The Consumption of Magic (Tales From Verania 3)
“Oh, hush. You know we will. Look at it. It’s so tiny!”
“Gods, I can never take you anywhere.”
“So she asked Kevin about you—”
“I will tell it. You know how I like telling stories.”
“Do I ever.”
Pat turned back toward me. “Do you know what he said about you?”
I squinted at her. “Is this a trick question?”
“No.”
“Um. Okay. Did he… talk about my ass?”
“Yes, but only for seven minutes. And then he talked about the unicorn graphically for sixteen minutes. I mean after that.”
“Younglings,” Leslie said. “Remember when we used to be that way? Why, I remember when we could go days without leaving the cave.”
“Lesbian dragon sex,” I whispered. “I’m hearing about lesbian dragon sex.”
“Leslie,” Pat hissed. “Now is not the time.”
“How I love you,” Leslie purred.
“As I was saying,” Pat said to me. “I do not take the word of a human. The star dragon said that we had a choice. That we could choose a side or remain neutral. That we could turn
our gazes away from the plights of men and let the land around us burn. I do believe we are high enough in our snowy mountain to avoid the worst of the fallout should the man in shadows rise.”
I swallowed thickly.
“And then you were here,” she said, cocking her head at me. “After all this time. And you were not what I expected. The star dragon said you were to be a grand wizard, capable of things this world has never seen before. But all I saw in front of me was a little smudge against the snow.”
“I don’t even find that offensive,” I assured her.
“No? So be it. We followed you down the mountain to see what you would do. You showed… ingenuity. Resourcefulness. Cunning. Qualities I do not care for in a human. Because they can lead to wrath and destruction if not tempered. I have seen the worst of men. Once they came for my beloved. They tried to take her from me. Do you know what happened to those men, apprentice?”
I had a pretty good idea.
“I ate them,” Pat said, tongue flicking out of her mouth. “Because I would not let them lay one filthy finger upon her feathers. No one should be able to touch them except for me.”
“I can see why,” I said quietly.
“Can you? I should hope so. Do you know what your Kevin said about you?”
I shook my head.
“After extolling your… assets, he grew quiet for a time. Then he looked down upon us and said that because of you, for the first time in his life, he was no longer scared.”
Oh, how my heart ached at that.
“He said that he’d been hurt before. That they had come for him, trying to take his hearts and blood, that he’d been trapped in their spells, unable to move. He had known fear then, true fear. Somehow he managed to escape. And he fled, looking for a place to call his own. He traveled far and wide and only settled when he found an abandoned keep that had easy access to sheep.”
I laughed as I wiped my eyes. “Yeah. He likes them because he’s a weirdo.”
“And he was okay, for a time,” Pat said. “He was able to catch his breath. But then he chanced upon a wizard near a castle, and it scared him. Because they were all the same, Darks or not. He fled, but not before taking a pretty.”