“Notice how I haven’t exploded yet even after you’ve insisted on beating me down. I would say that I have excellent control.”
He watched me warily. “Yes. I suppose you do have a point.”
“But that’s not what I was talking about, anyway.”
“No?”
I shook my head. “Why are we here, Randall? What do you have to show me?”
“You speak as if you have knowledge, but we both know that’s certainly not the case.”
I grinned at him. “There’s the Randall I know and who tolerates me.”
“Tolerates might be too strong a word. Why have you not lost control?”
“Maybe because you’re expecting me to.”
He stroked his beard thoughtfully. “Or maybe because I haven’t yet given you the right incentive.”
“That… doesn’t sound good.”
Randall began to smile, and I—
—HAD HEARD stories about them. The dragons. Every child growing up in Verania, regardless of their upbringing, knew about the dragons. They were legendary, maybe more so than any other magical creature that had ever existed. So little was known about them, aside from their general locations: the desert dragon, the mated pair in the Northern Mountains, the Great White in the Dark Woods, though it was more myth than anything else. Many had claimed to see it moving like a mountain in the heart of the Dark Woods, but there had never been any validity to those stories. They were drunken bar tales told to an enraptured crowd who’d forget them in favor of their hangovers the next day.
But it was strange, given how intertwined the dragons were with Verania, that no one knew that much about them. I suppose the argument could be made that it was hard to learn about a creature whose teeth were the size of a small human, but still. When I thought of them, the dragons, I found it odd that no one knew where they’d come from, or why there weren’t more of them, or what they were actually like. Oh, we knew they had names, but a dragon’s name was always a secret, something that wouldn’t be shared unless there was a reason to do so.
Then came Kevin.
Yes. Kevin. My dear, terrible Kevin. It wasn’t… disappointment per se, but more of a need for me to reconfigure my thoughts on how a dragon should be. But he roared his way into our lives, a dragon that was not known before, and then he could talk and just… exist, the way he did. After everything, the sexual threats, the kidnapping of the Prince, it turned out he was more like the rest of us than I first cared to admit. He just wanted to find a place he could call home.
And then he had to have loud, disgusting sex with my best friend and pretty much ruined dragons for me forever.
Mostly.
Now there’s Zero, the desert dragon who is one thousand four hundred years old but is mentally only fourteen. And who will only be awake for the next year. Zero, the snake dragon monster thing who worries about how he looks, if he will scare too many people.
Zero, the teenage emo dragon who just wants to be left alone so he can grow beautiful
things.
And there’s the star dragon, David’s Dragon, who is a bit of an asshole, but apparently all dragons are, so he fits. I don’t know how genuine he is or why he feels the need to help me like he has… though “help” might not be the right word. He says he’s taken a liking to me, all the while still being vague about almost everything. He spouts about impartiality, but then he possesses Kevin or waits until I blow myself up to tell me that there will be sacrifices before all is said and done.
And the last.
I saw it.
In Vadoma’s vision.
The Great White.
I told myself it wasn’t real.
I told myself that Vadoma was orchestrating the entire thing, showing me what she wanted me to see.
And yet….
I don’t know.