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Az’zae l

I got to City Hall at midmorning the next day. I’d been too anxious to sleep the night before, my brain swarming with plans for my next move with Elle. Besides, I preferred to fly over the city after the morning rush, to avoid stares and the odd scream.

Inside City Hall’s treasure room, I kept my wings pinned to my back, conscious that this building wasn’t designed for someone of my size. I had to duck through every doorway.

My assistant, Diego, sat in the reception area and greeted me with a small smile. “Good morning, Az’zael.” He almost said it right, slurring both Z’s into one. I didn’t bother to correct him.

He’d gradually relaxed over the last eight months. At first, the human, who was dark-haired, with medium-brown skin and a medium build, had been a ball of fear-sweat and nerves, and I’d asked one of the city councilors if another, less fearful human was available. They’d told me Diego had been the only applicant.

But now he felt comfortable enough to address me by name. I hoped the rest of Kilinis would warm up to me as well.

Elle had needed no such prompting, no hint of fear in her face or posture, just an open, welcoming smile. She’d been nervous, but not scared, and she’d quickly relaxed into confidence .

“You sent the gold over to Niemrin?” I asked, groping for something to say. Diego was so good at his job, while I still felt like an intruder at City Hall.

“It, um, wasn’t solid gold, but yes.”

“Right. An electronic transfer.” Nothing to polish or organize, no satisfying clink of gold-on-gold. Humans sucked the fun out of treasure hoarding. But then, it wasn’t the same innate drive for them as it was for dragons. “Niemrin’s happy with that, so it’s fine.”

I glanced around at the bare gray walls, the shamefully thin carpet, and sighed. “Can we at least get some gold bars around here?” I asked Diego. “I can’t have a treasure room with no treasure.”

“It’s a treasur y . Not a treasure room ,” Diego said, adjusting his suit jacket. He insisted on wearing mid-quality, off-the-rack suits despite my many offers to find him something better. He always said something about them being too expensive . But good clothing should be expensive, to reflect the cost of excellent materials and skilled labor. That was nothing to complain about.

Since Diego was quick and efficient and hadn’t screamed the first time we met, I wouldn’t replace him over his terrible taste in clothing.

“This is where we count Kilinis’s money. That makes it a treasure room. Treasure rooms need good decoration,” I explained, for what felt like the thousandth time. Would Elle like to see it one day? I’d show her my personal hoard first, of course. It was much more impressive.

If she were a dragon, I’d have already offered to show her, to demonstrate I was a good prospective mate and to assess compatibility. But I needed to step more carefully with a human.

“You rejected all the options I sent you last month,” Diego said.

“They were cheap.” A stream of smoke curled from my nose. Basic paintings, boring sculptures. All of it mass-produced .

“This is a public office.” Diego’s face took on a familiar pinched expression.

“Exactly! Good decorations show others that I take good care of the city, respect its value, and that it’s become wealthy under my control.” I would be a complete failure of a dragon if my city didn’t prosper, and how would Elle trust me to take care of her if I couldn’t take care of her home?

“People don’t want their taxes to be spent on expensive decorations.” Diego’s words were measured.

I’d already had dozens of meetings with City Council about tax-funded projects that would be many, many times more expensive than adding some beauty to this ugly building.

Humans were so uptight about money. All these extra rules I could never figure out. Oh, our contract with the city was incredibly specific. Niemrin and I provided protection, negotiated contracts with new businesses, and generally acted in the city’s best interests in exchange for getting to include the city in our hoard, which raised our status among other dragons and made us more attractive to future mates.

Plus, there were a bunch of provisions that amounted to “don’t act like a dictator”—I had a good idea of where those came from. We’d thought that was everything, but it had taken only a few hours after signing the contract for us to run into unspoken rules that boiled down to “don’t talk openly about money.” Totally the opposite of dragon rules, and extremely frustrating.

