by Milana Jacks
After the battle, he’d proposed to me the moment we landed, and I said yes. Promptly, he’d passed out from the wounds he’d sustained and turned back into a dragon so he’d heal by today.
Neither of us had completely healed. My back was still sore, but nothing was broken. Thankfully.
I didn’t have anything to wear to the masked ball. What I’d brought in my suitcase didn’t feel right for the event. Cindy had offered me Nentres’s mom’s dress, an old designer gown that fit right but didn’t feel right. I’d never met the woman before, but she was coming to the ball later this evening. I couldn’t wear her dress without asking her permission. So that left me with a little black dress I’d brought with me. But the little black dress, though totally appropriate to wear everywhere, was not appropriate for my own…engagement party.
At the thought of my engagement, my palms sweated, and I felt like bolting out of the room. Thank the Lord, Nentres had kept the key so he could come and fetch me at six. It was five thirty, and I was still in my robe. I paced the room as I’d done almost the entire afternoon. I couldn’t conjure up a dress; I could barely do my hair and makeup from the nerves.
Okay, okay. I had to get going. I only had the little black dress, so the black dress would get worn. No choice. I got my still-half-unpacked suitcase, put it on the bed, and unzipped it. I dug up the black dress holder where I kept the dress so it wouldn’t get ruined and hung the bag on the bathroom door. I unzipped it and frowned.
I spread the bag open and found a long, light blue silk gown.
I got it out of the bag and put it on the bed, then stepped back. A sob rose in my throat, and I put my hand over my mouth to stifle it through my tears. Through blurry eyes, I recognized my mother’s dress, the one she’d worn when she’d married my dad.
I picked it up and put it against my chest, then went to the mirror. A sob escaped, and I cried louder, but I didn’t know if it was from the memory of my mother and missing her or because someone, maybe even my stepmother, had placed this dress inside my suitcase. If she came here with Marcy tonight, I’d make a point to thank her.
“And now you have no excuses.”
I screamed and spun around. “Who’s there?” Flashbacks of the Cy assaulted me, and I batted the air in front of me. By the window, a woman appeared as if conjured from white light. “What…who are you?”
She smiled, though it creeped me out since she wasn’t entirely corporeal. “I’m your fairy godmother.”
“I’ve lost my mind.”
“Oh no, quite the opposite. You’ve opened your mind to the possibility that dragons, spirits, and werewolves exist, and I thought it appropriate to introduce myself. My name is Mother Nature, and I am your fairy godmother. I gifted you the spirit the day you turned eight, and I’ve watched over you ever since.”
“You slipped the dress inside my suitcase.”
“And I brought you shoes.” She held up glass slippers.
I took them, but they slid from my fingers and landed on the ground. “Shit!”
“They’re not really made of glass.”
“No?” I picked up the slippers. “Cold. They’re freezing. What are they?”
“They’re made of ice.” The woman glowed, and I stepped back. “Water and fire don’t play well together. If you put these slippers on, they will melt, but a water dragon and his spirit are here. It is up to all of you to ensure the slippers stay in their frozen state. If you fail and the slippers melt…well, how the hell can you return the balance of elements to the Earth if you can’t balance the elements of a pair of ice slippers? You know what I mean?”
“Okay, and what if the slippers melt?”
The woman turned into a cloaked skeleton. “Don’t fail.” In a blink, she was back to her fairy-godmother cheerful self.
Um, okay. We wouldn’t fail. “There’s another dragon here. The white one.” I left the slippers off for now.
“Knight. That one, oh, that one is real ice. It’ll take a miracle to break him. You may give him a message.”
“Okay.”
“He’ll find the spirit he’s looking for right under his nose.”
“That’s it?”
“Your slippers. Put them on right now and run along, child, run.”
Nentres
They said I shouldn’t see the bride before the wedding. Yeah, Amy thought we were getting engaged. No, I didn’t tell her I’d gotten the priest. I reckoned we’d skip the engagement altogether. Since I intended to marry her tonight, I couldn’t see her.
She’d felt sorry for me for the injuries I’d sustained, and with one foot in the grave—okay, so I loved a good drama—I managed to change into my human form long enough to ask Amy to marry me. I got a firm yes before I passed out for a week so I could heal. Good thing Lance had arrived at the mansion while I wreaked chaos on the habitat. He’d drowned out the raging fires threatening to enter the city and took care that my spirit didn’t run on me while I hibernated for days, and also made the ball happen a week after the scheduled date. Bless his heart, Lance could organize people like none other, make them work on time and around the clock. No wonder he and Amy had hit it off like two old ladies over tea.
I leaned against the front door and flipped the lock. I fixed the colorful beads over my tuxedo and straightened my bright pink tie. In two minutes, I was gonna cement our bond in front of all these people before Amy changed her mind or, worse, ran away because she had major commitment issues. And that was fine as long as we worked on them while in a committed relationship.
In other words, I had locked my bride inside the room and hidden the fucking key. Lance thought it was brilliant, Knight didn’t comment, and Selena, Lance’s spirit, hadn’t spoken to me all day. Besides, I couldn’t have Amy fleeing, and I just knew she was sitting upstairs with cold feet.
