“Just for your reference, all of this happened nearly a hundred years ago, James,” Zenya explained softly. “Everyone involved has either passed or served their sentences already, so there’s no need for you to grow upset at what happened to me.”

  “Somehow, that isn’t reassuring me,” I grumbled. “It sounds like you’re asking me not to get upset about things that are going to be undeniably upsetting.”

  “That’s almost exactly what I’m doing,” she confirmed. “Perhaps getting upset is too strong of a line. I don’t need you to do anything. I don’t need you to chase anyone down. It’s been handled already.”

  “You did say you wanted him to hold you when you said this. That’s something he can do that should keep his hands occupied. Switch with me,” Beth said, sliding her legs over Zenya’s hips and around her, pressing her tightly against me. “Go on, snuggle up against him. Up on his chest. Otherwise, you’re pushing me away from him.”

  Zenya hesitantly did what Beth suggested, slowly inching a leg up over mine and sliding until she had straddled me. My hands found her back and gently started stroking up and across her skin, smooth where the scars had marred her for years. It took a few seconds of contact, but she eventually lowered her head to my chest. About thirty seconds after that, she exhaled, and it felt as though she had truly relaxed against me, releasing the rest of the tension in her body.

  “You don’t have to tell me, if you don’t want to,” I said as my fingers slowly traced loops on her back.

  “Okay,” she replied softly. Then she inhaled, arching her back and pressing herself against me, stretching and flexing. Her face brushed against my chin as she lifted up, her onyx hair gliding against my skin, and I couldn’t possibly ignore how her body felt against mine. She was wearing the pajamas she had worn during our movie night again, and while they constituted a barrier, they weren’t nearly enough to prevent how much it felt like her innocent stretch was an intentional maneuver to press her chest and hips even more into me.

  The dragon nudged me and asked if it felt wrong to enjoy her as a woman. I thought about it for a moment because I knew conclusively that, at least right now, the answer was yes, but I wasn’t sure why. Eventually, as her yawn concluded and her arms settled back around my side, I realized that it wasn’t merely my reaction to her body that was unnerving me. It was that she had come here to support me initially and now wanted to share something from her past. It wasn’t that I actually felt uncomfortable with the idea of being intimate with her any longer; now was simply not the time. It wasn’t the time to feel how long her legs felt wrapped around mine. It wasn’t the time to feel how her perky bust felt pressed into my chest. It wasn’t the time to remember how her backside looked once I had removed all of the offending material from it, how stunning her pale skin was once the blemishes and scars had faded.

  “You remember how I told you that my employers had gone to the capital during the revolution, yes?” Zenya asked softly. I nodded. Beth and Sam hadn’t heard that part of our conversation during the movie, but they simply listened attentively. “Well, I continued working at the manor house anyway, out of fear. They didn’t say when they were coming back when they departed, so we had to be ready for them at any time. Of course, after some time, some of the other girls fled. They knew the war and the revolution were tearing up the aristocracy, mostly financially but somewhat literally, and they hoped to fall into the background of the chaos and find a new life for themselves somewhere else.

  “I wasn’t capable of doing that because the Countess had turned me. Not all of the girls there were vampires, nor the men ghouls. Most weren’t, actually. I had caught her eye, and she had converted me and then beaten the vampire that emerged into submission. I was both scared of trying to manage the beast she had awoken in me on my own, because I had never had to, and I was frightened of the idea that she would have some way of tracking me with her powers. I didn’t know how any of it worked. I wasn’t aware that there were others in the world. It felt like she was the only one who had these strange capabilities, and she had tied me to her, and that was that. Escape wasn’t something that existed in my mind. Her husband had a wizard employed, I think, to control the grounds. It made it seem like the Countess had more powers than she did.

  “All that is to say that I had no incentive to leave. Even as the majority of the other girls fled, trying to tell me that the Count had surely died and that I should get away while I could, I stayed. I stayed, did my daily duties, even as the food stores ran empty and the field laborers stopped working and the taxes stopped coming — not that we knew how to spend them, anyway.”

  Beth placed her hand on Zenya’s back, between mine, trying to offer her support, her empathy, her familiarity with that type of situation.

  Zenya winced, though, and I understood why as she continued telling her story. “It was the best time of my life after my childhood before now, though,” she said, which made Beth’s eyes open wide. “I was able to simply do my duties in ignorant bliss, fall into a routine without the chaos of the world around me, without powerful people coming to do as they pleased. It was simple, and as far as I knew at the time, it was fulfilling.

  “Then, after seven weeks of absence from my owners, the manor was attacked. I don’t know if it was because the wards around the outside of the property failed and the attackers had been waiting for their chance, or if the owner’s long absence merely invited opportunists, but the manor was raided by a dozen men. It wasn’t a pleasant experience — that much is for certain — but it could have been much worse. They made a mess of the place and took the handful of us who remained and hadn’t fled when they started making noise as captives.

  “At first, they talked about ransoming us and the things they stole back to the Countess, but when it became clear that wasn’t going to be an option because they were dead, the men quickly pivoted to other plans. Again, I don’t know if they intended to strike at the manor when the protections faded or if they were simply predisposed to unpleasantness already and found an opportunity, but they seized it, regardless. They returned to the manor after two days at a campsite in the forested lands the Count would hunt in and took everything of value they could find. A couple of the girls helped them find more secured things, but none of us actually knew where the real wealth was hidden — or if there even was any hidden on the premises. Those girls got let go for their assistance.

  “I, of course, was more terrified of the Countess at this time than I was of these men who, while being brigands, yes, had mostly simply taken belongings out of the house carefully and had us restrained but otherwise fed and treated politely. The one in charge was quite insistent that we were to be treated with respect. They didn’t scare me as much as the idea of the Countess I had built up in my mind. There were times when I felt sorry for them.