“Fine, I’ll bring some from home.” I had a few bars of gold, and some nice paintings. Oh, and those gold doubloons I’d snapped up a few months back would look nice piled in the corner next to Diego’s desk. He’d appreciate the view.

“If you like,” Diego said with a sigh. “Don’t forget, you have a meeting with Councilor Williams at eleven. ”

“Remind me what she wants to talk about?” I asked, secretly hoping the meeting wouldn’t last too long. I wanted to see Elle at lunch again.

“Housing.”

I tilted my head. “We have lots of houses.” Nice ones, too.

“I left notes on your desk.” Diego turned back to his computer.

Right. Notes. A familiar frustration built in my chest.

I sighed and entered my office, settling into the chair I’d brought from home, with its special wing cutouts and high-quality leather upholstery.

Diego had left a bullet-pointed sheet of paper on my desk, outlining something about not having enough homes for everyone. But I’d collected my yearly tribute—er, taxes —earlier that month, so we should have had enough to build more homes. It should have been simple.

But Councilor Jasmine would be here at eleven, which meant it wasn’t simple. I’d ask her a bunch of questions that I felt like I should know the answers to already, and at the end of our meeting, we wouldn’t be any closer to solving the problem because this other councilor objected, or that budget item needed the money instead, or this group thought it would impact them badly.

I crumpled the paper into a ball. At least “tax season” had been uncomplicated fun, even if no one handed over real gold. Some of the richer humans had dragged their feet and tried to get out of paying entirely. They hadn’t expected a visit from an angry dragon to force them to pay tribute. I’d also “assessed” a few extra fines. They weren’t pleased, but what were they going to do, fight a dragon? The memory made me chuckle.

I smoothed the paper back out, careful not to snag it with my claws. Would Elle take me seriously if Kilinis didn’t have enough houses ?

My parents constantly badgered me about Kilinis’s prosperity and how they’d done a much better job with their own city—I’d set their texts and calls to silent to get away from their constant offers to “help.” I’d been sure Niemrin and I could handle it, but how had I overlooked something as basic as housing?

The meeting with Councilor Jasmine was exactly as painful as I’d feared. She outlined in excruciating detail how many homes we needed, and how much money we needed to build them.

“We’d like to go forward with the new housing developments, Az’zael.” Councilor Jasmine pronounced my name perfectly. Her Bantu knots were neat, her suit a tailored wool blend. “But we simply don’t have the funding for everything you requested.” She looked at me like I could solve the problem with a flick of my wings.

When I’d fallen asleep in the third meeting in a row, City Council started sending Councilor Jasmine over to summarize their meetings instead of asking me to attend. It wasn’t that I didn’t care. It was that they spent so much time arguing back and forth, and somehow a decision still didn’t get made. So why pay attention?

I blinked. “I just collected trib— taxes .”

She handed me a sheet of paper. Jasmine always did a thorough job with these summaries. I’d tried to compensate her for the extra time, as was proper, but she’d looked scandalized and said something about not accepting “bribes.”

I glanced through it. Niemrin and I had begun a lot of projects, but Kilinis needed so much work. I could shift some of my personal hoard into Kilinis’s coffers, but that seemed inadequate somehow .

“Is it too soon to ask for more taxes?” I asked. That would give the people a stake in what was happening in their city. That’s what I wanted. Not to dictate everything to everyone.

Jasmine shot me a familiar, exasperated look. “Yes. We have some alternative proposals here.”

I took the binder from her hand. It was neatly organized with tabs. I’d expect nothing less from the exacting councilor. Physical paper was easier for me to focus on than the digital files Jasmine had tried to send over the first few weeks I’d been in Kilinis.

“Thank you. I’ll look them over.” I’d never felt more like a fraud than I did when I forced a smile. As if I knew how to evaluate any of those pages.

What had I been thinking when I claimed Kilinis? I could sniff out treasures from miles away, but most of mine were neatly organized in display cases, not liquidated and repurposed.

