Chapter 534: Not one but three?

ERIS

The small creature didn’t move. It didn’t strike or hiss or vanish into a cloud of silver smoke. It simply sat on my sternum and stared at me with the absolute, unblinking focus of a predator that had successfully cornered its prey and found it surprisingly comfortable.

I stayed on my back, the silver grass of Pyronox’s realm pricking the back of my neck. I took a breath, watching the way the creature rose and fell with my chest. Its scales weren’t the obsidian black of the great dragon behind me; they were pale, ice-pale, like the heart of a glacier or the precise, lethal light that reflects off a frozen lake at noon. There was a suggestion of color beneath the translucence, a faint, shifting shimmer that caught the light and held it captive.

Its horns were tiny, barely more than nubs of bone-white calcification pushed through the silver hide, announcing a future they hadn’t yet reached. But it was the eyes that stopped the air in my throat. They were big, too large for the narrow, triangular face, possessing that wide-eyed, staggering clarity common to the very young. And they were blue.

Not just any blue. They were that specific, nameless shade of a winter sky just before the sun fails, the exact color I had spent months memorizing every time Soren looked at me across a candlelit table or leaned down to brush his mouth against mine.

I knew this blue. I knew it in my marrow.

No, I told myself, the thought arriving and being shoved violently into a dark corner of my mind. Do not think it. You are not thinking that.

The creature made a sound, a tiny, rattling vibration that sat somewhere between a growl and a melodic screech. It wasn’t satisfied with the view from my sternum. With a sudden, jerky movement, it began to climb. Its feet were small, tipped with obsidian-sharp claws that snagged in the silk of my tunic, and everywhere they touched, they left a trail of biting, stinging cold.

Little frost prints bloomed across my collarbone, melting slowly into the heat of my skin as the dragon reached my shoulder. It settled there, its tail curling around the base of my neck with the proprietary confidence of a creature that had decided I was its permanent territory.

“Is this yours?” I asked, sitting up slowly and keeping my voice level.

The creature adjusted its grip, its tiny weight shifting as it peered into my ear with alarming curiosity. I looked at Pyronox. The ancient dragon god was looming over us, his massive amber eyes reflecting a bewilderment so profound it was almost comical. For a being that had lived since the first spark of creation, he looked remarkably like a man who had walked into his own house and found the furniture rearranged.

“No,” Pyronox said. The word was flat, certain, and carried the weight of a stone dropped into a well.

“Are you sure?” I pressed. “You’re a dragon. He’s a… whatever this is. It seems like a logical connection.”

Pyronox gave me a look, the dragon equivalent of a weary sigh. “I am certain, Eris Igniva. I did not imagine this. I did not call it.”

“So where did it come from?” I gestured to the silver thing now investigating the silver embroidery on my lapel with its snout.

Pyronox opened his mouth, his great jaw working for a second before he closed it again. He had no answer. This was not reassuring. To find a god at a loss for words was like finding a map with the edges missing; it suggested the world was currently operating outside the lines of established reality.

“Wonderful,” I said drily. “A god with no explanation. We’re off to a marvelous start.”

Before I could finish the thought, the little dragon on my shoulder let out a sharp, piercing trill, a miniature roar that vibrated against my collarbone.

The silence of the realm held for a heartbeat, and then the flowers to my left and right began to rustle. It wasn’t the wind.

“Oh no,” I muttered, recognizing the rhythm of an ambush. “There’s backup.”

The second one hit my lap before I could move. It was smaller than the first but twice as fast, a silver-grey blur that landed with the precision of a hunting hawk. Its scales were identical to the one on my shoulder, ice and frost and stolen moonlight.

A fraction of a second later, the third arrived. It came from the right, but this one was different. Its scales carried a darker tint, echoing the midnight-absorbing depths of Pyronox’s hide, yet it felt warmer, its underbelly glowing with a soft, subterranean heat. But when it looked up at me as it scrambled up my arm, the eyes were the same. Soren’s blue.

The chaos was immediate. I was suddenly a playground for three small dragons. The one on my shoulder was still trying to determine if my ear was edible; the one in my lap was chirping aggressively at the one on my shoulder; and the third, the darker one, had reached my head.

“Stop that,” I said flatly as the third dragon began to methodically chew on a stray lock of my hair.

The hair-eater did not stop. It paused, looked me in the eye with a deeply unimpressed expression, and went back to its meal.

I sat there, paralyzed by the sheer absurdity of the situation. One dragon on the shoulder, one in the lap, one eating my hair. They were already bickering, the two silver ones snapping at each other over the right to sit on my sternum.

The dark-scaled one finally decided that my chest was the ideal location for a nap. It circled three times, kneading its claws into my tunic like a cat before tucking its head beneath its wing. It let out a low, rhythmic thrum, a dragon’s version of a purr that sent a strange, grounding vibration through my ribs.

“There are other places to sleep,” I said, looking down at the small, coiled weight. “Pyronox is right there. He’s literally your kin. Go bother him.”

As if they heard me, all three paused. Six blue eyes turned simultaneously toward the great ancient god of fire and destruction. Pyronox stood still, his massive frame casting a shadow over the field. For a moment, it seemed they might actually consider the suggestion.

Then, they turned back to me as one. They made a series of overlapping, chirping sounds, the universal language of creatures who had found their person and were informing that person that their opinion on the matter was entirely irrelevant.

“I heard that,” I said drily. “I don’t know the dialect, but I heard it.”

While my hands were occupied with gently but firmly detaching the hair-eater from my head, my mind was racing. I held the silver dragon up by its middle, its little legs dangling, its expression bored.

Where did they come from?

If they weren’t Pyronox’s, and they weren’t some intervention by Orrian’s pen, there was only one other possibility. A wicked, terrifying possibility that I had spent months trying to prevent.

What if they come from you?

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