Page 27

I know what he means. It’s an almost mundane interaction compared to everything else we have been through. All the seal stuff, all the wings, the scares, the dramas. This is just coming home after a long day of bullshit and being cared for.

I close my eyes and I let him hold me for a while.

I find myself starting to feel better. More energy, less like I’ve just been drained.

It would be so much better if I could just stay with Ornix.

I mean, I guess I’m still planning my imminent escape, but other than that, being with him all the time feels amazing.

I wonder if I can escape and still come back somehow.

“You really won’t take over and teach me how to fly yourself?”

“You’re going to keep going to the classes,” he rumbles, rubbing my ass with the flat of his hand.

“You’re going to do what the instructor says, and you’re going to suffer the consequences if you don’t.

Think of it as a do-over from college, all the times you got away with things there, you won’t here. ”

“You’re saying he can punish me?”

“ I can punish you,” he growls. “Nobody else can touch you.”

“Well, he said that if we didn’t obey, there’d be consequences. He said he’d ground us. I am grounded, by the way. I couldn’t stop flying every time I opened my wings. And every time I opened them, he pulled me back down on that damn chain.”

Ornix smirks. “I don’t know if you have as much control as a typical whelp would. Wings are tricky at first, and you have some strange human version of them. It’s not going to be easy.”

“That’s why you have me in a baby class learning how to fly with creatures who still think that farts are funny.”

Ornix smiles at me. “Best place for you. There’s total supervision, and they’re used to mischievous brats who make trouble and almost kill themselves. It’s the first time you’ve used your wings without injury, isn’t it?”

“I guess?”

“Then yes, you keep going.”

“Well, I can’t go tomorrow.”

“Why not?” He asks the question indulgently, running his hand down my back and then down over my butt in a soothing motion.

“I have to go to the human world with you and find the seal, remember? If we don’t find the seal very soon, everything will be bad forever. So I can’t go back to flight school tomorrow. I have to go to the human world and find the seal.”

“Mhm. Well, I wanted you to recover somewhat before we did that. And those wings of yours are hard to hide. I don’t know that taking you back to the human world is really an option.”

“What?”

“You need to learn to retract them all the way. I don’t know if you can.”

“I could pretend they’re a fancy dress. Or just put a coat over them. Or wear a hoodie and a long skirt, or… there’s lots of ways.”

“You really don’t want to go back to school, do you,” he chuckles.

“No!” I whine.

He laughs, and I feel the rumble beneath me like a tectonic thing.

“You’re going to flying lessons tomorrow. I will do you one favor, however. I will have you put into a class with those closer to your age. You will not have to tolerate the youth, or at least, not the youth that much younger than you.”

That’s something, I guess. Part of the humiliation is being treated like a baby, but I bet it won’t be any better in more advanced classes, where my inability to control my body will be even more of an obvious problem.

I’ve got to distract him. I’ve got to make him realize that the seal is way more important than my education.

“I think I can feel the seal,” I lie.

That sparks a slap from him. Hard. He knew instantly that I wasn’t telling the truth.

“That is not something to joke about,” he says.

“Please don’t ever toy with these things.

Equinox is searching high and low for the artifact.

You and I are going to stay here and you are going to get stronger.

You are the most important thing. You are the future of my lineage, and you are the love of my very long life. ”

“Ow,” I whimper.

Then I start to feel something besides the sting that is seeping through my ass.

Not just sting. A tug. Something that makes me feel…

No way.

Ornix

She sits up, wings adorably askew. Then she looks at me with an expression of pure excitement.

“I’m not kidding. I actually think I can feel the seal.”

I am not amused by this stalling tactic. It is obvious, and in poor taste. “You are going to school tomorrow, and at this rate, you are going with a very sore ass.”

“No, Ornix. Really. I think it’s here.”

“If this is some kind of a joke, you are going to hurt so bad, little one. You are going to wish you had never understood the concept of a seal, let alone…”

She gets up and runs out of the room. I lift myself from the bed, feeling some of my many hundreds of years of age in the process. She has more energy than I do.

“Here,” she says, stopping outside Equinox’s chamber. “It’s in here.”

“Equinox’s rooms? But he’s in the human realm.”

I open the door, feeling the seal on it break. Nox has tried to keep it private, but there are no seals that I cannot destroy in this castle. However, he will know I have entered, I cannot prevent that.

“Hello, Uncle.”

He is immediately on the other side of the door as we enter. Melissa pushes past me and sticks her hand out for the seal.

“You found it!” she exclaims happily. “You did so well! Where was it? Did I drop it? Did someone have it? I would have come and looked too, but you would not believe what they have been doing here. It’s been a whole thing.”

She ignores the vibe of the room, which is tense. There is something in the way Nox is looking at me, a certain dark, smug triumph that makes me instantly uncomfortable.

He drops the seal into her hand. She drops it immediately, then scrabbles around on the floor between us while the pair of us stare each other down.

“Very well done, nephew. Where did you find it?”

