He sniffed her again and tilted his head, looking at her from angles, maybe sizing her up to see if she’d be a suitable appetizer before he went after the crowd on the Strip on the other side of the casino.
She took a few more steps down his neck, letting her fingers trail over his skin.
When she looked back, he was still watching her warily, but the rage in his eyes seemed to have faded.
She stepped closer, rubbing her cheek on the pearled skin on his neck.
The dragon slid his nose to the ground, still watching, but less threatening with his head lying beside her.
She stroked the dragon’s skin in long, smooth strokes.
The dragon’s eyelid dropped over his flame-blue eye.
Willow put a little more muscle into petting the dragon’s neck. He was so big that her ministrations probably felt like a mouse massage. The skin on her palms numbed as she stroked the pebbled wall of dragon flank beside her.
The dragon sighed, his eye rolling a little as it opened and closed. A ring of smoke drifted from his nostril.
“Ah, Tiamat. It’s nice to finally meet you.”
The dragon’s mouth curved up, and he rolled away from her, exposing the softer scales of his tummy.
Phone Call
EIGHT days before the soft open of the Dragon’s Den Hotel and Casino, Willow made sure that Arawn was out of the penthouse before she called her mother and stepfather.
“Hello?” her mother’s voice said. “Willow? It’s so good to hear from you! Are you finding what you needed in Great-Grandmother Esmeralda’s grimoire?”
“Yes, I did,” Willow said, talking quickly because any minute—
“Hello,” a man’s gruff voice said.
And there he was. “Hi, Oli. How’s the newspaper?”
Goddesses forbid she not greet him and ask about something important to him the moment he butted in.
“Ads are down. Revenues are down. I’m letting people go because the cattle herd gets all their news from Witchbook.”
Oliver, her stepfather, still ran his tiny, neighborhood newspaper even after he’d married Willow’s mother, who had more than enough money for the rest of their lives from Willow’s father’s life insurance. “Yeah, I’ve heard that’s a problem all over. Mom, can I ask you a huge favor?”
“Another one?” Oli grumped. “You haven’t paid us back for that gallivant to France you took yet.”
“Oh, hey!” Willow stuffed a perkiness that she didn’t feel into her voice. “I have a job now, so I can start paying you back this week.”
“Yeah, I’ll believe that when I have the cold, hard cash in my hand.”
Willow swallowed hard. Her eyes were burning. “Mom, could you please email me a picture of Greymalkin from the computer there?”
“Oh, sure, honey,” her mother said.
“Whaddya need it for?” Oli interrogated.
“Just a potion I’m whipping up.”
“Did they teach you this at that expensive remedial potions class for dummies in Paris?”
Willow hadn’t quite expected that blow, and it knocked the wind out of her. “Um, no. I’m sorry.”
Her mother said, “Oh, Oli. Stop being silly. Willow-darling, as a matter of fact, Oli and I will be up in Las Vegas tomorrow for monthly shopping. We could print out a picture here and drop it off.”
“Oh, you don’t need to do that. It would be great if I could get it tonight instead of tomorrow.”
“It’s no trouble, darling. Okay, we’ll see you tomorrow.”
Click.
Oh, Cernunnos’s Antlers, no.
Flying
THE next day, in the midst of the shining silver racks and countertops of the industrial kitchen, Willow stirred a small copper pot with her wand.
Arawn watched. As Willow dumped each of the ingredients into the solution, the cup or so of liquid in the pot absorbed the matter, never increasing in volume. An entire pound of fluffy, orange-red saffron threads—the stamens from crocus flowers and over a gallon of spice—slid into the liquid and was consumed without a bubble. It was as if the pale pink liquid were particularly strong acid that dissolved everything she added.
He wasn’t sure whether dragons were resistant to acid like they were to fire.
Willow added the last of the ash, made from burning their mingled hair and the sloughed-off dragon skin. She said, “It needs to boil for a few minutes, anyway. My mom and step-dad will be here with the picture I need any minute, and then we’ll do the last part. That last burning and incantation are touchy. My Great-Grandmother Esmerelda had notes all over those pages. Hand position, pronunciation, when to pause and when not to. It’s finicky.”
