by Chant, Zoe
"I don't know," Esme admitted. "Neither do our healers. It may have had something to do with the Heart of your hoard." She reached for the smooth skin above the bodice of her dress, and noticed him following the movement with his gaze, but her hand touched only bare skin. "I still have the necklace you gave me, but it's being cleaned. It got a bit ... er, bloody. I planted the seeds you gave me—but I'm really not sure if it had anything to do with that. It might be that we simply made the bond ourselves, through love and devotion." She leaned her head against the bed's ornate headboard. "Who knows how it works? We already knew we were right for each other. It was just a matter of getting our animals to agree."
Mate, Heikon's dragon sighed.
You certainly spent long enough telling me that she wasn't, you stubborn reptile.
His dragon didn't reply, merely curled up in rapturous peace.
"But I haven't told you my biggest news yet," Esme said, her fingers running through his hair over and over. "Melody had her babies!"
Heikon raised an eyebrow, the only part of his body he felt like moving at the moment, and probably the only part that didn't hurt. "Babies, plural?"
"Yes, she had twins. A boy and a girl. I knew about the twins part, but what I didn't know was that those sneaks had names already picked out."
Another eyebrow raise.
"Dashiell and Virginia. Good literary names." Her face was suffused with wonder. "I'm a grandmother, Heikon."
"And a young and beautiful one you are, too."
"Flattery," she murmured, "will get you everywhere." She leaned down to kiss him. It lingered, her lips sipping at his. When she broke away, she said, "The gargoyles have sent apologies for Trenn, by the way. I don't know if I believe them or not, but they claim he was a rogue, working without the support of his ... what did they call it? His alliance. I think that's their equivalent of our clans."
"Good for them." He really didn't care. The important thing was that his clan was all right. Or were they? "Have you heard from the Aerie? Is everyone—"
"Everyone is fine. It's you we've been worried about. You've been out for three days." She snuggled down beside him, curling up against him.
"Reive?" he asked, remembering his last sight of the young dragon, half conscious on Esme's back and poisoned by gargoyle venom.
"He's recovering. The clan healers have never seen anything like it, but getting the poison spikes out seemed to stop it, and now it's just a matter of letting his body heal on its own. He's in the room next door, and he's been asking about you. I'm sure he'll be in to see you soon."
"Not sure if I'm up to visitors yet," he murmured.
"Heikon Corcoran, admitting you aren't a hundred percent well? I'm shocked."
"Maybe I just enjoy having you all to myself." He twined his fingers lightly through the strands of her braid. The mate bond between them hummed with perfect satisfaction, perfect contentment.
* * *
He slept again, and afterwards, he washed and ate, and dressed in borrowed clothes, a dark brown shirt and casual tan slacks belonging to Esme's father. He saw her parents briefly, offered his sincere thanks for their help and a promise of permanent friendship with his clan. Then he and Esme went walking on her clan grounds below the chalet.
He was still slow and easily tired, but he could feel himself getting stronger. The exercise seemed to be helping.
Esme's family, it appeared, went in more for interior decorating than landscaping. For the most part, the sloping hillside around the chalet was left natural, except for some groves of fruit trees and green pastures where cows grazed. The low, deep tones of their cowbells rang across the hillside like strange music, and it occurred to him to wonder if that was what it all went back to for Esme, the melodious sound of the cowbells lulling her to sleep in her cradle.
They sat on a rocky outcropping looking down into the valley, where there was a small village below. The wind was cool and fresh, tugging loose strands of hair out of Esme's braid. The village looked like a calendar picture from up here, tiny picturesque houses with a mountain stream running through the middle of it.
"They know about dragons down there," Esme said, indicating the village. "Rather like Darius's village, where the people living there are mostly humans, but they keep his secret because it's in their best interests to do so. Back in a much earlier time, my family ruled them as the local nobility. We had a beneficial arrangement with them; we kept raiders out, and they kept our secret. These days I think it's just come to be how things are. They don't post pictures of dragons on Youtube, and they enjoy a prosperous little town supported by dragon clan money."
Heikon laughed quietly.
"Something's funny?" she said sharply, looking at him.
"Not that kind of funny. Not really." He wrapped his hand around hers, chafing the backs of her fingers. "It's just that I can hear your love for this place when you talk about it. I keep thinking I've seen all the sides to you, and then I find another. The dragon princess of the cities, who loves the city lights and cultural opportunities and bustle. The world traveler who loves the Greek islands, serene and beautiful under the sun. The wild child of the mountains, who loves this small town where she grew up."
Esme snorted, but she let him keep holding her hand. "Well, it would be boring if I only enjoyed one thing, wouldn't it? As long as you don't start thinking any of those sides of me are the only side."
"I would never dream of it," he promised, kissing her fingers. "I hope you'll keep showing me all the different things you love, so that I can learn to love them too."
"Hmm." She stood, and offered him a hand up. "I'm thinking I might offer you a ride back. It was an easy walk down, but it's going to be a steep climb up, and you'll be able to see more of the view that way."
"Lead on, my love."
