“But I want to see him.”
“I can summon him. It’s no problem. With Blue, I’m not controlling him. He just listens to me, because he wants the bestfor me, because he's a part of me. And I do think at one point you'll be able to summon him, because you're a part of me too. The biggest part of me.”
He smiled and I noticed his eyes got glassy.
I summoned Blue. Purple-blue smoke swirled around us, revealing Blue's small dragon form. He bounded over happily. After greeting me, he settled contentedly into Di's lap. Di froze, unsure.
Blue tipped his head up and looked at Di. Not at me. At Di. His blue-purple eyes – the same color as his fire – narrowed in what I had spent fifteen years learning to read as recognition. Then he butted his small horned head against Di's chest. Once. Gently.
Di's hand came up, slowly, and rested on Blue's head.
"Hey, little guy," he said softly. "Thanks for not letting me run into that fight. And for the demon you incinerated on top of me. I owe you. A lot."
Blue puffed a small ring of blue smoke at him in answer. The dragon equivalent of anytime.
I laughed warmly. "You two look adorable."
“Umm, what should I do?”
“He likes you. Scratch behind his ears or on his back” Di tentatively lowered his hands and touched Blue’s head. Blue purred, and smoke came out of his nostrils. Di laughed and relaxed next to me.
Next, we tried fire. It turned out he couldn’t summon or control it.
“So basically, my only powers as a demon are seeing in the dark plus being super strong?”
“Don’t forget Blue,” I supplied.
“I don’t think he counts. He just likes me.” As if Blue agreed, he puffed, and blue-purple smoke filled the space around us.
“Blue,” I warned. He turned his back to me and curled on the bed. Talk about a moody dragon.
Even though Di was disappointed at lacking wings or horns, happiness radiated through our bond. Our love echoed around us and within us.
Somewhere, outside the warmth of this room, outside the bond humming between us, outside the small fire-dragon now snoring on the comforter… the world was still moving. King was still sitting in his house with a family that didn't yet know what their brother and son had become, and what I always was.
Tomorrow we would have to go home.
Tomorrow we would have to tell them.
But tonight, tonight was ours.
We fell asleep entwined. Before closing my eyes, I kissed Di’s forehead, whispering through our bond,“I love you.”
“I love you too, my demon.”
Chapter forty-one
Diablos
No matter how much we wanted to stay in our bubble of happiness, we knew it was time to return home. Dagon tried to hide his feelings, but our bond betrayed his worry about facing King. He feared King wouldn't accept him as a demon. He feared he wouldn't accept me and that I would lose my father.
I felt it through the thread before he had a chance to bury it. It was a fast, sharp drop in him every time King came up in conversation. The bond didn't translate the fear into spoken words for me. It just gave me the shape of it. The same shape Dagon had walked around with for fifteen years and never once let me see.
I didn't tell him I could feel it.
Some things a person needs to carry by himself for one more minute before he's ready to be carried.
My emotions were different. I clung to anger to mask my fears, or maybe the anger that I've been holding back had finally surfaced. Anger toward King for pushing Dagon away all those years ago. Rationally, I understood King's reasons, but that didn't diminish my resentment. Anger that he didn't tell us the whole truth before we left. Anger that he disappeared like thin air and only messaged us to check if we're okay.