  “I was wrong to, of course, because these men weren’t men — they were a group of young werewolves sent out from their clan in a coming-of-age challenge. They had to come back with things of value for their clan in order to become full members. Each man had to bring something they were individually responsible for, and they couldn’t be shared.”

  “I thought Zoey said wolves tend to not—” Sam started, before being cut off.

  “She did. I’ve talked with her and Kyle about it. Her reaction to Kyle felt strange to me, given my experiences. I don’t know if it was something different about European wolves versus American wolves biologically, something to do with the modern age, or if it was just one strange group overcoming their natural instincts to survive in harsh times, but they had a clan. It wasn’t a pack — it wasn’t a single family — and there were nearly a hundred of them. When I was brought back with them to their home — as one of the things of use that they had to bring back — I was surprised to see an entire village of wolves awaiting them.

  “They went through their coming of age ceremony, with each man having given his account of the raid on the manor and what things he had brought back. Money, precious metals, information, documents about the world — and then me, the only girl remaining. I wasn’t sure when I realized that all of the others had been let go. None of the ones who had stayed and been captured with me were girls I had worked with regularly before. I wasn’t friends with them, and they hadn’t made much of an impression on me, but one by one, they had been let go. I didn’t think anything of it until the third-to-last man of the troupe trotted me into the room with the elders and introduced me as his thing of value.

  “It turns out that they knew I was a vampire. I didn’t even know the word yet, but they knew exactly what I was. I don’t know how, but I was as sheltered as I could be at that moment, and it wasn’t like anyone told me after the fact. Anyway, he introduced me as a vampire who had been part of the Countess’ coven. The elders asked me if it was true, but I didn’t understand exactly what they were saying. I replied that the Countess was the one who had turned me. That was enough justification for them. They nodded, and the man who had claimed me as his thing completed his ceremony.

  “I don’t know if you’re familiar with the concept of a whipping boy,” Zenya started to say, which made all three of us listening groan immediately, “but that is what I became. Initially, of course, I was simply punished to atone for some alleged crime that had been committed years before by the Count or one of his relatives or something like that. But once that had been completed to their satisfaction, and they realized that I didn’t die even when subjected to extreme physical punishment, because I was already dead, of course, they found a different use for me.

  “For nearly 30 years, I was kept bound and held in the elder’s chamber. In the beginning, every time a child committed an offence, or when a pregnant woman had committed a crime, or when someone too elderly or infirm had a punishment to receive, they would whip me instead. I was not gagged — that would have been counterproductive, in their minds, because they wanted the person who wasn’t fit enough to receive the punishment to see how much it hurt me. They continued using their barbed whips for particularly egregious punishments, which left little shards of silver in my body, as you well know. The silver was a toxin to them and would leave them crippled for a time, but in me, it just broke off and got lodged under my skin, living there for decades as a sign of the crimes I was bearing.

  “They cleaned my body between each bout, treating me about as well as they would a captive from another clan. I was clothed, fed, kept clean, and given very basic quarters inside the elder’s chamber. It was there that I listened to all of the disagreements and heard all of the arguments. After several years, one of the elders died. His son, who was the one who had led the raiding party, was given his spot — not that it was hereditary; he was simply seen as the best of the next generation. He was somewhat different from the previous leaders. I got a bed, I ate at his table, and he talked to me directly. He’d talk to me about what the clan was doing, what their struggles were, and what decisions he had to make. I guess he assumed that, since I had been in the elder chamber for several years at that point, I had some grasp of what should be going on.

  “He didn’t stop the punishments, but he did make the guilty person assist their surgeon in cleaning and wrapping my wounds. I still wasn’t one of them, but he thought that seeing the injury, witnessing how much my body would endure, and guiding them through the process of preparing me to heal made them more aware of what I was doing for them. For most of them, I believe it was effective. There was one girl who took joy in watching me get punished in her stead. She’d continuously get in minor trouble, have me punished for her, and then take deliberately incorrect actions while assisting the surgeon to cause me more agony.

  “I mentioned it once, over dinner with the elder who had somewhat humanized me. He watched intently the next time she committed an offence, and saw when she stuck her finger in one of my wounds and pulled it back open after the surgeon had closed it. She was the only one of their clan that I know of who was flayed while I was there. She threw a fit over it, insisting that I wasn’t one of them and that I didn’t deserve any of their protections. The elder was unmoved.

  “My time as a captive there came to an end not long after. Their clan struggled through the famine in the 30s. The pups coming of age would frequently simply leave for one of the cities where the industrial five-year plans were, at least according to the propaganda, making things better, while the area we were in was subject to extreme grain quotas that led to starvation among many people. Poverty and hunger were widespread. In an attempt to earn money to save his clan, the now-aging elder sold me to a businessman who needed an assistant. I was sold on my intelligence and conversational abilities, something he himself cultivated in me to support him. Of course, the businessman he sold me to was actually Vladimir, the ghoul whom you’ve met and is our House Head here. He was performing sting operations for the Soviet government, looking to sniff out magical individuals who had been lost in the shuffle between the wars and the subsequent government restructuring. When he fell out with the party there and fled to the States, he brought me with him.”

  “Is that where you got your aversion to blood?” I asked when Zenya set her head back down on my chest.

  “No,” she replied. “I already had no desire to ever again consume blood before the wolves found me. They didn’t even offer me any, not that I would have accepted.”

  “Fucking hell,” Beth exhaled. “Are you telling me there’s more?”

  Zenya hesitated for several seconds before nodding slowly. “I didn’t become a vampire by my own choice, so, yes, there’s more. Not tonight, though. I don’t think I’ve shared everything with anyone before. Marjorie knew about the scars, but I didn’t tell her how I earned them.”

  “You didn’t,” Sam said. “You didn’t earn them.”

  Evgenia took several seconds before she whispered, “Maybe.”