I could send the plans to Niemrin and ask for his opinion, but he’d send them right back and tell me this was my job.

I could send them to my brother, Udar, but the thought made my shoulders tighten and my fists curl. Udar would know exactly what to do. He’d give me that smug little smile as he told me, then he’d worm his way in, and a few flicks of his wings later he’d have taken Kilinis out from under me. Goodbye city, goodbye prestige, goodbye any possibility of mating Elle.

I had to figure out how to do this myself.

Before I could do more than glance through the first proposal, Niemrin called.

“Remind me why I shouldn’t murder humans.” Frustration crackled through every word.

“We’ve tried very hard to make the humans not afraid of us, and they’re still skittish. ”

“But they’re so aggravating.”

“Who’s pissing you off?” And why? Niemrin was a knowledge-sniffer and spent most of his days holed up at Kilinis University. The little interaction I’d had with other human knowledge-sniffers—no, that’s not what they called them, academics?—suggested that they were just as reclusive as Niemrin. According to him, they rarely approached him unless necessary.

“It doesn’t matter. I just need a distraction.”

I glanced around my office as if one would appear out of the depressingly bare walls. “I’m going to decorate City Hall’s treasure room.”

He snorted. “Of course you are. Probably with pure gold. Thinking about bringing anything from your library?”

I winced. “You know there’s not a lot to bring.”

“I doubt the humans would notice. One thought the fact I had a library at all was impressive,” he scoffed.

Hope fluttered in my chest. “Really?”

“Oh no, don’t tell me you think this gives you a better chance with that blonde server?”

“I don’t think it gives me a worse chance.”

Niemrin laughed. “I can’t believe she didn’t run away screaming. What the fuck were you thinking, daring her to take her own tip?”

I shrugged. “It worked, didn’t it?” Although it wasn’t ideal having to eat at Norma’s Kitchen multiple times before catching her attention, what with its cheap decor and the chair that groaned every time I shifted my weight and scratched the insides of my delicate wings.

“Did it? She probably thinks you’re a lunatic.”

“Or she thinks I’m very rich and very interested.” I’d heard humans joke about overtipping cute servers .

Of course I wanted Elle to know I was far wealthier than any other suitor, and therefore a better choice. I could provide stability and keep her in every comfort. So I’d given her more than I thought any human would.

“She’s not a dragon, Az.”

Dragons courted each other with large gifts as explicit proof that they would be good providers. I’d watched enough human television to know that although they preferred to play coy, they also gave courting gifts.

“Of course she isn’t.” She was soft and small and delicate.

“I should have bought you a book on human dating. Oh wait, you wouldn’t have read it.”

I stifled another wince. Niemrin was right. I probably wouldn’t have.

I was a first-class gold-sniffer but a barely passable knowledge-sniffer, and I rarely bothered with knowledge-gathering. Niemrin’s skill set was almost exactly the opposite of mine, which was part of why we’d teamed up to claim Kilinis. He was the only other dragon I knew whose skills were as unbalanced as mine.

When we’d first claimed Kilinis, I think my parents had hoped Niemrin and I would match on a romantic level. It would have made their dreams come true. But both Niemrin and I hoped claiming a city would mean finding human mates for ourselves.

“Like that book would do you any good,” I volleyed back. Niemrin was into some human librarian he couldn’t shut up about but wouldn’t make a move on.

“If you want a human so bad, use their customs instead of making one afraid she might be stealing from you. I know Tika sent you some courting sites when we first claimed Kilinis,” he said, papers shuffling in the background of his call .

“I want one with fire, not some shrinking, scared thing.” One with fire enough to risk touching a dragon’s money. I wanted someone who understood their worth and demanded their due. Answering fire ignited in my chest at the thought.

The humans on those courting sites looked confident and inviting. Most even knew their worth, demanding thousands for just a meeting, but I’d learned that pictures were deceptive, and even confident humans still feared dragons.

