Page 213 of Nobody Told Me Thrift Shops Sell Stolen Dragon Heirlooms

For years, I had taken to the sky when I wanted to be apart.

Above the pack. Above the business. Above the rooms where I was too dragon, not dragon enough, useful but suspect, heir but exception. I had mistaken distance for clarity because it was easier than admitting how lonely the view could be.

Today, though, the sky didn’t feel like escape.

It felt like return.

The estate came into view through a break in the clouds: dark rooflines, pale stone, old trees, the landing terrace my father had built for my mother before I was born. For her joy first. For mine after.

I landed there, claws scraping stone.

My father waited, a wool coat pulled over his suit, hands in his pockets, watching his dragon son descend with the same quiet pride he had never once made conditional.

I shifted. “She’s awake?” I asked.

“And lucid,” he said. “For now. She was singing this morning.”

I swallowed hard. My mother sang on lucid days. Sometimes old songs. Sometimes fragments. Sometimes a line repeated for an hour until it became both music and ache.

“Will you come?” I asked.

His gaze moved to my face. “You don’t need me for this part.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Warmth entered his eyes. “Then yes.”

We found my mother in the shrine room. The narrow altar table stood against the far wall. On it rested the necklace, the shrine mirror, the silver reliquary comb, and an empty space waiting at the center. I had mounted the sword above it days earlier while my father held the level and wisely said nothing about how long it took me to choose the height.

My mother sat before it on a cushion, wearing a soft blue dress and one of my father’s cardigans. Her hair fell loose over one shoulder. In the lamplight, she looked impossibly young and impossibly old, a woman carrying more years than her face admitted and more loss than anyone had deserved.

She turned when we entered.

For one breath, I saw uncertainty.

Then she smiled.

“Rafe,” she said.

“Hello, Mother.”

Her gaze dropped to the case in my hands. “You brought it.”

“Yes.”

My father stayed near the door, there if we needed him.

I crossed the room and knelt beside my mother, opening the case with a soft click. Inside lay the incense burner. It had taken time to authenticate it, to ensure we had all the proper documentation so the relics couldn’t be taken from us again. But now, all the relics were returned to us.

The burner was smaller than I’d thought it would be. Bronze, darkened with age. Three short feet. A lid shaped with overlapping scales. One handle repaired in a metal that didn’t match. Along the rim, the wave-and-claw pattern caught the lamplight.

My mother lifted one hand but didn’t touch it. “This was my grandmother’s. She would light it on winter mornings. Before tea.” Her brows drew together faintly, the memory shifting under the surface. “Or maybe my father told me that.”

“Both can be true,” I said.

She smiled at me, grateful for the mercy of that.

I set the burner in the empty space on the altar. It was such a momentous occasion for me, I expected some magic to sizzle in the air. Of course, nothing happened. It was a recovered object. A relic because we had made it one, because memory had gathered around it until it weighed more than the metal it was made of.