  “You didn’t,” Sam insisted.

  “Maybe. It does make me more comfortable with ending up here.”

  “What do you mean by that?” I asked.

  “It makes me feel like I deserve where I ended up, James. It makes me feel like the things that I went through were perfectly shaping me to be your advisor now — to be someone useful for you, so that you could show me what I had been missing the entire time.”

  “You deserve a lot more than that, Zenya,” I said back. “I know that, well, in a similar vein to Arjun, you were born in a different time and place, so far removed from what I know that it may as well have been the magical world he was born in, but you deserved more than to be a prisoner for half of your life.”

  “I wasn’t with the wolves for—”

  “And you’re going to tell me that you weren’t a prisoner at the manor, with the fear you just described having of the Countess?”

  “No,” she whispered back.

  My hands wrapped fully around her, holding her against my chest tightly as I sighed.

  “I wish I could help. Tell me — tell us — if you need something, please?” I asked. “Please? I know that somehow we’ve ended up in muddy water here, but I want you to be happy, and I want you to get what you want out of life. I don’t know what that is. You don’t want me to try and get justice for you, but you can’t tell me that story and then expect me to sit here and do nothing.”

  “Do your work tomorrow for Antonin. Learn what it would take to construct yourself a house that isn’t owned by Aisling with the amenities you desire, so that you can have a home for you and yours. Find someone else who needs your help with Juliana’s money. See if you can take a stand and get the rules changed.”

  “None of that’s for you, Zenya,” Sam pointed out.

  “I’m where I need to be right now,” Zenya answered. “I got my reward already. James is holding me — not you, not Beth, Zoey’s not even here right now to give me space, not the scaled girl down the hall who was begging to be his homemaker not a week ago. He’s holding me, and all of you are here listening to me, asking me what I want and what I need. I don’t know. I’ve never had to know in my life. I’ve always been told what I should expect. Right now, I’m getting more than I ever imagined. I was happy, you know that? When Elder Antonenko talked to me over his dinner about his tribe, I was happy. Or I thought I was. I didn’t have to think about me. I listened to his thoughts about the youth he was counseling, the tools that needed repairs, and how those costs had to be redistributed, and I gave my advice, but it was surreal. I was detached from the impact of those decisions. I don’t know how to make decisions for me any more than you know what you want now that you’ve got James. I’m in the same boat as you, Samantha. I ended up in his orbit and now I know what I was missing in the past, but I don’t know what I’m missing now.”

  “Shh,” I whispered, my fingers rubbing against her shoulder blades as I held her. “You don’t need to know. As long as you think you’ll be capable of saying something when you do know.”

  “I told you I wanted this, didn’t I?”

  “You did. You absolutely did.”

  Sam opened her mouth to say something, but she changed her mind and closed it a second later. Her hand joined Beth’s, all of us wrapping Zenya up with as much love and care as we could project after having listened to her tell part of her story. It was a good thing it was early because the three of us who did sleep needed the extra hour of quiet contact in the dark, cool room before we were emotionally ready to actually drift off.

  And Zenya lay there silently against me the entire time. The only thing that told me she was even alive was when, in the darkness, she leaned up noiselessly and pressed a kiss against my cheek, like a polite ghost leaving a stray touch in the night.

  ~*~*~*~

  I woke up to Zenya in the exact same position as she was when I fell asleep, with my arms wrapped around her back and her face nestled into my neck. Beth was still beside me, snoring very lightly, but it was only the three of us in the bed.

  “Sam got up half an hour ago,” Zenya informed me with a whisper. “She’s making breakfast and talking with her mother. Asmara started moving a few minutes ago and is taking a shower in the other bathroom. Cynthia finished in there already.”

  “Are you coming with me today?” I asked her.

  She shook her head softly. “No. I’m going to go see where you could be permitted to build a house — magically, as I looked into the mundane steps weeks ago — and how much land and construction would cost this morning versus your current savings and expected income. If I have more time, I have some paperwork to draft that you’ll likely need soon, but I’m going to spend the afternoon with Marjorie regardless of how far I get. Talking about what I told you and what she thinks I should want, because I’ve not managed to come up with anything that you wouldn’t have given me freely anyway.”

  “Isn’t much he wouldn’t have, if you’d ask,” Beth grumbled groggily.

  “I know, Beth. I know, now. And I’m incredibly blessed to have gotten here. It takes a lot of the sting out emotionally of what I told you all last night to know that it was a part of getting me here.”

  “I’m not—” I started.

  “I know, James,” Zenya interrupted me. “I know you don’t like that I’m framing it that way. I know you think they aren’t related and that I can have good things happen without experiencing what you would call atrocities. But I did experience them and they did get me here, and now you’re going to prevent them from ever happening again.”

  “Well, try to,” I acknowledged.

  “Mmhmm,” she nodded knowingly. “And your ‘try to’ means that so much as a stubbed toe will be unacceptable. Unending bliss seems to be your target threshold, and the fact that it’s unreachable doesn’t stop you from aiming for it.”

  “Would be nice if I felt that I was actually working on it.”

  “Then you need to get up and join Sam, so she can learn what she needs to do to assist you in creating a home that is yours in the near future, James.”

  “Yeah,” I sighed. “You’re right. I just don’t want to get up when you two feel so good against me.”

  I was pleasantly surprised when that offhand comment drew what could only be described as a purr from Evgenia’s chest. She smiled as she vibrated and nuzzled herself even deeper against me.

  “Five more minutes then,” she eventually decreed. “I’ll tell you when your time with me is up.”

  It was closer to twenty-five than five itself, but I did eventually get up and shower myself. Sam had made potato pancakes for breakfast that came out looking surprisingly like hash browns, and I was wondering how she got them so crisp before I saw her frying one, then telekinetically removing it from the oil in the air over the sink before slicing the next one and assembling the pancake without ever lifting a finger.

