The Dean must have trusted my resolve, because nobody waited for me outside. I took a moment to watch the dragons soaring above, mixing in with the churning clouds that constantly rolled over the spires. Students on the ground hurried to their classes and despite the horror that I’d just come to realize they all faced, they seemed happy. They laughed and joked, chasing each other and feigning strikes with their swords. My high school principal would have had a hernia, but I guess when a Viking was in charge, things were run a little differently.
“I like it here,” Lily said, making me flinch as she joined me to survey the streets. “It’s not what I expected, but in a good way.”
I swallowed hard, trying not to pay too much attention to the fact that this girl was actually a dragon. She ran her fingers through silky hair that draped over her shoulders. A pleated skirt ran short on her long legs and she was one of the few students who didn’t have a sword.
With a sinking sense of dread I realized that was because she didn’t need a weapon… she was a weapon.
Lily chuckled as I stared. “I guess I’m not what you were expecting, either, huh?”
Forcing myself to speak, I released a nervous laugh. “Uh, yeah. You could say that.” I tilted my head, looking her over. “You look pretty human.” But I’d seen her eyes change… she definitely was anything but human.
She shrugged. “I didn’t know I was a dragon until recently, actually.” She began walking, so I followed her, keeping pace. “I have a bond with one of the other students, James.” She frowned as if this irritated her. “He’s a Knight of the Silver Order. Human, but infused with knightly magic from his lineage that goes back to the days of Merlin and King Arthur, if you can believe it. Did you know he was initially supposed to kill me? The Silver Order has a different take on dragons. He brought me here because he thought I could be a weapon against the wild dragons—well, all dragons, if I’m being honest.” She drew in a deep breath, held it, then released it through her mouth. A trickle of smoke licked across her tongue. “The Dean has been a good influence, though. She’s helped him grow—and she’s helped me accept who and what I am.” She surprised me by taking my hand and giving me a squeeze. “She’ll help you too, if you let her.”
I didn’t feel so terrified of Lily anymore and I managed to give her a weak smile. We walked silently minus a few pleasantries. She was heading back to the dorms and was voluntarily accompanying me. She explained with a small laugh that “stall duty” would put Killian in a worse mood than he was already in.
“Does ‘stall duty’ mean what I think it means?” I asked, not able to hide my wry smile. After how much of a jerk Killian had been—even if I kind of did deserve it—it felt like a decent punishment.
“Oh yes,” she said with a grave nod. “The larger wyverns move out of the dorms and into their own stalls. They eat a lot and, well, it’s got to come out and go somewhere.”
We chuckled, the laughter loosening my shoulders and coming as a reprieve after the kind of day I’d had.
She squeezed my hand again when we entered the dorm. The humid air flushed into the cooler atmosphere inside the stone building. “Killian will be back soon. Until then, just take some time. Absorb what you’ve learned today and know that you can come talk to me about anything.” She pointed upward. “I’m on the top floor, far room on the west side if you ever need me.”
“Sure, thanks,” I said as Lily waved goodbye and took the stairs.
I sighed. Did they really have no elevators in this realm?
After building up my confidence, I took the stairs as well and wandered through the corridors. When I reached the door, I smirked because my feet had taken me straight back to Killian’s place, even though I hadn’t exactly remembered the way.
I’d followed my heart… because we were mates.
Opening the door, I spotted Killian’s wyvern keening in his nest, fighting some nightmare that plagued him. My stomach twisted, because my riderbond worked both with Killian and his wyvern. It tore me up to see Topaz like this. Jasmine had said that time passed differently in the Tunnels, so however long I’d been gone was enough for what healing I’d done to the wyvern to completely wear off.
“Poor baby,” I said as I entered the room. I approached him and hovered my hands over his faded scales, but the power wouldn’t come to me. “I must have used up all my goddess gifts on Killian earlier,” I murmured, disappointed that I wasn’t some all-powerful supernatural that the Dean made me out to be. I had limits, limits that I was going to have to get used to.
Unable to be magically useful, I spent my time tidying up the room. Killian seemed to be relatively clean, but we’d been gone a while and his wyvern had been on his own. Somebody must have come in to help care for him, though, because I found the refrigerator still stocked with both human food and raw meats. I tossed one of the slivers of steak over to the wyvern and he gobbled it up, satisfied as he reshuffled himself in his nest. I found chewed up shoes and dangled them from my fingers. “Are you a dragon or a dog?” I quietly asked him. He preened, then tucked his snout under his wing as he fell back asleep.
I cleaned the windows, reorganized Killian’s closet, and then I found my own closet and dresser had been stocked with various things. I put on some shoes after washing my feet. The room was