Banging sounded.
I tilted my head, separated the noise downstairs from the one upstairs, homed in on the banging.
“I’m ready,” Amy shouted. “Open the door right now! Right now!”
George went to fetch Amy. I wanted to watch her walk down the stairs. I bet she looked beautiful.
Next to me, Knight said, “Your bride wants out.”
I glanced at his profile. With all-around hard features on a hard man, Knight was as serious as guys went. I patted the dove Creature on Knight’s shoulder. Knight turned his head, and the creature stayed right under his nose. She poked her head up and brushed against his lips.
“Aww,” I said. “Aren’t you cute. Is she young?” I asked Knight. The creature was pretty small for a dove.
“It’s fully grown. First time out, so I’m keeping it close.”
Damn. It wasn’t an it, it was a she. Like I said, Knight had a brand of crazy all his own.
A flutter of skirts upstairs drew my eyes. Amy made a mad dash down the numerous stairs, and when that didn’t do, she hopped onto the rail and slid down, then scampered to the door.
She ran into my chest. And I wasn’t moving. “We are doing this, Amy,” I said.
“Oh my God, where’s Lance?”
“Huh?”
“Lance!”
“What do you need Lance for?”
“The slippers.” Wide-eyed, she lifted her dress and pointed at her clear shoes.
“They look great, baby. You look beautiful.”
“They’re melting.” She looked around. “Lance!”
Well, Lance was outside waiting to greet the parade from the city. And no way was Amy going outside. I bent to take a better look at her pretty shoes when I heard the front door unlock. I spun around and glared at Knight, who open the door wide and gestured with his hand.
Amy ran.
It took everything I had to stay in place and watch her cross the yard and nearly topple Lance over. The gates were wide open, the parade almost here. I could see them coming, heard men and women singing. Trumpets blared as I waited for my spirit, thinking she’d slip into the crowd and disappear. My palms sweated.
“Amy and Selena have the same scent,” Knight said.
I couldn’t care less about how they smelled! “Really?” I asked him. “That’s what you’re worried about now? Their smell? My spirit has cold feet.”
“I bet. Her shoes are made of ice.”
I didn’t know what the hell he was sayin’, but I didn’t need to know anything besides Amy, who had hooked her hand under Lance’s elbow and was now walking across the yard with a big smile on her pretty face.
My mood improved. Oh yeah, baby, I was getting married.
Epilogue
Nentres
The last week of November meant Amy had been decorating for Thanksgiving. Oh no, not just for our home, but she’d decorated and organized a Thanksgiving dinner down in the town and invited everyone she came across in the past three weeks. It was eleven in the morning, and dinner was set to start at five. I would’ve expected Amy to be here, which was why I’d stopped by after I’d come back from a meeting with a cyborg military general. The truce was rocky but necessary. I gave up some money to help restore the habitat, except for the plasma. I told them I’d burn the thing down if I saw it again, then left them to think on what I’d said.
Threatening them was risky on my part. We still needed Knight and Arthur to find their spirits, and then we would attempt to end the Ice Age.
“I heard Mary made gumbo,” Eddy said as we watched people arrange the tables in the former breakfast place.
“It’s turkey day,” I said.
“I know what day it is. Did she make gumbo or not?”
Mary had made gumbo, the first one in a decade. “Maybe,” I said.
“Your wife ain’t here. Went home. Said she felt tired, but I got a note for you.” He reached into his pocket and passed me a sealed envelope.
I ripped it open and read.
I never gave you the five things, but I can give you five words:
We are having a baby.
I read it three times. “Baby,” I said.
“Did you just call me baby?” Eddy asked.
“Bye!” I ripped off my clothes and took to the sky.
Oh yeah, I was having a baby.
***
Hello, Milana here. I hope you loved Nentres as much as I loved writing him. We’re halfway into the series now. Eddy, #2.5 story is coming or might’ve already published, depending on when you’re reading these words. Flip the page for exclusive peek into Knight’s book.
See the Wind
Uncorrected proof pending release
Clementine
Flying was overrated. Especially at midnight in the bitter cold winter of the Ice Age up here in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. But I couldn’t delay the message from my dragon lord, Arthur, to his brother dragon Knight any longer. I’d already delayed Arthur’s reply long enough, mainly because, besides being a dove creature in service to Arthur, I ran my own business.
Arthur was spending a lot of time near the Pittsburg habitat, therefore inside Knight’s territory. About three weeks ago, Knight had asked him to retreat to Ohio, which they considered part of North America and Arthur’s territory. I relayed a message, and Arthur sent me back with his own message for Knight. I hoped Knight didn’t kill the messenger.
I flapped my wings and locked in on my target, Knight’s cottage home that sat in the middle of a once-beautiful forest right outside Pittsburg. Now, frozen brown trees surrounded his brown home, making it look like part of nature. From my vantage point of one thousand feet, I could see that Knight didn’t really live alone, because there were other homes scattered on a huge property, but if anyone approached from the ground, they’d think he lived alone in the middle of nowhere.