Her body flowed and shifted, and the dragon reared above him. Her green, he noticed now, was exactly the green of the trees behind her, and the gold patterns on her scales made him think of sunlight on meadow grass. This place suited her.
But then, so did the city, where she fit so seamlessly into the bustle of pedestrians on sidewalks, and readily adapted to new technology. So did the Greek islands, where her cave lay secret and hidden.
Some people were made to stay in one place their entire lives, and loved it that way. And some people were made to travel. Esme was one of those.
But even world travelers needed somewhere to come home to. He hoped she would come to think of his mountain as fondly as she thought of the mountains of her youth.
He thought there was a very excellent likelihood that she would.
* * *
Back at the chalet, Esme went off to see her family about dinner plans, but Heikon opted to stay outside, examining the flowers around the chalet's terraced stone patios. They didn't have a vast amount of landscaping, but what they had was understated and well planned to suit the natural curves of the land. Heikon was always eager to learn new techniques that he could apply to his gardens back home. He definitely would need to talk to their gardener.
The soft tap of footsteps on stone tiles alerted him to the presence of another person, before Reive came into view.
"Uncle," Reive said with a brief smile. He was gray and weak-looking, with his right arm swathed in bandages from shoulder to fingers. "They told me you were up and about."
"It seems that I'm recovering faster than you are," Heikon said, frowning at him. "I thought a swift recovery was the province of the young."
"You try taking a dose of gargoyle venom and see how you like it." Reive grimaced and sat down on a stone bench next to a bank of latticed roses. Heikon joined him; sitting down wasn't a bad idea, now that he thought about it. No sense in overdoing it.
"Esme says the gargoyles have reported that it was the action of a rogue," Heikon said.
"Wouldn't you be?" Reive said. "If this was a power play of theirs, it didn't work." He frowned, and carefully flexed the fingers of his right hand, protruding fr
om the bandages. "Don't look at me like that. I'm getting better. And they're gargoyles; what do you expect? They're not like us."
In all honesty, Heikon had his doubts about that. From what he'd seen, the gargoyles were more similar to his own kind than not, just as he was starting to realize, from getting to know Esme's old people, that humans were not really that different from shifters after all. They all loved and grieved; they all could be generous and kind, selfish and petty. They were all people, under the skin, scales, or stone.
.... did gargoyles have fated mates? It was something he had never really wondered about before. Perhaps they shared that too.
But now was not the time for his musings on this, not with Reive looking pale and weak from a near-fatal encounter with one of them.
"Aside from all of that," Reive said, and his face lit up with a bright grin, making him look less tired and wan. "What's this I hear about Esme being your mate? When exactly were you planning to tell the rest of us?"
"We didn't know either," Heikon protested, aware as the words came out that it didn't sound like much of a defense.
"How can you not know?"
"Nephew, settle in," Heikon said. He took a deep breath. "Let me tell you the story of something that started twenty years ago, and only came full circle a few days ago."
He had a feeling he was going to be telling this story a lot in the next couple of weeks. Esme had surely had similar experiences filling in her own family. But it was, at last, a story that had an ending—and a happy one, at that. The mate bond was a gentle presence inside his chest, a warm awareness of Esme elsewhere in the chalet—a reminder that no matter how far they were from each other, neither of them would ever be lonely, not ever again.
"It happened," he began, "at the Aerie, twenty years ago."
Esme
There was a picture on her phone, from half a world away. I felt you should see this.
The picture showed sun-drenched rocks. It could have been anywhere, but she recognized the brilliant sunlight and stark shadows of the Greek islands. There was still some blood visible on the rocks, dried to a rime of dark brown.
And a tiny green seedling curling up from the sandy soil.
I don't know if cherry trees will grow in the Mediterranean islands, Heikon texted. It's entirely the wrong climate. But I guess we'll see.
She smiled, and texted back, We've beaten the odds before.
I love you, Heikon texted. I miss you.
YOU'RE the one who decided you needed to go to Greece two weeks before your own wedding and see how the repairs to the villa were coming along.
What can I say? he texted back, and she could almost hear the wry humor behind the words. You're the one who introduced me to the joys of world travel. You have no one to blame but yourself.
You'd better bring me back something nice. She touched the locket at her throat. Meticulously cleaned, with fresh seeds inside, it was always with her, carrying a little of Heikon close to her heart.
I'm sure you'd never let me hear the end of it if I didn't.
Too right. And now you're going to make me late to my own class.
We can't have that, he texted. Talk to you later, my love.
And you, she wrote back. My love.
With her heart as light as the trip of her feet in her dancing shoes, she went downstairs to prepare for her last class before she left for Heikon's mountain and an indefinite stay there.
She would have loved to invite her students to the wedding, but she knew she couldn't. Even if it hadn't been held at a private dragon mountain in the middle of nowhere, there were sure to be transformed dragonlets running around under the adults' feet throughout the festivities. No matter how often they were cautioned not to shift, someone would surely slip up.
And anyway, a wedding was supposed to be a fun event. Having everyone on their best behavior, trying to hide their true selves because there were a bunch of humans underfoot, would make the entire event fun for no one.
Anyway, did she really want to explain to everyone that her fiancé owned his own mountain? No, she did not.
