Wish (Scales 'n' Spells 3)

What did North have right now?

A dwindling bank account and very limited future prospects.

Maybe she was right. Maybe he was simply dragging his feet. What was he going to do with magic and dragons? What kind of future was that?

As much as he hated the idea, maybe he should go home and forget about Burkhard Castle.

And Warin.

North sat at the big dining hall the next morning, pushing porridge around in his bowl instead of eating it. He kept staring at his phone, black and silent at the moment. He’d texted his mother the name of the town and the nearest airport last night, then immediately wished he hadn’t. Because doing so broke his heart.

But still, what choice did he have?

Someone dropped into the seat next to him, and North looked around, only partially out of curiosity. Mostly out of instinct. He didn’t at all feel connected to the space he was in just then.

Ravi looked back at him, concern cutting lines across his face. “Did someone die? You look really depressed.”

“No,” North denied even though it felt like it. “No, my ma called last night. She’s fed up and demanding I come home immediately.”

“Fed up…? I’m not following.”

“She never wanted me to go on this trip. Was really, super against it.” North struggled to put this all into words, to explain.

“Warin,” Ravi called. “Come here, you need to listen to this.”

Warin was here? How lost in his head was he that North hadn’t realized it?

He was indeed, looking far more alert and energetic than North felt. Warin had coffee and a plate overflowing with an omelet in his hand. He put both on the table, sitting across from North with worry written all over his face. “What’s happened?”

It was somehow even harder to look at Warin and explain. “My ma called and demanded I come home immediately. Today, in fact. She never wanted me to go on this trip, and she’s at the end of her patience.”

Warin stared at him with a growing frown. “But you don’t wish to return home.”

God, how true those words were. “No. But I’m really low on options. See, my parents aren’t…aren’t magical? They’re not mages, but I don’t mean that exactly, it’s just that there’s no room for magic in their lives. They only know their simple lives, with their business and their church and their family. That’s all they’re comfortable with, and they refuse to think about anything else. So to them, this trip wasn’t a fantastic journey. It was a strange thing I kept insisting on. I almost had to sneak out of the house to actually leave on it, that’s how against it they were. And now I’m….”

Ravi bumped his shoulder, encouraging him. “What?”

“I’m really low on money.” The words tasted like acid in his mouth. “And I don’t want to leave, I really don’t, because all of you are amazing. But I don’t see how I can stay. It’s not like I can work here.”

Both dragons stared at him with perfectly blank expressions. Then in growing confusion before glancing at each other.

“Uh…” Ravi dragged out the sound, scratching at his head. “I feel like a miscommunication happened somewhere.”

“It obviously did,” Warin agreed. “North? Of course you can work here.”

North blinked at him. Blinked again. Those words didn’t compute for a moment. “What? How?”

“You’re a mage,” Ravi told him as if this was the most obvious thing in the world. “Magic is your career path.”

North turned to look at him, still utterly confused. “Wait. Wait, I thought mages couldn’t actually survive on their magic in this day and age.”

Ravi negated this with a wave. “They just package it differently, that’s all. The mages of the Burkhard clan have a whole line of cosmetics, soaps, hair tonics, cleansing crystals, you name it. And believe me, they stay busy making it all. The clan owns lands. Alric and Dieter oversee extensive investments to support the clan. But we dragons also depend on what they make to keep cash flowing. We support them as much as we can, of course. We manage the greenhouses and take them out when we need to harvest supplies. And we package things up, ship them out, manage the orders, all of that. But you see how much work a mage has here to do.”

“It’s part of why all the mages are excited to see you,” Warin pitched in, his voice gentle. “We dragons, we look at you and see a potential spouse. But the mages looked at you and saw a potential co-worker, someone to help them. There’s a great deal of magic worked in this castle on a daily basis. Trust me, if you want to work and earn your place here, there’s more than enough work to go around.”

North’s jaw was dangling somewhere near the center of the Earth. They still used magic in this day and age to earn a living? That hadn’t died with the Dragon Wars?! Holy shit. He managed to get his jaw slotted back into place long enough to croak, “But I don’t know enough magic to help them, do I?”