When Niemrin and I first moved to Kilinis, I’d thought meeting City Council in person, with their friendly emails and obvious desire for us to claim Kilinis, would be a breeze, but it had been a disaster of sweaty palms, stuttered words, and dropped gazes.

I never wanted my mate to look at me with fear.

“She did take the money,” Niemrin said. “You’re really planning to court her?”

“Obviously.” We dragons might have been good at finding and hoarding treasure, but compassion and kindness were unheard of. I’d had enough dragon toughness and wanted a little human softness—and I wasn’t about to let a chance with Elle, who’d shown herself to be an alluring combination of soft and bold, slip through my talons.

“Just don’t get too far ahead of yourself.”

“Of course not.” I knew she hadn’t agreed to be my mate yet . Humans moved a little slower than dragons. My friend Movi had taken three months to convince her human to mate her, when a typical dragon courtship lasted only a week or two. But I could be patient. What were three or four months compared to a lifetime?

I hung up on Niemrin before he could give me any more “helpful” advice. Like he knew what humans wanted any more than I did. They only gave hints and vague assurances when talking about anything. “ Enough to get the job done,” “until it’s right,” “get everyone’s needs met,” as if I was supposed to know what that meant if no one would specify.

Sweat prickled on my neck. How could I give Elle sufficient courting gifts if she wouldn’t be specific about what she wanted? What if I gave her inadequate gifts and she didn’t tell me—simply turned me down flat?

She’d be rightfully insulted if I didn’t show her I understood a good mate was worth everything .

No, no, she was confident; her fingers grabbed every single bill out of my wallet yesterday with no hesitation. She’d tell me if I offered too little and negotiate for more. Surely humans wouldn’t let their prudishness around money extend to something so important as choosing a mate . Mates were for life, and humans couldn’t smell treasure the way dragons could. Choosing a mate that couldn’t adequately provide would spell disaster.

Since I could easily provide enough gold for both of us, Elle, with her steel spine and compassion for others, would only need to bring herself. My lids grew heavy. I couldn’t wait to drape her in silks and jewels and show off the fine, bold mate I’d found to everyone.

Movi had met Jorge on one of those courtship apps—Arranged, the same one my sister kept sending me. He’d been an aggressive negotiator. Movi had bragged about it the first time I’d met her human.

But she had done so much of her initial negotiating from behind a screen, and I wanted to see that initial spark of interest from Elle. And that fire . I’d never have seen Elle’s fire for myself if I’d only looked at a picture. She was all big eyes and blonde hair.

I only hoped she enjoyed being spoiled enough to ignore my shortcomings.

As soon as the clock struck noon, I left for lunch. This time, I walked to Norma’s Kitchen rather than fly.

When I stepped inside, the hostess greeted me. “Welcome back.” It was the same dark-haired Asian woman from yesterday, whose name tag read “Jen.” She gave me a warmer smile than last time, though, like most humans, she didn’t even try to pronounce my name. Every time I came in, she seemed a little less nervous.

The first time I’d come to Norma’s Kitchen, I’d recognized Jen’s low voice immediately as one I’d overheard from high above. That interrupted conversation was why I’d started coming to Norma’s Kitchen, despite the average food and kitschy decor.

“Could you seat me in Elle’s section, please?” I gave her my most polite smile.

Her tan skin paled. “Uh, Elle isn’t in today, but please, take your pick of tables and I’ll have someone with you shortly.”

“That’s okay. I’ll come back next time she’s in. ”

Jen blinked at me.

“When would that be?” I asked.

“Um. Uh.” Sweat beaded on her forehead. “I’m afraid I can’t give out staff schedules.”

I tilted my head.

“It’s against policy.” Her words tripped over themselves.

“I see.” I did not see. I’d return as many times as it took, so why not tell me?

When I encountered a problem, pulling out my wallet usually fixed it. “Will this jog your memory?” I’d seen enough television to know that the move might work.

