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The moon’s annoyingly attentive stare finally faltered in the clouding sky, and Ari stepped forward into welcoming blackness.
She moved with the ease and purposefulness that came from being unafraid and unhindered by the concerns that clouded the emotional mind. It all vanished the moment she became the White Wraith. Like this, she was an extension of the will of her benefactors, an enemy to all Dragons, and more than just a Fenthri. She cast aside the mortal coil to become something...more. When Ari felt the tattered flaps at the bottom of her white coat hit her booted calves, she felt like a bloody god.
The bomb exploded with a BANG of satisfyingly epic proportions.
corona.
Florence said brightly, so sweet it could give the man cavities.
“I’m sure she’s fine,” the Dragon said again. In less than twelve hours he had managed to find Ari’s last nerve, rip it out, step on it, throw it from the window, light it on fire, and bring it back to life, only to repeat the process twice over. She was half a breath away from telling the Dragon that his boon be damned, he had the choice of lying quietly while she tore out his heart...or struggling while she tore out his heart. And oh, how she hoped he picked the struggling if it came to that.
“Cva,” Ari interrupted him with the grace of a gear falling off its axle.
Where Ari’s voice grew louder when faced with a confrontation, his lowered. It was the auditory equivalent of the velvet of his shirt. It was a contradiction that Ari couldn’t explain. One that shouldn’t be but was—something gentle and dangerous.
Ari focused on him with the attention of a wild dog on a bone.
She was not a proud creature. She was a creature that did what must be done.
She was invincible, and she would be damned if something as small as magic and minutes got the better of her.
Ari wasn’t the most innately patient of women.
She was equal parts intolerable, brash, harsh, improper, and—worst of all—unfashionable.
He sighed again, growing even more tired of the woman. He avoided her questions, and she throttled him. He was smart with her, and she drew her blades. He told her the truth, and she acted like he’d told the most boldfaced lie she’d ever heard. There was literally nothing he could say or do around her that didn’t end with her maiming or insulting him.
“Not until we’ve unsaddled ourselves from this one.” Arianna’s particular breed of tact had returned as she motioned rudely to him.
Arianna clearly didn’t know how to handle this sudden subservience, and Cvareh’s out-of-character actions seemed to annoy her all the more.
He swatted her hand away with a glare and the two locked eyes. They were like counter-weights on either side of the scale. Different, but painfully similar—more so than they wanted to admit.
Florence could see them from a step away, and that step was a half a world of perspective. He was the sugared art on a cake and Ari was the plate and utensils. They saw an enemy in each other, mortal opposites, form versus function. Florence saw two things that were undeniably different, but surprisingly complementary.
Florence placed a hand on both their shoulders, trying to ease tensions. She had worked so hard to make her hands conjure explosions that it was odd to use them to diffuse.
He didn’t do the one thing Arianna would find even more intolerable: give up.
Cvareh pulled off his goggles as if he needed unhindered sight to stare disapprovingly at the room.
He understood the word “prison” in the sense that his mind could come up with a definition, the equivalent word in Royuk, but somehow he wasn’t speaking their language yet. The gravity he felt at the idea of a prison break was a weightless cloud compared to the lead in Arianna’s eyes and, so plainly, Florence’s heart.
But, then again, now that she was a bit older she could see it was no less reckless than deciding to play with explosives for a living. Adulthood just meant finding the variety of crazy that resonated the most with you and doing it until you died or it killed you—whichever came first.
lockstep,
She never thought there was a space for her and the Dragon between the two letters of the word “we”.
“My word isn’t good enough?” Florence gave her an encouraging smile, and shook her head. “Not this time, I’m afraid. I know Cvareh. I’ve already formulated my own thoughts and opinions on him. This is not a story of times long gone that you recount for me and I must take at face value. This is a situation in which I have my own empirical evidence to support what I believe to be true. If you want me to change my mind, you must present new evidence.”
“Ari, don’t be mean,” Florence scolded. Arianna squinted at the girl. Florence had taken his side a few times over the past weeks, and it was becoming a trend she didn’t enjoy.
She remained hunched over the tiny springs and dials of a mechanical bird. Getting its wings to flap had been trying her patience all morning. Sophie ignored her, crossing over to the table. She picked up the wingless body of the bird. “Well, if I ever need to send messages via clockwork pigeon, I know who to turn to.”
With the buffeting of large wings, her cerulean mount landed with a dignified caw. At least Petra found it dignified. She didn’t speak boco, and some of the other birds ruffled their feathers at whatever it was her Raku had said. Petra patted him lovingly on the bill. “You annoy the feathers off these gaudy chickens.”
