Page 107 of Connor and the Dragons

Oallian and I looked at each other for a beat, then went sprinting after her.

“Your Majesty. Is he okay?” Oallian called as he pulled ahead of me. “If he is bleeding I would like to know now, because I am going to be very upset and I would rather get started.”

“Move, dragon.”

We ran the whole length of the palace. Past the long gallery, down the wide stair, through two sets of doors a footman got open about half a second before the Queen of Qoksmere swept through them, finally skidding to a stop in the grand ballroom.

“This had better not be a seating chart emergency,” Oallian huffed.

“Oallian,” I said, nodding towards the other end of the room.

Half the chairs were stacked along the far wall. There was a trestle table near the doors with a floor plan weighted flat on it and a chalk line drawn across the parquet and abandoned partway. Six footmen stood against the walls with their hands behind them and their eyes forward, and a steward was still holding a list.

And in the middle of all of it, filling most of a room built for four hundred people, was an enormous blue-white dragon, lying down, looking absolutely resigned, as if the worst fate imaginable had befallen him.

There was frost feathering out from him across the floor in a slow ring. It had already reached the base of the nearest column. Two footmen were quietly moving chairs back from the edge of it.

“We were arranging the solstice ball,” Delsy said. She had her hand on the doorframe and she was still out of breath. “He was talking about the placement of the musicians. He said the word harpist, and then he shifted. I’m afraid he ripped straight through his favorite morning coat.”

“The blue one shot through with gold embroidery?” Oallian gasped. Then he looked at Kessrin and a huge smile broke out on his face. “Oh. Oh!”

“We did fuck him quite thoroughly this morning,” he said, at volume.

“Just five minutes ago, you were complaining about that not being nearly enough.”

“Well it was. He’s finally been bred, and he’s producing an egg. That’s why he looks so miffed. Because he wanted a cozy cave for his confinement. Remember?”

The steward lowered his list.

The information hit me sideways and left my mouth as a weird squeak. Then I was across the parquet with my bare feet skidding on the ice and both hands on Kessrin, whooping. “Who cares about the cave? We’re having a baby!”

Oallian’s grin grew bigger and he whooped, louder than I was, and the two of us climbed a dragon in a ballroom in front of the crown and six members of staff.

I wrapped both arms around his long neck as far as I could reach and kissed him on the side of the jaw and told him he was magnificent. Oallian was kissing the other side and saying something about how he had known, he had known this morning, he had said so at the time.

Kessrin turned his head, slowly, and looked at us. His tail twitched, and he knocked over a stack of chairs.

“He’s thrilled,” Oallian said. “I’m sure of it. He’s just a little grumpy about the not-cave.”

“Then we shall give him a cave,” Delsynarea pronounced, stepping forward to lay a hand on Kessrin’s forehead. “As much as a ballroom can be a cave.” She turned and started issuing orders. “He’ll want dark, so draw the curtains, and we must build a cozy nest, don’t you think?”

“I do think,” Oallian agreed. “Ooh, this will be fabulous.”

They rushed off, making plans and issuing orders and wondering where one might find two hundred cozy blankets. I stayed with our dragon, still slowly petting him. I ran a hand down his flank, up under the shoulder where the plates run smaller, and I pressed my forehead against his cool, scaly skin. “It’ll be okay, sweetheart. They’re building you some sort of pillow fort, it sounds like. That’s better than a cave, isn’t it?”

And then I felt him. He arrived the way a memory surfaces, except this one came from outside me and pushed in warm behind my eyes.

What came first was the mood, and the mood was grumpy. Enormous, put-upon, thoroughly fed-up crankiness, that was so very Kessrin that I leaned into it, smiling against his scales. “Sweetheart, you’re okay,” I whispered. “We’ll make you your cave. We’ll build it right around you.”

The next thought was urgent and worried and had a slight tinge of seating charts to it.

“Honestly, I don’t think the Queen will be too upset about the ball.”

It took me a moment to realize that everyone around us had frozen, and that the Queen was staring at me, brow furrowed.

“The resonance deepens, then?” she asked.

“Completely,” Oallian said. “And he is very worried about his seating charts. I can’t with the seating charts.”