The wind sped up my descent, and I spread my wings wide, a flying technique I’d picked up by following a real eagle one day. Knight’s window stayed open, and I’d fit right through it, then land on his table. Easy peasy. Knight approached the window. Uh-oh. But I was almost there. I angled my body, then slipped through the crack—Yes!—bumped into his shoulder, tumbled in the air, and hit the wall. Unceremoniously, I slid down and thumped on the floor. “Peep,” I groaned, still in my dove form.
Knight scooped me up and walked us to the couch. He put me on the wooden table, right next to a huge dream catcher. Gently, he parted my feathers and then, not so gently, plucked one out. “Peep!” I said, and stabbed his thumb with my beak. This time, I drew blood, wishing he’d understand I didn’t want to donate any more of my feathers for his dream catcher. Every time I delivered a message, he plucked a feather of mine. I was gonna look like a bald turkey soon.
“Thank you, Clementine,” he said. “You must practice landing.”
“Peep,” I agreed.
“You can change now.”
Oh dear Lord, thank you so much for your permission. I didn’t know how my twin sister had dealt with all the bossy dragon stuff. She’d been much less tolerant of bossy guys than I, and I was reaching the end of my patience with this particular dragon.
Knight got busy adding my feather to his dream catcher while I assumed my human form and crossed one leg over the other. Sitting naked on the table and right across from a very attractive male made me feel awkward, no matter that he’d seen me naked a few times before. I was still new to the dove gig, having had inherited the creature after the car accident that had killed my twin sister.
My twin sister, the original “owner” of the dove creature, and I had slid off the icy road. The car spiraled out of control, and she’d died on the spot while I got injured. An almost-transparent woman had awoken me when she pressed her hand to my chest and told me I was my sister’s dove keeper. Since I knew my sister had been gifted a dove a decade ago when we were fourteen, I understood that the Mother Nature my sister had spoken off had transferred my sister’s dove to me. That was how I knew my twin had died.
That and the hollowness in my chest despite the pressure I felt from the recently acquired gift.
The pressure remained to this day.
The emptiness of losing my sister remained too.
I parted my long hair, fixed it to fall over my breasts, and watched Knight’s large hands work my fragile feather into his collection hanging in bunches from the circular top of the dream catcher.
When Knight worked on his dream catcher, it captured all his attention, which was a great thing for several reasons. One, it made me more comfortable about my nudity, not that Knight perused my body anyhow. And two, it allowed me to stare at him. This evening, Knight’s short black hair was wet, and a recent haircut exposed the hard lines of his jaw, chin, and nose. He wore black pajama bottoms and a white T-shirt that exposed his muscled arms, covered in tribal tattoos. Knight was the only Native American I’d ever met. He’d told me I was the only albino he’d ever met, so we had something in common. Actually, it was the only thing we had in common.
Knight put the dream catcher aside and leaned back on the couch, his hands fisted on his thighs. “Do you have a message for me?”
I scrunched up my nose. “Yes.”
“And?”
“Arthur said no.”
Knight remained stoic, a permanent state for this dragon, while probably thinking of ways to best strangle me and make it painful. I looked around as the raging fire in the fireplace on my left heated the rustic cottage. Everything here was warm and cozy in contrast to the man who lived here. He lived in an open space with a small kitchen behind me, a living room with a brown couch where he sat, and a bedroom in an alcove up the stairs. The bathroom must be the closed door under the alcove.
“Is that all he said?” Knight asked.
I nodded. Of course it was not all Arthur had said, but I thought a simple no should do as a reply.
“Clementine,” Knight said, a commanding tone to his voice.
I straightened my shoulders. “Yes, sir.”
“Lord.”
“Lord Knight. Right.”
“Did you tell Arthur exactly what I said?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me what you said to him.”
“I said, Hi, my lord. Knight has a message for you. He asks you to retreat back into your territory.”
“Now tell me exactly what he said.”
I played with the end of my hair.
Knight tsked. “I’m waiting.”
I lifted my gaze. “He sent me here to tell you he’s not leaving, and that you need to let him do the thing you two disagreed on. I don’t know what that thing is, by the way.”
Knight narrowed his yes. “Anything else?”
“Yes. Arthur called you a mother hen and said to go fuck yourself. With one of your cocks. The bigger one.” I couldn’t possibly have imagined what that meant had I not seen two cocks on Knight with my own eyes.
“That doesn’t sound like just a no.”
“I took that as a no, he will not retreat back into his territory. He wants to do the thing you disagreed on, and the extra fucks weren’t necessary. Should I be worried?”
Knight’s jaw muscles ticked. “About what?”
“The two of you fighting.”
“We’re not fighting. We’re disagreeing. You should worry about your landing so you don’t break your wings. I’ll worry about Arthur.”
I pointed at the dream catcher. “Why do you make these?”
“I want to summon Mother Nature.”
“Oh! She can be summoned? I want to summon her too. I have so many questions about my new gig.”
“A gig?” He frowned.
“Mm-hm. Remember I told you I inherited the dove creature from my sister? Initially, I wasn’t gifted the dove, and I believe it was a spur-of-the-moment decision on Mother’s part. I’d like her to gift the dove to someone else.”