“What happens if you don’t do it right?”
Willow shrugged. “Maybe you turn into a giant chicken again. Or a duck this time.”
Oh, that had not been cool. The only thing worse would have been for Math and Cai to have seen it.
Arawn frowned at the picture he’d donated in the crucible, all ready for burning. “Maybe I should have used a picture of the Dark Other.”
“I don’t think that’s a pure and uncomplicated love at all, and his name is Tiamat.”
“It doesn’t have a name,” he insisted, leaning against the counter and watching the potion froth. “It’s an animal—a mythical animal, granted—but it’s still just an animal.”
“Animals have names. Greymalkin, my first cat, came when you called him. Of course, that might have been because I was also shaking the kitty treats, but he knew his name.”
“It’s a dragon. It doesn’t care if you call it or not. It’s not going to come or play fetch, just burn down cities.”
“He sure rolled over and let me rub his tummy.”
Inside the body and looking out through the eyes, Arawn had been so shocked that he’d stopped battling for control for several minutes, but he’d gotten it back right after that. “I still can’t believe it did that. You should have run once you had the skin.”
“I still don’t think he’s going to hurt me.”
He had to make her understand the danger that his dragon posed. “It will hurt anyone or anything, any time it feels like it. It will burn them to death.”
Willow cleaned her wand with a damp towel and laid it on the counter. “What did he do that made you dislike him so much?”
“It’s not what it did, it’s what it is. It’s a blue-fire dragon. It’s a ticking time-bomb, a ticking nuclear time-bomb. If it gets angry and gains control, cities could get fried.”
“You’ve never been angry at me. I’ve never seen you more than slightly irritated at anyone.”
“Of course not. When I’m in control,” he gestured to his all-too-human and male body—his flat stomach, broad shoulders, and long legs covered with suit slacks and a white shirt, not dragon skin, “it fights to gain control and emerge. When I was a kid, I had a tough time learning to control it. Once its fire came in, I couldn’t let it take control except when we’re flying. Even then, I still leave inhabited areas quickly for wide, open skies.”
“But aren’t all fire-breathing dragons dangerous?”
“Not like this one. It can hurt and kill other mature dragons with its fire. It’s one of the reasons I’m in security for the dragon clan. If a dragon goes rogue, which happens rarely anymore, I’m one of the few dragons who can hunt down a rogue and kill it.”
“Oh,” Willow said. “I thought you just liked the military and strategy.”
He shrugged. “It started with the blue fire. Everyone said I should go into security. I just kept going with it.”
“That makes sense.” She picked up the picture from the crucible where it was waiting to be burned. “Your mother was beautiful, and your dad was nice-looking, too.”
“Thanks.” He’d meant that to be a breezy quip, but his voice was a little too whispery.
Willow looked up at him. “You miss them?”
He nodded, the wistfulness rising in his soul. “My d
ad would have thought I was nuts for trying to circumvent fate, but he got lucky with his fated mate. He always said so. My mom would have been glad I was taking an interest in the Craft.”
Willow smiled at him, a soft and gentle smile.
He’d always liked her smile. He was serious about how he refrained from ever feeling angry, but being with Willow made the calm come easier.
He said, “My mom celebrated the major witching holidays. In a dragon community, because most of the dragonmates are non-dragons, there are always a lot of supernatural minorities. She was the High Priestess of the Dragon Coven.”
“Oh, wow,” Willow said, her green eyes flaring.
“My dad celebrated with her, but he wasn’t a mage, of course. He was a dragon. I think my mom wanted more kids, hoping that one might be a witch or a mage instead of a latent dragon, so she’d have someone to pass her traditions down to.”
“Did you learn the Craft?” Willow asked him.
He shrugged. “I attended rituals and holidays, but I’m not a mage. I can’t do magic. After a while, it was obvious to everyone that I was pretty useless there, so I stopped going.”
