Candy eyed me suspiciously. “Come on. Betty wants to see you as soon as possible.”
“And Betty would be…?” It was a little late to be asking questions, especially with more and more of the dragon princesses taking notice of our arrival. Better late than never.
“She’s our Nest-mother,” said Candy, like it should have been self-explanatory. “Come on.”
I went.
Candy led me past the central mound of gold to the stairs leading to the overhead catwalks. We acquired a small procession as we walked, other dragon princesses stopping whatever they’d been doing before as they came to follow us. Most of them didn’t look friendly. I was probably the first non-cryptid to set foot in their Nest since it was established, and my presence represented a potential danger. Candy’s face was set in an expression of resolute neutrality. Looking at her, I realized what a risk she was taking in believing me. If I’d been lying about the dragon, she could have been in serious trouble—and so could I. Good thing for both of us that I wasn’t lying, even if it wasn’t necessarily a good thing for the city as a whole.
A door labeled “Manager” in old-fashioned gilt lettering stood at the head of the stairs. “Behave,” hissed Candy, and knocked.
“You may enter.” The voice from behind the door managed to be ancient and alluring at the same time, like an aging Mae West turning on the sex appeal one last time before shuffling off to the retirement home.
Candy opened the door, and I followed her inside.
The downstairs had given me a pretty good idea of the dragon princess aesthetic where interior decorating was concerned: why waste money on furniture when it could be used to buy perfectly good gold? This room was no different. Gold in every possible form was mounded high against the walls, and flakes of gold leaf covered the floor, some of it still attached to pages ripped from antique books. It was a good thing my father wasn’t there. Seeing books that old and valuable treated so poorly might have been enough to convince him that dragon princesses weren’t harmless after all.
The décor only held my attention for a few seconds before I found more important things to focus on, like the woman in front of us, who had to be the oldest dragon princess I’d ever seen. She appeared to be a well- preserved seventy, the kind of seventy that had done everything—and every
“So,” she said, in that Mae West voice. “You must be the new Healy girl.”
“We’re Price girls now, actually,” I said. “Have been for a couple of generations. I’m Verity Price. Nice to meet you.”
“Betty Smith.” She looked me appraisingly up and down. “I always forget about that little intermarriage. You do look frighteningly like your grandmother, you know, especially with all of that blood in your hair. There’s never been a Healy girl who didn’t look fabulous in red, which is a good thing; you spend so damn much time wearing it.”
I couldn’t decide whether she was trying to be insulting or not. I decided to go with the interpretation that was less likely to get me attacked by the cast of
“She was fighting with servitors,” said Candy.
Betty’s eyes narrowed. “You’re sure?”
“I spoke to them. They understood me, just like the stories said they would.” Candy abruptly pointed at me, as accusing as the prosecuting attorney in a murder case. “She was there. She saw it happen.”
“I saw something like that, yeah. I don’t speak dragon, so I don’t know exactly what Candy said, or how much of it they actually understood, but they stopped attacking me when she told them to play nice with the breakable children.” I leaned over, plucking the first aid kit from under Candy’s arm while she was distracted with pointing at me. “Look, I really, really want to know what’s going on. I’d also really, really like to stop bleeding. Is there a place I can sit down and slap on some bandages while you explain? Please?”
“You truly are so much like your grandmother.” Betty chuckled as she rose slowly from her pile of gold chains, sounding more like Mae West than ever. “She never had any patience either. Of course, most of the time she was impatient because your grandfather was watching my, ah, attributes when she wanted him to be watching her back, but no one ever claimed your family line was designed for patience. Sit down. My girls can take care of you.”
“Do as you’re told,” hissed Candy, glaring daggers as she shoved me toward the spot Betty had vacated. Lacking any real grounds for argument, I sat. Three of the dragon princesses who had accompanied us upstairs moved to take the first aid kit and start tending my wounds. I was tired enough to let them. If it meant I stopped bleeding, it was fine by me.
“I’m assuming Candice has explained the basic nature of servitors to you,” Betty said. “I do hope you haven’t killed too many of them—the poor dears really don’t have much control over themselves without the proper people to tell them what to do.” Seeing my expression, she clucked her tongue, giving a small shake of her head. “That’s what I was afraid of. Ah, well. It’s not like they’re a necessity, and really, they only serve to prove that you were telling the truth when you claimed there might be a male waiting somewhere in this fair city of ours. And you, my little rumpled darling, are going to find him for us.”
“Wait—what?” It was difficult to sit up straight on a mound of slippery gold jewelry with several dragon princesses aggressively cleaning and bandaging my wounds. Somehow I managed. Blame it on the shock. “A male?”
“Oh, my dear innocent poppet.” Betty smiled, Mae West turned pure predator. “Surely you didn’t think that dragons were actually
For a moment I just stared at her, with dragon princesses smirking at me from all directions. This was it: the big secret that they’d been keeping all this time, probably since the conflicts between the humans and dragons first began. Dragon princesses didn’t exist. There were just … dragons. Big dragons and little dragons, but still dragons, regardless of whether they had scales or supermodel-quality skin. One species.
Betty smirked along with the others, clearly waiting for my expression of surprise and dismay. I settled back on the bed of gold, letting the dragon princesses around me go back to cleaning my wounds. “So what, you’re saying is this is a case of extreme sexual dimorphism combined with parthenogenetic reproduction? That’s a new one.”
The dragon princesses stared at me.
I sighed. “Trained cryptozoologist, remember? God, it’s like you put on one pair of five-inch heels and everyone forgets you have a brain. The tango is hard, people. It takes actual intelligence to do it right.”
“Regardless,” said Betty, recovering her equilibrium with admirable speed. She put a hand on her hip, taking a slinky step toward me. For a woman her age, she sure knew how to move. “You owe us, you and your family, and we don’t take kindly to debts. This is your chance to pay them off. You’re going to find us the male.”
“That was already the goal.” The dragon princesses who’d been working on bandaging my various scrapes and scratches were done, or close enough that I no longer felt like I was in danger of bleeding all over everything. I pulled away from them, tugging my shirt back into a semblance of order before I stood. “If there’s a dragon in this city—sorry, a
“And what, you’ll remember us in your prayers each night? I’m sorry, but we prefer to work in more concrete coinage.” Betty waved a hand, indicating the heaps of gold cluttering the room. “Interior décor this nice doesn’t come cheap, sweetheart.”
“And assuming I can find your dragon before his current keepers manage to kill him, I’ll tell you where he is,