  “Thought you weren’t big on cooking,” I said, trying to ask the question without being inflammatory.

  “I’m not,” she replied firmly. “But it’s not like before two months ago I could do any of this. It’s still enjoyable to use the powers you’ve shared with me to do things, especially the first couple of times. Being able to just play with magic is awesome. When I’ve made the dish already and can’t think of any new way to do something, yeah, then cooking is kinda lame. I don’t actually want to get good at it, but I am because my mom still needs to eat, and now Asmara does, too, and everything I make tastes better.”

  “Your cooking is delicious,” Asmara added as she stepped into the kitchen from the hallway.

  I glanced at my new housemate as she crossed into the room, but did a double-take when what she was wearing connected in my brain. I knew she was from a much warmer part of the world and that it was winter here, but for everyone I knew, that meant an occasional hat to go with their sweatshirt. There had been days in December when I had still worn shorts to the gym and Zoey was still running outside, admittedly in leggings instead of her skin-tight shorts now. No, to my unhidden surprise, Asmara was wearing fur-lined boots, sweatpants, what looked to be two layered sweatshirts, and then she was carrying a heavy outer jacket as well as a hat and gloves.

  “What?” she asked as I stared at her.

  “Are you cold?” was the only thing I could contemplate asking.

  “Not in here. It isn’t warm outside, though. On top of that, James, I have bright silver scales all over my body.”

  I furrowed my brow. “I just assumed you’d have magic to—” I started, but cut myself off as I realized what the problem was.

  “Someone likely will, but I don’t personally,” Asmara answered my incomplete thought. “I didn’t leave my home before. Literally didn’t leave. Since I’ve been here, I’ve covered up almost all of the time. My father conjured illusions when he needed to, but that was very rarely. The expectation was that I would be clothed nearly totally.”

  “We’re going to find another solution to that,” I replied. “So that you can wear what you wish.”

  Asmara inclined her head in thanks, but then continued speaking. “I don’t know if you should spend much time on that, to be honest with you. It is very cold here compared to where I lived, and aside from meeting with other magically inclined persons, I don’t think I’ll have a massive need for leaving the house right now. Perhaps, in the future, I will want to, but for now I am content remaining with one of you in your home.”

  “Well, even if you don’t want it right away, I don’t want you to feel like you don’t have the choice to go out when you do want to. Today, simply being here might be new and exciting, but that could quickly turn into feeling like a prisoner if no progress is made.”

  Asmara smiled. “And you were worried about how I would feel about your treatment here.”

  “I was worried that you had no way of knowing how I was going to treat you — that you were throwing yourself into the deep end with no way out if I wasn’t what you thought I was.”

  “The risk was worth it,” she replied firmly. “But I knew enough to know it was no great risk at all.”

  “Alright,” Sam interrupted. “Eat up. James has a house to build, and you have to learn how to use magic without exhausting yourself.”

  ~*~*~*~

  I was confused by the fact that I ended up in the driver’s seat of a car I had never been in before, headed to a place I had never been to before. I was even more astounded that Antonin wasn’t even interested in copiloting for me on the way to his cousin’s property, and I was utterly shocked that the task of assisting me in navigating was left to Sam.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Even if I had been told beforehand that I was the one who was going to be driving, I would have assumed that Antonin would guide me. If for some reason he wasn’t going to be, I would have assumed that it was to discuss magic with Sam in the back seat, since he was going to need her assistance later in the day.

  No, instead, when he met the scaled South Asian woman who had recently thrust herself into my life and learned that she had absolutely no knowledge of magic at all despite being literally the child of a dragon, Antonin grew almost giddy with excitement and insisted that Sam and Asmara switch places.

  Which only confirmed that I was always going to be driving while he talked shop with one of the women accompanying me.

  “Drakeling,” Antonin started to ask while I was negotiating one of the highway interchanges to leave the city — something only possible with Sam’s help, because the highway split in a way that the GPS didn’t think was an exit and therefore didn’t tell me to deviate, but that was marked an exit on the road signage — “Would you open a connection to Asmara like you did with Samantha that first time I was teaching you?”

  “Through the bond?” I asked. “That’s—”

  “No, drakeling. When I had you inscribing the metal plates, you were not yet bonded with Samantha, and yet you shared mana with her anyway.”

  “That took a lot of focus,” I replied once I made the terrifying left-hand ramp merge.

  “And it was terrifying until I understood how in control of it he was,” Sam added. “Not something he should do while driving.”

  Antonin was silent for several seconds. Then he sighed. “And when we arrive, we will have other tasks. A most unfortunate circumstance. So be it.”

  I glanced at Sam, thinking that she could probably host the link and syphon energy from me through our bond. I wasn’t sure if she actually knew how to do that, though — my natural aptitude for it had clearly been draconically supported, and perhaps even influenced and safeguarded by my third part — and now was absolutely not the time for her to begin testing things, not least of which because I still needed her attention to help me drive.

  After what felt like a stressful eternity, even though it had only taken twenty-five minutes in reality, we were out of the city center and onto the highway proper, heading west on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. I felt myself exhale a breath I hadn’t realized I had been holding, and then I twitched when Sam placed her hand on my thigh. She left it there for the rest of the drive, her thumb slowly and gently rubbing my leg. I felt her magic nudge me, too, just looking to calm me and help me focus on what I was doing.

  Her support was incredibly welcome. I hadn’t driven in months and hadn’t ever done so from a major city center. I felt rusty, didn’t feel like I had ever mastered the skill in my previous life, and now I was driving in a place I had never before driven in to a place I had never been to before while the person who knew where I was going was in the back seat discussing the foundational elements of connecting with magic with Asmara — which I didn’t even feel like I could complain about, because I did want him to do it. I just didn’t exactly feel like now was a good time.