“It had fallen down the back of the couch,” he says. “Nothing to worry about. I don’t think any of the humans saw it, let alone became corrupted by it.”

“I see you bought new computers back here,” I say.

“Are you going to smash them up again?”

The energy is very strange. Equinox and I had come to an understanding, but right now it feels as though we have a great distance between us. There is an abyss of it, and I do not know where it is coming from.

Then a sound comes from somewhere around my knees.

“Hm.”

It is a little human sound that heralds the complete unraveling of this scene.

“I don’t think this is real,” she says, frowning.

“You’re attuned to it. Of course it’s real,” Equinox says.

“Give it to me,” I reply, reaching down for her, pulling her and the seal up together.

The second it touches my fingers, I am almost certain it is not real. It resonates, but not with the feeling of an ancient seal. The sensation is more… electronic. Human. This might be an object of power, but it doesn’t originate from here.

“What is going on, Equinox. Why can she feel the seal, and why is this one clearly a decoy?”

He sighs and takes several steps back, putting space between us. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says. “That’s what I found. It looked like the seal to me.”

“It doesn’t really. The real seal has bits of kobold paint on it. This is too clean. And it’s too heavy. It feels like a lead weight.” She looks at Nox. “Did you really not notice?”

In her innocence, she is doing what I would be doing more harshly. She is so confused. She does not see the answer that is clearly before us.

She feels the seal because it is here.

“Are you going to try to keep the real artifact for yourself, Equinox? Do you have some plan that involves the possession of one of the seven seals?”

I purr the questions slowly, softly, trying not to escalate a situation that has already escalated. He hoped to come back, pawn off the fake, hope Melissa’s sense for the real thing would be confused by proximity.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, not sounding convincing in the slightest. The air smells of guilt and betrayal.

The energy has shifted. I think of all the fights I have had with the whelp for all these years, and I sense that they have come to a head while I was not watching.

It is a strange thing, to feel a shift in energy that does not seem as though it could be backed up by evidence, except I have lived long enough to know that it will be.

“Where’s the real seal?”

“That is the real seal.”

“You didn’t have a plan for this part, did you?” I make my voice softer. I make myself sound as though I am almost sympathetic. “You thought your little ruse would go over without anybody noticing. But Melissa is smarter than you thought. And you’re not as good a liar as you’d like to be.”

“Nox?” Melissa pipes up, sounding appropriately hurt and confused. She really believes in him. I should have kept her further from him, but that’s hardly practical when family lives together the way we do.

He sighs. “Fine. I have the real seal. I didn’t want to hand it over because she’s only going to lose it again, and you indulge her, Uncle, and I don’t want to have to go back to the human world in five minutes’ time when she runs away again.”

“Hey, fuck you. You were the one who talked me into running away,” Melissa exclaims.

Oh, he’s really made a mess of this now. He should have tried to keep her sweet over me. She’s more incendiary than I am, and I am on her side.

“You’re kind of an asshole,” she frowns. “Where’s the real one?”

He reaches into his pocket and hands it over to her. She drops that one too, but this time it hits the floor with a much more satisfying and legitimate sound.

“There it is,” she says. “It’s perfect.”

“You and I need to talk,” I growl at Nox. “Not now, but later. I know you are a developer, but I have no time for these games.”

“Of course, Uncle,” he says. A little too smooth. A little too agreeable. He’s definitely up to something.

I need to look into this. And I need to do it without drawing too much attention to my growing suspicions.

“For now, this one needs to get showered and to bed. She’s had a long day of flying lessons.”

“I have,” Melissa interjects. “And they were all terrible.”

The tension becomes defused as Nox smiles. He enjoys her rebellious nature. It reminds him of himself, I am sure.

I usher her out of his chambers, and ensure I take the seal from her.

“I think I should keep this safe,” I say. “There has been a great deal of trouble around it. Time to ensure it does not end up where it does not belong again.”

Melissa does not argue for once. I am quite impressed. She not only found the artifact we were searching for the moment it returned to her range of feeling, she sniffed out a fake one.

“You did very well,” I tell her. “You may be having a little trouble finding the nature of your wings, but you understand the magic of this place. You are linked to it. You belong here, Melissa. Not just with me, but with everybody.”

She smiles at me, a soft, gentle, happy little expression that I rarely get to see on her face. She is usually a more strident creature, one way or another.

“You really mean that?”

“Yes. Absolutely. You have been fated from the beginning. From the first moment I saw you. Your connection to this place has always been extraordinary.”

“That’s ‘cause I played the game,” she reminds me.

I loathe that game, but I also know that it is not the root of her connection.

“No. I sensed you. I felt you the same way you feel this seal. I am attuned to you. You belong here. With me. You are part of the fabric of the magic of this place. Remember that next time you feel frustrated with the learning process. You have already come so far. You are a creature like no other. Now. Come. You need a bath.”

“I need a bath?”

“Well,” I amend my words. “I need you naked, wet, and oily.”

She blushes and giggles, an absolutely gorgeous sight. I sweep her up into my other arm, carrying her with as much reverence as I do the seal.