“What did he say?”
“Ryan?”
“Sam.”
“I’m not stalling.”
He took a step toward me. “You’re totally stalling.”
I said, “A little,” because how do you tell a prince that his Knight Commander of a fiancé has a magic kink and wants to do things to your butthole? It’s hard.
(Sex pun.)
“Did he tell you about us?” Justin asked, eyes narrowed.
And. Wait. What? “What about you?”
“Uh. Never mind.”
“Justin.”
“I think I might love you,” the dragon blurted out.
I prayed to the gods he wasn’t talking to me.
And he wasn’t. He was staring right at Justin.
“Heh,” I said. “Awesome.”
“What?” Justin said.
“Your face,” the dragon said. “I want to do things to it.”
“Heh,” I said. “More awesome.”
“Uh. I don’t even know your name,” Justin said, hedging.
The dragon pulled himself up to full height. His wings fluttered behind him. He looked proud. Regal. Terrifying.
I waited for it with bated breath. Because this was a big moment, maybe even historical. Dragons named themselves after they were born. After trial and experience. Their true names were supposed to be words of power that they rarely shared with others. The fact that the dragon was willing to share his true name with us was nothing short of a miracle. I reminded myself to write it down in my Grimoire, which I’d sorely been neglecting these past few weeks.
I knew, I just knew that he’d be named something majestic like Mountain Storm or Fire Eyes or HeartWing (granted, my track record for guessing the names of magical creatures was certainly not the best).
The dragon said, “I am from the Old Line; the blood that runs through me stretches back hundreds of thousands of years. I hail from the faraway jungles, in a land never before seen by man. I am fire and skin and wings. I am the dark dragon. I am the Beast from the East. I am…”
“Ohmygods ohmygods ohmygods,” I muttered half-hysterically.
“…Kevin,” the dragon finished triumphantly.
“OHMYGODS OHMYGODS OHMY—wait. What?”
“Kevin,” the dragon repeated.
“Your name is Kevin.”
“Yes,” Kevin said, chest still puffed out proudly, eyes gazing off into the distance as if imagining dragony things us mere mortals could never understand.
“Kev-in,” I said, trying to understand why it didn’t sound like Fire Eyes when I said it. “Huh.”