  Eventually, the GPS had me turn on a dirt driveway, and Antonin’s sedan kicked up a dust cloud behind us as I crawled toward a house and barn set nearly a mile back from the main road. Antonin had me park alongside a pickup truck under a massive, permanent carport that was next to a large beige house. It was only after I stepped out of the car that I realized how many piles of lumber and other building materials I had driven past while focusing on keeping the car from being tugged by the grooves in the dirt road. I winced as I mentally prepared myself for moving all of them at some point during the day.

  “Tóňa!” came shouted from the house. When I turned my head, there was another slate grey skinned, ancient elf standing on the porch waving. “Come here, you old goat. It’s good to see you, and especially good if you’ve come with help for me today.”

  Antonin sheepishly walked toward the house, where the other elf wrapped him in a hug that seemed to defy how old they both looked. The hug lasted long enough to give me a better chance to observe the other elf, who was wearing jeans, boots, and a heavy flannel shirt. His silver hair was trimmed short. Directly next to Antonin, the resemblance was unmistakable, but the two men seemed to be contrasts of each other everywhere other than physically. Antonin was eclectic, and his single-minded academic pursuits had left him somewhat unkempt, untamed by society, even as he lived among it. Meanwhile, this other man, who seemed to have departed somewhat from the center of civilization to live on his own with just the animals he raised, seemed to be refined and well-groomed, socially skilled — simply retiring from the bustle of life in his advancing age.

  “Hello to you, too, Jan,” Antonin replied. “It is good to have made it here today, and the company I invited should be of great help to you.”

  As he released his grasp on Antonin, the other elf, Jan, looked over the three of us still standing cautiously by the car and frowned. “I’m not trying to be sexist and say that women can’t work, Tóňa, but I’m not sure how much help these three will be.”

  “Perhaps I should introduce you, then, and you can judge them for yourself. First, you are correct, the gentleman — and, despite what I’m about to say about him, I do mean that title genuinely — who is going to be doing the vast majority of the physical labor today is none other than James Anderson.”

  Jan’s brow furrowed as he tried to place where he had heard my name. After a second, his eyes opened wide and he looked back at Antonin. “You brought the dragon to my home?”

  “Jan, you’re not listening to me. Yes, I brought the dragon to your home. Actually, he brought me to your home. He is here as a favor to me and is going to work, so long as I uphold my end of the bargain. Frankly, if I don’t, he’s probably going to do the work and then rightfully find another way to deal with me.”

  “What was your end of the bargain?” Jan asked.

  Antonin glanced at me.

  “To show me and my mate Samantha how to do the kinds of magical infrastructure installation you want done so that we understand what will be needed in our own future home, and to help me test an aspect of my physiology so that I can use it for productive endeavors moving forward,” I answered, sparing Antonin from having to feel like he was sharing private details.

  “That’s the redhead beside him,” Antonin added. “Samantha O’Brien, daughter of Cynthia O’Brien, wife in all ways but legal to James, and very likely to be the next rated Grand Sorceress in this part of the world.”

  “Powerful?” Jan asked.

  Antonin wobbled his head. “Yes, but not in the way you think, though she is growing that way every day. Versatile and very precise.”

  “And the third?” Jan asked.

  “That is Asmara Arjunputra, kobold daughter of the outcast white wyrm Arjun, recently taken into James’ sponsorship from her home in Indonesia. While not here to work, she’s here to watch Samantha and me and learn what she can of magic so that she can be evaluated for her talents sometime soon.”

  Jan clicked his tongue twice and, with an unhidden frown on my face, said, “Tóňa, you’re playing with fire. You’ve brought the daughter of the eldest dragon in the world, a lover of one of the serpents who is a powerful spellcaster in her own right, and one of the great calamities himself to my very doorstep, through my protective warding and directly to my home. I do believe the two here to labor will be very effective, but I have reservations about giving such powerful people unfettered access to my property.”

  “You want to renegotiate our terms,” Antonin surmised.

  “I think you’ve unintentionally reduced the value of your offer by increasing the complications I have to deal with.”

  “Why don’t you show us what you need done, and you and I can bicker over the specifics throughout the day?” Antonin asked.

  “I suppose the dragon, dragon-bride, and dragon-daughter are already here,” Jan said with a sigh. “Maybe when the work’s done, I won’t be as bothered by that. James, you are here to provide physical labor, correct?”

  “Yeah,” I replied.

  “How much can you carry?”

  “In this form? Depends on how it’s arranged, I suppose. And how far I have to move it.”

  “The property line is warded,” Jan responded. “No one who isn’t invited can come in, with some exceptions for obvious emergencies. Can’t really see in, either, with the treeline we maintain. You can use your other form, if it’ll help, though I won’t complain much if you don’t. Why don’t you start with those packets of shingles there? They need to come to the backyard. The trucks can’t get back there, at least not without me chewing them out for tearing up the grass, and so they unload here along the driveway.”

  I picked up one of the plastic-wrapped packs and held it in my hands. It was cumbersome and awkward, but not exactly heavy, so I set it back down on the pallet where the rest were lying and then grabbed a second one.

  “Two?” Jan asked. “You don’t know how far you’re carrying them, yet.”

  I shrugged. “They’re really not all that heavy. Just odd to hold. To be honest, I could probably carry all of them, weight-wise, but I don’t know how I’d hold them.”

  “Could shift and place them on your back magically,” Sam whispered into my mind. “It would only take a small amount of force to keep the pallet balanced on you as you walked, since your body would be holding all the weight.”

  “I’m not shifting right now. Not when Asmara hasn’t felt that, yet.”

