Page 28 of Dragon Chaos Around

CHAOS: The film should be stored at fifty-eight degrees with thirty percent relative humidity. Your hotel room will not suffice. I can provide appropriate storage in my archive.

She read it twice. Three times. Translated it from eight centuries of emotional deflection into the language it was spoken in:

I’m offering you a reason to come back.

ALANI: I require access.

CHAOS: I’ll arrange it.

She pocketed the phone. The city swallowed her—crowds, cabs, the relentless forward motion of eight million people who had no idea that a dragon king on the top floor of a Manhattan tower had cracked open the vault he’d sealed for years and invited a woman in a rust-colored blouse to come inside.

Alani walked. The transport case was heavy in her hand, and the morning was great, and the word worthy beat steady and warm against the inside of her ribs.

THIRTEEN

ALANI

The text from her mother arrived Wednesday, which was suspicious because that day was reserved for her afternoon facial, her standing call with the foundation’s development director. Marisol did not interrupt this time for anything short of a family emergency, a philanthropic crisis, or intelligence she considered too time-sensitive to hold.

MARISOL: Anak, your brother has invited his business partner to dinner Friday. The gentleman from Silverscale. I assume you have no objections?

Alani stared at the message from the back seat of a cab stuck in Midtown traffic. The gentleman from Silverscale. As though Chaos Silverscale were a visiting professor and not a nearly-eight-hundred-year-old dragon king who had been leaving priceless artifacts on her desk and looking at her with molten-gold eyes while admitting his dragon found her worthy.

She called Crystal.

“My mother has invited Chaos to Friday dinner.”

“Your mother or your brother?”

“My mother is claiming Royce invited him, but Royce doesn’t invite anyone to family dinner without clearing it through Mom first, which means Mom orchestrated the invitation and used Royce as the delivery mechanism, which means⁠—”

“Your mother is running reconnaissance.” Crystal’s voice carried the calm of someone who had married into this family and understood its operational structure. “She wants to evaluate him in person. At the dinner table. With food as a weapon.”

“Crystal, she’s going to make lumpia. She only makes lumpia from scratch when she’s conducting an assessment.”

“How many varieties?”

“She didn’t specify. If it’s two, she’s curious. If it’s three, she’s serious. If she breaks out the lumpiang sariwa with the homemade crepe wrappers⁠—”

“Then she’s already decided he’s a candidate and the dinner is a formality.”

Alani pressed her forehead against the cab window. The glass was warm from the September afternoon. Her reflection stared back—composure holding steady, personal life crumbling like wet cardboard.

“He’s going to walk into a Nores family dinner. Crystal. He has dined with actual royalty. He has survived eight centuries of power politics. And my father is going to ask him about compound interest while my mother serves arroz con gandules and evaluates his chopstick technique.”

“He uses chopsticks?”

“He lived in Japan for forty years in the eighteen hundreds. I assume he uses them beautifully, because he does everything beautifully, and my mother will notice, and then she’ll switch to Tagalog to discuss him with my aunt on speakerphone while he’s still at the table, and he probably speaks Tagalog because he’s EIGHT HUNDRED YEARS OLD and has had time to learn every language on Earth.”

“Does he?”

“I don’t know! That’s the problem! I don’t know what he speaks or what he eats or how he handles a dining room full of Noreses operating at maximum volume, and I am going to have to sit across from him while my entire family conducts a coordinated evaluation of the man whose dragon is—” She stopped. Breathed. “—courting me with rare collectibles from his personal vault.”

Crystal was quiet for a beat. When she spoke, the warmth cut through the teasing. “Lani. Do you want me to run interference?”

“You married my brother. You ARE the interference.”

“I mean real interference. I can redirect your mom. I can keep Royce from going full protective-older-brother. I can make sure Isla doesn’t do the character-study thing where she narrates everyone’s subtext out loud.”