Sorry, it’s just that I’m pregnant and I have the silliest cravings right now.”
I leave her hut, and make my way back to the Red Rock. I can tell that someone has talked to her about persuading me to at least try a caveman. Probably Korr’ax himself. But she resisted it, and I’m grateful for that. Still, there’s not much she can do.
The tribesmen I meet greet me with sweet smiles, but avoid talking to me. That’s on Korr’ax’s orders, probably suggested by Bryar so as not to overwhelm me with awkward caveman suitors. He’d rather show them to me one by one.
That won’t last forever. As time goes on, tensions might get worse and Korr’ax might simply tell me outright to find a husband. So far the attempts have been moderately subtle, but he’s a man of action, and if he wants something he tends to get it.
Most of the men I meet are green-striped ones from the Borok tribe, but some have yellow stripes and come from the Tretter tribe that Korr’ax also rules. There are many more of those than usual, so I guess he’s got a whole roster ready to show to me if none of the Borok guys pass my muster.
“Yikes,” I mutter to myself as I pass one layer of guards at the foot of the stairs. They smile and flex their muscles as they let me pass, and in my state of mind I find them all sickeningly ingratiating.
“They don’t know any better,” I remind myself between clenched teeth. “They’ve never seen girls before. They have no clue.”
When I approach the top of the stairs, I hear some of the girls are talking at the penthouse plateau. They go quiet when they spot me, so I think I can guess what their topic was.
It’s Cora, Riley and Piper, picking at a woven basket with nuts and berries.
“Hi,” I greet them. “Still no birth?”
“Not yet,” Cora says. “Alba’s baby is a stubborn one. But we’ll get there.”
I glance over at the flying saucer. “How’s he doing in there, Myron the Plood?”
“Seems fine,” Riley tells me. “As long as he doesn’t have to come up with any ideas or show any initiative, he’s happy just flying the saucer.”
I glance out over the jungle. “Such a weird thing, being a pure servant species. Someone must have genetically altered them, right?”
“Could be,” Piper says, gently rocking the baby in her arms. “Or just designed them from scratch. Though at this point, nothing about this planet would surprise me. Maybe dragons made them somehow. Maybe they just found each other and decided the arrangement worked.”
Riley snorts softly. “I think the Plood side of the arrangement got the short end of the stick.”
“Depends,” Piper says. “They seem weirdly happy about serving.”
Gazing out over endless miles of jungle, I find myself hoping to see a dark shape in between the trees down there. But all I seeare occasional small, white blobs. “I think I can see some of them down there. Are they migrating, or what?”
“We think they’re trying to find that dragon who kept showing up around Callie,” Riley says. “Vyrathion, I think she called him. Dark scales with gold through them.”
My eyes drift back to the jungle before I can stop them.All the places you can’t go.
“Sounds like him,” I say, trying to sound more casual than I feel. “Did Callie ever figure out how to get rid of him?”
Riley shrugs. “She married Crat'ax. After that, the dragon stopped showing up.”
“Convenient,” I mutter.
“Maybe,” Riley says. “Or maybe dragons lose interest once they think someone belongs to somebody else.”
I pick a dark blue berry from the basket. “So what’s he doing here?”
“We’re trying to figure that out,” Cora says. “There’s no gold here, as far as we know. And if Astrid is right, most dragons prefer to stay far away from each other.”
Riley nods. “Praxigor definitely does. I don’t think he even likes hearing about other dragons.”
“Exactly,” Cora says. “So having one suddenly appear here feels strange.”