  Sam shrugged. One more packet of shingles floated up from where it had been set without anyone touching it and began to follow us through the air — which made Jan double-take, but he didn’t say anything besides to follow him. We went around the side of his house, down a slight slope that the house had been built into, over a tiny little stream with a pretty but unnecessary wooden bridge crossing it, to eventually reach what looked like a war zone with a dozen tarps and a thousand random pieces of equipment stashed at two makeshift workbenches surrounding an open foundation laid in the ground. Jan pointed at a spot in the grass where Sam and I set the shingles we had carried — not entirely sure why, given that there was no roof to work on yet — as he began explaining what he wanted.

  “I’d like to get the frame and exterior walls up today,” he said, which sounded absurd to me, given that I was looking at a cement pit in the ground. “The majority of the plumbing has been started, along with some of the electrical hookups for the basement. The fact that we have a dragon and a sorceress should help. Can’t say I was looking forward to carrying things up ladders.” Turning to Antonin, he continued, “Why don’t you and the two ladies go in and start looking at the water pump and warding the foundation line? The dragon and I will start getting the frame going.”

  Getting the frame going turned out to mean that I sprouted my wings and, over a dozen trips, carried what felt like an entire forest’s worth of wood from where it had been delivered in front of the existing house to this back structure. I did manage to finish that before Jan was finished anchoring the initial sections of the frame that he wanted done, so I was sent to watch Antonin and learn how to do the magical lining Jan wanted in the rest of the structure.

  When I was finished replicating what I could from Antonin’s instruction (leaving both him and Sam critiquing my efforts of flaws I couldn’t exactly see), and I returned to Jan, my tasking returned to carrying things back and forth from the front of the house and from the garage that he opened for me. Over the course of an hour, as he did what he felt he needed to, I felt like I relocated an entire hardware store piece by piece.

  When they took a break for lunch, Jan had me walk with him to where his current stables were, so I could visualize what he was doing with the new structure. It was quickly revealed that wasn’t the only reason, though, as after lunch, he had me move bales of grasses for the animals. Animals which included things straight out of a storybook — gryphons for racing, a herd of dire boars reared for their meat, a collection of basilisks in a heated enclosure who had their shed scales collected, and a group of woolly wyrms — fuzzy, dog-sized animals that looked like a komodo wearing a giant cotton ball — who grew flame-resistant wool rather than scales. When that chore was completed, I was utilized as a flying mounting point — holding things in the air with a measure to ensure they were plumb with what he wanted, while Jan anchored them at one end and then the other.

  When he had finished what he needed from me there, I was sent around the rest of the farm to do the chores Jan couldn’t do while he was working on the new building. Pour this bag of food out here, make sure these gates were opened, fill this trough with water, turn this machine on, move these buckets of feed from here to there, take this panel out of the glowbee hive and replace it with this one — a lot of busy work necessary to keep the whole facility running that I didn’t understand completely, but for which understanding wasn’t actually necessary for completion.

  The rest of the afternoon was spent shuffling between all four jobs I had done: carrying and fetching things as Jan or Antonin needed them, holding things in the air where my wings made it easy for Jan to secure them, assisting Sam and Antonin as they enchanted things, and running various errands around the farm.

  I found the labor I did on the farm to be incredibly frustrating, though, for reasons wholly outside of what I would have predicted when the day started. While the physical work was indeed monotonous, it wasn’t backbreaking for me, simply dull. The enchanting, likewise, took several attempts to get done correctly, but in the end, I learned more because of my struggles, and I could only walk away satisfied, even if Sam and Antonin felt I needed more practice. Obviously, I did, but now I’d at least understand what I was looking at when I started practicing for my own designs and goals.

  The frustrating part came when I went to help Jan in the existing horse stalls. The animals who remained inside winnied and neighed and wholly rejected my mere existence, flustered by my presence in the barn. They refused to calm until I left, and even then, they took several minutes each to settle. The nerviest of the bunch actually nipped at Jan, so bothered by my presence in their home.

  All around the farm, where I went, the animals voiced their displeasure.

  It was upsetting, to put it mildly. In the past, I had rather enjoyed the company of a pet, even preferring the company of my neighbors’ animals to the people that cared for them. To cause such obvious discomfort and distress among things innocent of worldly strife was troublesome. It certainly cemented my opinion that my power had been pushed into me for a reason — as a coping strategy, if nothing else. Losing the ability to enjoy the presence of unfamiliar animals where I went had to serve some greater purpose, surely, right?

  The magical livestock was a little better. The flock of gryphons were still uncomfortable with my presence, and they bowed in deference each time I carried something on the path that ran along their pasture. It was just as distressing, feeling them recognize my aura, even suppressed as it was, and immediately identifying me as the greater predator. I watched on enviously from a distance as one of the farmhands tossed them whole fish, seeing the eagle-eyed beasts snatch them out of the air, each waiting their turn. I wished I could do that. I wanted to have the experience of interacting with these clearly intelligent, majestic animals. But when I came near, they bowed, lowering their beaks to the ground, their eyes not raising up to meet me, even when I was carrying their treats.

  Their deference was bittersweet because, even though it vexed me so, it did allow me to ask the farmhand to demonstrate how to take on and off their racing harnesses. When I asked about demonstrating riding one, though, they nervously shook their heads and informed me that, while the gryphons lived here and were cared for here, Jan didn’t actually own all of them — he reared them for third parties. Putting their harnesses on was one thing — something that, with me here keeping them calm and deferential, wasn’t a bad way to keep them familiar with wearing the leather — but actually mounting them was clearly beyond what they had permission to do.

  So, instead, I obtained the contact information for the leather crafter from Jan and hoped that they would be able to help me more.

  Besides the bittersweet experience with the gryphons, there were two notable exceptions to my frustrating experience, and I clung to them like a life raft in a capsizing ship, for they were the only beacon of light I could see when I was otherwise alone on the farm.