So she let them throw her a bridal shower instead.
She was well aware there were plans afoot. No matter how they tried to hide it, they simply were not very subtle; all the whispering would have been a dead giveaway even if she hadn't had extra-sharp dragon hearing.
But she was still surprised by her own reaction when they came in on this very last dance night, laden with packages. Everyone had brought gifts, and there were bags of decorations that Lupe and Judy immediately threw themselves into putting up. And the cake was amazing. It was several layers tall, made to look like one of Esme's green dancing dresses, complete with a realistic ruffled skirt. The top read Congratulations and best wishes to Esme from her students in looping handwriting.
Esme blinked hard to stop herself from inappropriately bursting into tears unbefitting a 200-year-old dragon. She had already done plenty of joy-crying over her new grandbabies; she was turning into a regular sap. "Did all of you make this?" she asked, leaning close to admire the piped icing folds of the skirt.
"Greta did," Bea said.
Greta blushed. "I used to decorate cakes professionally," she admitted. "I haven't made a cake like this in years. It was fun to put my hand in again."
And then the gifts were opened—all standard bridal-shower kinds of things, at least from what Esme gathered from TV and movies, never having had one herself; there were appliances she knew she'd never use, risqué lingerie (in gold and green, and surprisingly well-sized for her) that she probably would, and an ornate crystal cake server that made Greta exclaim, "Miriam! That's the one I gave you at your wedding to Herbert!" She paused. "Or was it Benjamin? Anyway, you can't regift a wedding gift!"
"It is not," Miriam said without a trace of either shame or doubt.
"It is so."
"Well, it's lovely, anyway," Esme said, and went to cut the cake.
Later, as cake was consumed and people broke up into conversational groups, Miriam beckoned Esme. "Dear, could I talk to you privately for a minute? If you'd just push my chair—"
Esme wheeled her into the adjacent room with the stereo equipment. The door was normally left open during dance classes so she could easily come and go, but she pulled it shut.
"And those?" Miriam said, indicating the blinds across the large window looking into the ballroom.
Esme drew the blinds as well. "When you said private, you meant private," she said, smiling, and inwardly bracing against whatever wedding-night advice was inevitably going to follow.
"I just needed to show you something," Miriam said. Her hands trembling with age-related palsy, she twitched aside the blanket covering her legs. "I'll need your assistance in a moment."
Esme moved forward, expecting Miriam was about to get up. But that wasn't what happened at all. Instead, Miriam vanished.
In the chair, nestled in shawls and blankets, there was no longer an elderly human woman, but a very, very old fox. Her muzzle was white with age, but her rheumy eyes were still sharp. She looked up at Esme's astonished face and seemed to grin. An instant later, she was human again.
Esme helped her back into her clothes. "Well ... that is a surprise. I never guessed, not even once."
"You're surprised, but not shocked," Miriam said. "I thought so." She leaned close, and whispered, "And what are you, dear?"
Esme hesitated for only the briefest moment. "A dragon."
Miriam's eyes widened briefly. "A dragon. Goodness. I've heard of your kind, but I wasn't sure if you were real or not ..." She winked. "At least until I saw your boyfriend shift."
"Oh, Heikon," Esme sighed. "He's so sure that humans don't pay attention to what's going on around them. He's not half as careful as he should be. When did you see him?"
"Months ago now, dear. One of the times Sarah was driving me to class early. I just happened to be looking out the window in the right direction to see a dark shadow descend through the rai
n, and a moment later your beau was stepping out from behind a building, shaking rain off his umbrella." She smiled. "You dragon shifters really do keep your clothes when you shift. That's convenient."
"Convenient in some ways, but I doubt if Heikon would be so cavalier about shifting if he had to walk around naked afterwards." Though ... the idea was rather nice. Hmmm.
"I can't believe I've met not just one dragon, but two," Miriam mused. "I don't suppose you'd mind if I told Sarah? I'll keep it a secret if you want me to."
"Your granddaughter is also a shifter?" Esme asked. Miriam nodded. "Well ... I guess that'd be okay. I don't want it spread around, though."
Miriam touched her finger to the side of her nose. "Urban foxes are sly. And good at keeping secrets."
Indeed they were. Esme thought for a moment of inviting Miriam to the wedding, but it was much too far for such an old woman to travel, even an old fox. "I appreciate you trusting me enough to tell me," she said instead.
Miriam held out her hand, and Esme clasped the cold, trembling fingers in her own. "And you as well," the old woman said quietly.
After that, it was conversation and cake and, of course, dancing. The party lingered through the evening, until finally everyone began to collect their coats and say good night.
"Wait," Esme called. "Thank you, all of you. Before you go, I wanted to give you something."
She passed around keys, each one folded in a slip of paper.
"This is a key to the front door, and the security code. I'm going to be gone for a while, and I don't know when I'll be back. If you want to come in whenever I'm gone and use the ballroom, please feel free. My apartment will be locked, but I'll leave some records and CDs downstairs for you."
"But you will be back?" Judy asked, folding her hand over the piece of paper, and it was clear from the looks on all of their faces that she was speaking for the entire group.