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The blustery act was dropped as both men leaned forward to look at the piece of parchment I held. Lanwin plucked a pair of specs out of his pocket and popped them on. They read the tiny text with rapt attention. I’d found a bunch of Nan’s business documentation locked in a cupboard when we’d redone the storeroom, turning it into a meeting space. We really need to find Merlin again, see if he could set us up with another couple of those endless storerooms he’d made for the books. I looked away from the gnomes and their reading, rubbing at my chest when a sudden ache flared there.
“Yes, well, of course, Lanwin and Sons will honour this agreement between your family and mine. So, Miss McKinnon, how many can we put you down for?”
“How’d you go?” Ash asked after the men had left. Her eyes widened when she saw the mess on the platter. “Those little pigs! Where’d they fit all that food?”
“No idea,” I said, replating the leftovers into a container. “Least there’s no cleanup. They eat them head and all.”
“Dude!”
“Yep, and I have the deal. Nan had an agreement in place with his father and they’re going to honour it. Half a featherweight of gold per equivalent in feet.”
“Half! God, girl, what did you promise them? Your first-born child?”
“Didn’t have to. I checked with the office of Grand Gerent and the agreement was still valid. It was either roll over or be taken through the courts. How we would have navigated the intricacies of Mirenese Law, I have no idea. And it’s goblins who do deals on first-born children, not gnomes.”
“What’s the difference? They’re all little and ugly looking.” I just stared at her. “What? I didn’t spend my days pouring over Dungeons and Dragons manuals, did I?”
“You might have if you’d known it would be crucial to our future financial success. Now, I’ve created a database of the customers who’ve enquired about cockatrice feet,” I said, opening the company laptop and clicking through to the desktop. The spreadsheet popped up on the screen and I scrolled up. “The requests aren’t listed by date but by the likelihood of still needing them. These are all people from planets where feet aren’t readily available. They may have been able to source them from somewhere, but it’s not likely. The ones down at the bottom are from places like Mireen or Aluse where it's probable they’ve gotten them locally.”
Ash leant over to peer at the screen. “When did you have time to do this?”
“Well, the re-enactment society doesn’t have much going on until winter, so I’ve had a bit of spare.”
“What about cosplay? There’s that big Con coming up in a few months, isn’t there.”
“I, I haven’t really done a lot of that since…y’know.”
“Since you found Kenny boy doing the do in your costumes? C’mon Tess, you’re not going to let something like that stop you, are you?”
“It’s not that.” I looked over at Miazydar who was laying down near the counter. “It just kind of feels… I want to say a waste of time, but that’s not quite right. I was a dragon rider, Ash, for a moment. It wasn’t dress-up, I wasn’t playing pretend, I was one.”
You still are one.
“OK, well, you know you’re welcome to hang out with us. Come to this party, have a laugh.” A cold wave swept through me. I tried to mask it, keep my gaze steady, waiting for a moment to make sure my voice wouldn’t waver before opening my mouth and — “Don’t say no, please, Tess. It would be good for you to get out, see some people. Well, other than those guys. Maybe that’s what I need to do, read a book about lots of close, geeky friends.”
“I have friends,” I said with a frown. “It’s just, how do I talk to them about what’s happened here? What happened through the portal? I have nothing I can share with them, which doesn’t make for a very interesting friendship.”
“Do you need to have interesting things to say? Shouldn’t they just like you for you?”
It was OK for her to say. She didn’t have people meet her, expecting her to be a carbon copy of me. She didn’t see the fallen faces and the polite edging away when it turned out I was not just a younger version of her. Ash was always brash and didn’t give a shit, so people liked her more. I found myself asking question after question, listening to hours of answers I wasn’t even interested in hearing, because I was too afraid the attention would swing to me.
That was part of the agony of hanging out with the guys Ash thought was such a laugh to foist on me. I looked over to where the harem worked under Jez’s eagle eye. Ash didn’t realise how many nights I’d sat up, poring over books with characters just like them, experiencing lust and love as if I was the MC, falling in love with the male lead as if he was a real guy. I kept these guys, all the guys that had turned up in my bedroom due to the curse, at a distance for a reason. Ash was half sure Gabe had turned up due to Nan’s spell, but I wasn’t so certain. He would be a lot more douchey if he was a real biker romantic lead.
I let my eyes run over the back of the blond-haired guy as he reached into the shelves and pulled out item after item, noting each down on the stocktake sheet. What was his name? Caden? Brayden? His cocky smile had set my heart aflutter and what he had been doing with his hands… How was I supposed to cope when he vanished at 4 am? Better they stick with Jez, I thought as she lay in the chair sucking a lollipop.
You always have me, Miazydar said.
Of course, my love. I don’t like to mention that to Ash though. She feels it, the loss of her bond with you.
So you say. It’s a strange thing; I don’t remember bonding to her, only you.
Yeah, but you remember things that didn’t happen. I was never there for your hatching. We were never bonded.
Well, however it happened, we are now.
“So, you’ll come?” Ash said.
I forced that ever-present smile I had become so good at mimicking up on my face. “Yeah, o