“You didn’t lend your voice?”
He shrugged. “Like I said, I was pretty useless.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I always thought there would be time, you know? I thought I could go back and celebrate with her another few times, here and there. I thought when I had met my mate and we had a dragonling, she would consecrate the child to her goddesses, too.”
“I’m sorry,” Willow said.
Arawn nodded. There was nothing else he could do but nod. “It’s funny. When she had that stroke and my father followed her two days later, people whispered that my father’s dragon magic hadn’t been enough to save her.”
“They shouldn’t have said that,” Willow said. “That’s not fair. I assume it’s not true, either.”
“I don’t know why his magic didn’t protect her. The Tiamat family had been marrying other dragons for a few generations. People think that depletes the magic. They think other supernatural bloodlines keep dragons strong, unlike the fae who are getting weaker with every generation, except for the few that outbreed.”
“But he didn’t marry a dragon,” Willow said, toying with her wand. “You said she was a witch.”
Arawn nodded. “But that didn’t help him any. He was the product of generations of dragons. People said he poured all his magic into me, into making my dragon, and he didn’t have any left to protect her.”
“Oh,” Willow said, straightening.
“Yeah,” Arawn said. “My father made me a blue-fire dragon, though he didn’t know that he’d managed it at the time. They said that he made one of the most powerful dragon kinds, and that’s why he didn’t have enough magic left.”
“Hern’s Bow, Arawn,” Willow cursed. She even cursed gently. The cuteness tapped his heart through all the other stuff swirling around it.
Arawn’s chest fluttered. “I don’t even know if that’s how it works. I mean, nobody says anything like having a dragonling depletes your magic or that you’re changed afterward. Indeed, one of the strongest dragons I know has three dragonling kids, so he did it three times. None of my friends have had dragonlings yet, so I haven’t been present for a melding. If that’s what happened, I wish he hadn’t done it, or I wish he’d held back some.”
Willow slid her arms around his waist, molding her soft, gently curving body to his. His arms folded around her, and he inhaled the comforting sweetness of her shampoo that smelled like herbs and mint. She said, “I don’t know enough about dragon magic to argue with you, but they must have loved you so much.”
“Yeah,” Arawn said, resting his chin on Willow’s head and looking over the kitchen. “I hope it was worth it to them.”
Her arms tightened around his waist.
At the far end of the kitchen, past the shining shelves and canisters, a door slammed. A woman’s voice sang out, “Yoo-hoo!”
A jingling sound moved through the kitchen and toward them.
Willow tugged herself out of his arms. “And that’s my mother and Oli.”
“I never met them while we were dating,” Arawn noted.
“Yeah, well—” Willow said.
Willow’s mother and stepfather rounded the end of the kitchen counter and shelves.
Her mother was a sight to behold. She was a round and curvy little witch, and wow, was she ever a witch. Her tee shirt had a pentagram on it and read, Wiccans Unite! Defeat the Darkness! The bells on her ankle chimed music with every step under her long, ruffled, bohemian skirt made of at least four different colors of silk. She wore a tall, silver tiara with a crescent moon and stars in her puff of iron-gray hair, and she carried a staff carved with runes and radiating rainbows of magic that even Arawn could see. Crystals of every kind of rock and shape—frosty white towers, cloudy pink spheres, clear amethyst pyramids, black shards, green malachite blocks, and blue lapis lazuli sticks—swung from chains around her neck, wrists, and waist.
Willow whispered, “You might have asked some questions that I couldn’t answer back then.”
Arawn acknowledged that this might have been so.
Willow’s mother waved and shouted, “Blessed be!” She pointed at Arawn and grinned. “And who are you, you great Horned God, you?”
Willow smiled broadly and showed all her teeth, a thoroughly creepy smile that Arawn had never seen before. She called out, “Hello, Mother! Hi, Ori! Did you bring the picture, by any chance?”
“Oh, yes, Willow-darling. We have it here.” She whipped a square piece of paper out of her bra and handed it to Willow, and then she sidled up to Arawn. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?”