  The first was the old sheepdog, Elliot. When he saw me, he felt the same fear as all the other animals — I could smell it, same as I could on a human. But he flapped his ear, mentally shrugged, and went back to work. It seemed, in his one-track mind, if I were there as a harbinger of destruction, as my aura seemed to convey, there was naught he could do to stop me. If I wasn’t, then he still had work to do, and my presence had upset the flock he tended. We ended the day peacefully, with the old hound lying beside a fire I projected after his sheep had been moved to their new pasture, an uneasy acceptance that I was what I was, both of us understanding that I couldn’t help that I caused fear in Elliot any more than the sheep feared him.

  The other beacon of my work was the supposedly skittish barn cat, ironically named Tabby, even though she was solid grey without any stripes. Despite the claim that she was a nervous thing that preferred to hide in the shadows, she strutted right out to me while I was taking a break, headbutting my leg and meowing for all to see. She had some fear in her, too, but evidently thought, much like Elliot, that hiding would be no good. Instead, she came out of the dark and claimed me, demanding attention until she was purring as I pet her stomach. She had hedged her bets that, while hiding would be of no benefit had I wished her ill intent, coming out would show the world I was actually a bit of a pushover and therefore elevate her status.

  Which I deny, but the nibble marks on my hand, earned when I pet her stomach for too long, certainly support.

  When I finally slumped back down in the driver’s seat of the car when the day was done, everyone seemed exhausted. Asmara had a big smile plastered to her face even though her eyes were clearly fatigued, Sam planted her hand back on my thigh as she settled into her seat, and Antonin let out a huge sigh.

  “Thank you, drakeling,” Antonin said once we were back on the main road. “Jan was very happy with your assistance today. You did more than he thought possible.”

  “Sounded like he had doubts at the beginning,” I mumbled back.

  “He was nervous about having you there, which was fair. But, more than that, he needed to give me a hard time about it. He needed to ensure that I squirmed a little, just to ensure that I don’t come frivolously asking him for more favors in the future.”

  “But it’s paid now?”

  “It’s paid now,” he confirmed.

  “We can work on testing my saliva now?”

  “I already was. I have a handful of trial applicants lined up to meet with you next week. After I spoke with Aisling and obtained her approval, I sent Evgenia the information so that she could draft a medical release form for them, ensuring they understand that this is technically research rather than established medicine. I’m hopeful that once they know this is legitimate — by the first handful of individuals spreading word of their experiences — we’ll be able to interest more test cases.”

  “Cool,” I replied. “Cool. Let’s do it.”

  Sam kept her hand on my thigh as I drove, and, graciously, kept her soothing magic running. I wasn’t sure exactly why I was so exhausted, given that I had done a lot of learning and productive work during the day. The only possible explanation I could come up with was that the labor hadn’t been for me. That was the only difference I could see. Every other time, even when I had expended tremendous amounts of energy, it had been either directly for me or at least notionally, indirectly for me, as a form of training or practice. Today, while I had learned how things needed to be done for the future, I wasn’t really practicing or doing something for myself.

  Thankfully, for all of our safety, merely being in the car with Sam’s hand on my leg was enough to rejuvenate me back into focus for the drive itself. The rest of the drive was quiet under the starry night sky, far enough out of the city that they were visible even among the oncoming headlights. Asmara seemed excited in the back seat, and I certainly understood how all of this could be if it were all new to her, but with neither Antonin nor me encouraging her to ask her questions, she kept them to herself.

  That changed after we parked the car downtown and Antonin bade us goodnight.

  “Your wings are so amazing,” Asmara said. “And you kept flying all day long, moving everything and then holding it in the air for Jan, even casting spells while you did.”

  “Yeah,” I replied wearily.

  “And Antonin said you should be able to hold mana for me, so that when I do get evaluated and want to practice, I should be able to catch up quickly. I mean, as long as you’re willing to help, more than you already are.”

  “I am,” I responded. “And, frankly, I think Sam should be able to do it, too. She should be able to syphon mana from me and hold it for you, if I’m not around. I had the thought in the car, but I needed her to help me navigate since Antonin was distracted with you, and I didn’t think that was a good environment to just start testing things.”

  “Probably not,” she admitted, though her smile didn’t fade at all. “He also said he knew another kobold here who I could talk to.”

  “Yeah, Antonella,” I confirmed. “She runs a florist’s shop. Has helped me a couple of times. She was very patient with me, and I can’t imagine she’d be less with you. Especially since I’m sure you’d make a better first impression.”

  “What happened?” Asmara asked me.

  “I came in that morning and yelled at Antonin a little bit while she sat quietly and waited for me to throw my tantrum. Then, when I was done, she spent a few hours teaching me how to magically communicate with flora. She didn’t think I was wrong with how I acted, or at least she said she didn’t, but I didn’t feel like it was a great showing on my part.”

  Asmara thought for a few seconds, but then replied, “The tantrum, as you called it, that you had at the dragon moot was what made me think I would be safe here. You told a dragon not to disrespect a mortal. Since then, you’ve dismissed a dragon from your house to tend to the needs of a werewolf and marched directly to the seat to argue in favor of protecting people you’ve never met from injustices you’ve not committed. I’m willing to bet that you had a perfectly justifiable reason for being upset.”

  “I felt like I was being controlled. My interactions, anyway. I felt like I was being watched and had the people I could interact with limited. Antonin confirmed all of it, though he didn’t have the specifics.”

  “That sounds like it would be frustrating for anyone,” Asmara replied softly.

  “What’s wrong now, James?” Sam asked, speaking up for the first time since she said goodbye to Antonin.

  “I’m just tired. Disheartened. Tired physically and magically from doing stuff on the farm. The magic seems to be saying that since it wasn’t for me — and it wasn’t even indirectly for me, since it was paying a favor back for Antonin — I wasn’t rejuvenated by it, even though I felt like I made progress.

