Page 16 of Connor and the Dragons

“How do they even work?” Connor asked, rapping the basket rim. “You carry these in your claws? What’s the weight distribution look like in the air? I’m not too heavy, am I? You’re rather small.”

“Rather small in this form,” I said, frowning at him. “Would you like to see a demonstration?” Nothing got my ire up like doubting my dragon. “Clear the courtyard!”

It only took a moment for the order to be obeyed. I very carefully removed my coat and shirt, trying not to notice the way Connor’s eyes landed on my bare chest.

“Privacy please,” I said, hand on the waistband of my trousers, and he blushed, apologized, and turned away. I removed my trousers and carefully set them on a rock, and I closed my eyes, and let the transformation take me. Connor must have felt the gust of wind unleashed by my wings, because he turned the moment it was complete.

Transforming was the one thing in my life that had never once been difficult. The world got smaller and sharper, and I stretched my wings wide, accidentally knocking a stone off the promenade with my left wing. The yard’s noise resolved into wind and heartbeats, and I looked down at Connor, who stood beneath me now, hair blowing softly in the wind, staring up at me. His mouth had fallen open, and he had not taken so much as one step back.

He was also just as handsome from above.

Needing to distract myself from my dragon urge to claim him as my own, I picked up the nearer basket in one fore-claw and gave my wings one hard flap, lifting off rapidly. Below me, Connor let out a joyful whoop, and I would have grinned if a dragon’s jaw allowed it as I soared in a wide, high figure-eight above the palace, enjoying the crackle of my joints as I let every part of me stretch to its full size. It usually did not bother me to contain myself in human form, but flying was like stretching one’s limbs after weeks confined in a small space.

The only challenging part about the whole venture was that it was impossible to transform without tearing one’s clothes, which meant turning myself back to human left me standing nude in front of Connor next to my neatly stacked pile of clothes. He blinked, eyes skimming down to my cock and widening slightly before his cheeks went pink.

“Shit, sorry, right. Privacy.” He turned away from me, and I turned my back to him and quickly dressed.

“That,” he said, and stopped. He restarted. “You’re. Okay. I’ve seen Oallian, and Oallian is very impressive, but you are beautiful. All that silver and ice-colored scales, and the way you’re iridescent in the sun. I’m rambling, sorry, I’m just… wow.”

“It’s normal for my kind.”

“Sure,” Connor said, still staring. “Sure.”

And my face went hot, and the grass went white. It spread out from my feet in a fast silent ring, a full frost, crisping every blade silver for three yards in every direction.

“The ground is often cold in the mornings,” I said.

“It’s nearly midday,” Connor said, staring at the frost.

“The shade lingers.” I retrieved my coat and put it on with both buttons’ worth of composure. “We should go up. The baskets clearly speak for themselves.”

He let it go, or appeared to, and nodded. “So, we leave tomorrow?”

“We leave tomorrow. As long as the weather agrees. We cannot fly safely in heavy winds or rain.” And I was praying for a full week of heavy winds and rain the entire time we were climbing the tower stairs.

Connor watched me work through my unlocking procedure, which I did not hurry, because it was not a procedure that rewarded hurrying. The second key lived in a puzzle box my mother gave me when I was ninety. Walnut and brass, eleven moves to open and eleven to close, and in four hundred years I had never met another person who could work it.

I opened it, took out the key, set the box on the sill, and turned to the second door.

Behind me, wood slid on wood.

Connor had the box in both hands and it was open, and he was tipping it toward the light to look at the inside of the lid.

“The fourth move is a lie,” he said. “It gives you a click and it doesn’t go anywhere. That is genuinely mean.”

“That box has eleven moves.”

“I know. It’s a great box.” He closed it and opened it again, faster, and then he caught my face and stopped. “Sorry. I’ve been in a tower for three days and there is nothing in this tower to read.”

I took it back from him and made a note to find a new place to stash the second key, for security purposes. Perhaps a safe opened with a number-lock.

I was distracted by that thought as we walked through the second door and I locked it behind me. Connor cursed, and I looked up to find Oallian on fire.

It was not a large fire. His shirt was smoldering at the collar in a lazy, well-established way, as though it had been at it for a while and saw no reason to escalate, and thin smoke was gathering against the ceiling, and none of this was the main problem, because the main problem was the tail. A tail, unmistakable, red-scaled and the length of my arm, had emerged through the seat of his trousers, and Oallian was attempting to sit on it.

“I can explain,” he said.

“You’re on fire,” Connor said.