A dragon would have simply given me a price for the information, but I didn’t expect a human to be so straightforward, so I pulled out what I hoped was the correct amount.

Jen took the hundred-dollar bill, turned it this way and that, then stuffed it in her apron. “She’s working the dinner shift tomorrow night. She’ll be in at four.”

“Thank you.” I smiled again and left.

I plodded back to my office, dodging humans and resisting the urge to take flight. Soaring overhead still alarmed them. Taking off from the sidewalk would really set them off. I’d have to ask Diego to order something for lunch instead.

At first, I’d thought it was a good idea to regularly visit different restaurants. I was a terrible cook, and I wanted to get to know Kilinis, so my plan solved both problems. But the servers always dropped things and stuttered, so I got delivery or takeout more and more.

I was the friendlier dragon, between me and Niemrin, and the humans were still terrified of me.

When I returned to City Hall, Diego said, “That was a quick lunch.”

“I changed my mind. What was the name of that French restaurant I had a few weeks ago? Could you order me something from there? And get yourself something, too.” I flicked a glance over to the mini fridge he’d requested a few months ago, where he kept his lunch box.

At first, I’d been impressed when Diego told me he brought his lunch every day. Did a family member make it? A small gift of their time, just for him? But no, he said they were his own “leftovers,” which sounded incredibly depressing.

Since he was a competent assistant, a small lunch from me to him seemed an appropriate gift. The familiar font of the restaurant’s menu glowed on his computer screen, proof of his value.

At four o’clock the next day, I double-checked that my perfectly tailored suit was lint free and ensured none of the threads on the embroidery had snagged throughout the day. Then I returned to Norma’s Kitchen. Jen greeted me with a soft, “Elle’s section?”

Already, I could see her across the room, talking to a table of four. She was tall for a human, but still so tiny compared to me, her blonde hair in a messy bun. I willed her to turn around so I could catalog her features all over again. Large brown eyes, soft pink lips, that soft, smooth skin that all humans had, so unlike my tough scales.

I nodded, barely able to contain my excitement, and the hostess led me to a table that had already been pulled farther away from the wall and the other patrons to make room for my size and wings. The lone chair that could accommodate me was neatly tucked in, positioned so I could face the restaurant.

Nervously, I sat down. I’d show her I could be generous, that I believed her time was valuable enough to repay her for spending it with me. And after I finished my meal, I’d ask if she’d begin a courtship.

An “arrangement,” I think the humans called it—all the courting apps I’d seen used that term. And Jorge had called his and Movi’s courtship an “arrangement” before he agreed to be her mate.

Elle approached my table, her smile wide and welcoming. Everything in me jerked to attention.

“Welcome back to Norma’s Kitchen, Az’zael. Jen said you might be in today. How are you?” Her smile seemed genuine, but there was a tightness around her eyes.

“You know my name.” A wide grin pulled up the corners of my mouth. Two days ago, she’d mispronounced it when talking to a human couple, yet today she’d gotten her tongue around the double-Z sound perfectly.

She frowned. “Everyone knows your name.”

Not like that, they didn’t. “Please, call me Az.” Would she? So far, no human had been brave enough to use my nickname.

She blinked rapidly. “Um, sure, Az.”

Hearing her say it had me feeling like I could take off from the chair without even flapping my wings.

“What would you like to drink?” she asked.

I ordered a beer—I found them a little unpleasant, but they were the drink of choice for so many humans, and I wanted to understand them better—and she returned with it in minutes.

“I know you had the pulled pork sandwich last time, but I thought you might like to try the smoked ribs if you wanted something new? You said you liked meat, and the cook is experimenting with some new seasonings,” she said as she set the beer mug in front of me.

The tips of my wings twitched, delighted that she remembered my preferences and wanted to recommend something. “Yes, I’ll try that.”

“I’ll have it right out for you.” She sailed off to the next table.