Willow held the picture of a gray cat and the picture of Arawn’s parents that he had supplied over the crucible and lit one of the corners on fire with a white candle. She said, “Mom and Ori, this is a friend of mine, Arawn. Arawn, meet my mom and stepfather, Ori. Everybody say hi.”
The pictures caught on fire, and Willow concentrated on them, turning the paper with her fingers to make sure that the fire consumed the pictures at the same rate. She chanted something under her breath at it.
Meanwhile, Arawn was doing his best not to leap upon the kitchen countertops and scramble up on top of the shelves to perch there because Willow’s mother was walking her fingers up his chest, saying, “It’s such a pleasure to meet a friend of Willow’s.”
“Great to meet you, too, ma’am.”
“Oh, don’t be so formal. Call me Lunamaria.”
Willow dropped the flaming paper into the crucible and watched it burn, still chanting, but now her eyes were closed. Her fingers moved through a series of complicated maneuvers, pausing every second as she stressed a word of the incantation.
Willow’s mother pinched Arawn’s cheek, which seemed somewhat innocent, but then she leaned in and whispered in his ear, “Any friend of Willow’s—”
“Okay!” Arawn skittered sideways and plucked her mother’s hands off of his shoulders. He spun away, planting himself between them and Willow. She needed to concentrate on the spell. “Okay, then! It was great to meet you guys. Let’s have supper when you’re in town sometime.”
Willow’s mother looked at him from under her gray eyelashes and said, “I’d like to eat y—”
“I think we should leave Willow alone now,” Arawn said, waving his hands to try to shoo them out of the kitchen.
“Oh, but Aye-ron,” Willow’s mother drew out his name. “We’ve just started getting acquainted.”
“We should adjourn this to the casino area,” Arawn said. “We’re opening the casino in a week, you know. You should come back then. I can give you complimentary passes.”
“I’d like to make a pass—”
Arawn turned his head. “Willow, are you done with that by any chance?”
“Yes,” Willow said behind Arawn’s back, her voice flush with relief. “It’s done. It’s all burned
, and I added it to the solution. The potion has to cool, and then you can drink it.”
“It won’t make any difference,” Willow’s stepfather said, scowling. Red blotches appeared on his neck. “She’s just going to screw this one up like she always does.”
Arawn glanced back at Willow.
Her eyes were huge.
Yeah, she’d heard him, dammit.
Her stepfather continued, “We spent thousands of dollars, thousands of dollars, to send her to that fancy potions school in Paris because she’s such a screw-up.”
Willow’s voice was small. “I said I’d pay you back.”
“And for what?” he shouted. “For yet another failed potion?”
Willow’s mother patted Oli’s shoulder. “That’s enough silly talk, dear.”
“We shouldn’t have bothered driving up here to give you that damned picture of that stupid cat! It won’t make any difference! You’ll just screw this one up like you screw up everything else!”
“I’m sorry,” Willow whispered behind Arawn.
Arawn turned to look at her.
Willow was hiding her face in her hands, and she was crouching over like she expected to be hit. “I’m so sorry. I’ll be better. I promise I’ll do better.”
Oh, Dragon Lords of the Sky. This was why she freaked out when she made a mistake.
No.
Her stepfather, Oli, was why. He was the reason.
Oli was the damned reason that Willow got so scared, and he was the reason she cried.
Arawn didn’t like to see Willow cry.
Seeing Willow cry made all sorts of roiling, raging, boiling clouds surface in Arawn’s head.
Oli was still yelling.
Lunamaria was still ineffectively trying to distract him.
And Willow was still crying.
“Stop!” A dragon’s roar filled Arawn’s voice. “Enough!”
He grabbed Oli’s shirt front, twisting it in his fist, and dragged him closer. “Leave her alone, you thrice-damned bully. Don’t talk to her like that.”
Oli sneered, “I’ll talk to her however I want to. I raised her. I paid for her to go to college and to that stupid potions school that didn’t fix her.”
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