  “But, while you guys were working on the enchanting and Jan was securing the anchorings and connections and had me running errands, I interacted with the animals. Or, I should say, I was observed by most of the animals. The horses and sheep looked at me like I was a wildfire raging through their fields. The glow bees shuddered and huddled down when I was swapping trays in their hive, waiting for me to pass by. The gryphons deferred to me completely. I couldn’t give them treats when they finished their tasks because they felt like they had to wait for me to take my share as the greater predator.

  “The only two animals that didn’t shun me completely were still terrified of me. The barn cat came out and demanded my attention because she was terrified of me. She used her fear of me to increase her status among the other animals. Elliot didn’t shun me, either, but that was because he was just too damn old and tired and had too much work to do to change his behavior because I was there. If I were going to be the destroyer of worlds that I could be, there was nothing he could do about it, so he just got on with his job.

  “It was just heartbreaking in a way, Sam,” I concluded with a sigh. “Something went and put all this power in me, and I’m doing what I can now to understand it and try to position myself to use it for good, but when I can’t be even in the same room as a horse — not a feral horse, but someone’s trained workhorse — and, yeah, horses can be skittish and I’m not their trainer and they don’t have a relationship with me, but the fact that I can’t even be in the same room, standing and doing nothing, without distressing them, hurts. I feel as though something has been taken from me, and I want to know why. I’m very grateful that this has brought me to you and Beth and Zoey and Zenya, but I want to know why I’m here. I didn’t do anything to get here, and I didn’t ask for this, so if whatever made this happen could show up and explain itself, that would be great.

  “On top of all of that, we’re looking to handle Juliana’s gift tomorrow, and I’m stressing over that, too. I have a family I care for, one very close confidant whom you’ve all encouraged me to get closer to, and one visiting friend whom I’m coming to know better. Our dynamic right now works. I’m stressed about upsetting that, and I’m stressed about how I’m going to make everything work moving forward, whether I decline every offer from them or with someone I own. Not someone who is simply relying on me — someone who I own, Sam.”

  I sighed again as we turned onto the block leading to our apartment. “Sorry,” I said, mostly to Asmara. “I’m just tired and feeling vulnerable, and it makes me wonder when the other shoe is going to drop. No one knows why I’m a dragon, but no one seems to think that it’s a thing that could have genuinely just happened randomly by pure chance, especially when no one thinks I was one at birth. Someone or something caused it. When are they coming to collect on their investment? What do they want from me?”

  Sam’s magic flared again, soothing and calming me, but I shook my head. “I appreciate it, Sam, but I’m good. Another night spent with all of you, and I’ll be fine in the morning. I just need to be a little removed from the unexpected side effect of helping Jan today, and hopefully resolve my concerns tomorrow. Snuggling and sleeping will help prepare me for handling that.”

  Asmara looked at me wistfully. I didn’t need my olfactory emotional detector to understand what was going through her head. She wanted to be on my list of names that I was grateful for. She wanted to help right now. She wanted to be the one whose arms I wanted around my body.

  The dragon wanted me to indulge her. Sam had suggested that I be open to it. I just didn’t feel like it was fair to her to indulge what she thought she wanted right now. Maybe I was spurning something that was genuine, but I needed time to see it. I needed to know that she wasn’t conflating her feelings of joy over being able to get what she wanted from life via me with what she actually felt for me as an individual. I wasn’t going to risk the potential where she had me for a time and decided I wasn’t what she wanted, but felt trapped because I was her bridge to this world. I was simply wearing too many hats to merely try with Asmara. I didn’t see a way to back out if it wasn’t going to work, and I needed more time with her before I knew I could let her take that step.

  That didn’t mean I refused the hug she offered me as we stepped back into the apartment.

  It was quiet inside. Cynthia was asleep, Beth was soaking in the tub waiting for us to come home, and Zenya was in her room, likely continuing her management sim. Kyle had left earlier in the day, looking to spend some time with his parents on his way home, taking an overnight train back north. He spent the afternoon with Zoey, and they had taken a number of pictures as they did touristy things around the city, tagging me in a few of them on FaeBook. I was happy to see them. For the first time, he and his sister both looked comfortable in their skin in the same room together. That certainly wasn’t anything I had planned on accomplishing when the statuesque blonde jumped me in the lobby of the gym she worked at, but it did fill me with immense joy to know that it had happened.

  He did admit that he was going to avoid my parents — that it would be too difficult for him to see them or my sister so shortly after seeing me happy and healthy, knowing he would have to lie to their faces about where he had been. I couldn’t blame him. The only way I could handle the situation was to put it out of my mind completely and hope that there would be a way to resolve it in the future. I wasn’t optimistic — the longer I waited, the less likely it was that any reentry into their lives would go well — but clinging to that hope was enough to keep me delusionally content.

  I was just sitting down on the couch, sipping a glass of the tea that Sam had teasingly poked fun at when Arjun was here, looking through the pictures Kyle had shared of him and Zoey, when the werewolf in question mentally reached out to me.

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  “Sitting on the couch,” I replied. “Sam wanted a shower before bed, so I’m waiting for her and taking a minute to myself.”

  “Put clothes on and meet me outside in two minutes,” she demanded.

  Her mental voice was terse and pointed, so I didn’t question her. I just did as she asked. I was expecting her to arrive and need something quickly, so I wasn’t surprised when she pulled into the parking lot hastily. I was surprised that she came flying into the lot with lights and sirens on.

  “In. Now,” she mentally told me without a hint of patience. I complied, sliding into the low-sitting seat. She had the car moving again before I had the door shut and before I had put my seatbelt on, lights and sirens blaring as she raced through the streets toward somewhere I wasn’t familiar with. Her hands were gripping the steering wheel hard enough that her fingers were the color of her fur.

  “What’s going on, Zo?” I asked after she made a turn and finally had a street without a number of cars to swerve around.

  “Mallory’s hurt. Vehicle incident. We’re going to the hospital.”