Page 5 of The Dragon With A Girl Tattoo
Avval gave me a little nod of the head.“You will tell me if you need pain medicines.”
“I would never keep my crampiness from you,” I told him, and blew him a kiss before joining Elle in my studio, plopping down on an overstuffed chair next to her.“I know you’re intimidated by the First Dragon, but you really don’t have to worry.He’s delighted you came for a visit.We don’t normally get many people here, so stop feeling like you have to leave us alone together.”
“Well, heisa demigod,” Elle said with a twist of her lips, then laughed and shook her head.“I know, I know—he’s not going to smite me on the spot because I didn’t take care of you like I should have when we were both in the foster system, but man alive, Charity—he’s a dragon god!Of course that means I’m going to watch my p’s and q’s around him.”
I would have scoffed at such an idea but admitted to myself that Avval’s presence was naturally one that demanded respect, and instead spent an hour arranging to chat with the mates of all the wyverns.
“OK, I get that the leaders of the dragon septs are called wyverns,” Elle said ninety minutes later, when we sat before my laptop waiting for the video chat room to open.“And the nonofficial groups are called tribes, and they have mates, as well.”
“The tribe leaders are called masters, not wyverns,” I reminded her.“There are a couple that are more or less adjacent to the weyr.”
She frowned in concentration, glancing at the cheat sheet of names and brief explanations that I had given her.“Got it.I’m just confused as to who are actually the First Dragon’s kids, and who are his descendants.”
“Every dragon is a descendant, but Baltic and Yrian are the only ones of his actual children who are still alive.Well ...”I looked toward the door, and, after a moment’s thought, got up and closed it before returning to my chair.
Elle’s eyebrows rose at the action.
“He has another child living,” I said in a suitably hushed tone, then threw understandable pronoun use to the wind by adding, “But he disowned him thousands of years ago.”
“A bad seed?”Elle asked, her eyebrows rising higher.
“Very bad.You’ve heard of the demon lord Bael?”
She nodded.
“That’s him.He was the second child born, and his name was Kashi until the First Dragon stripped him of his dragon nature due to ...oh, a whole lot of truly reprehensible things involving much death and sorrow.No one calls Bael by his original name except his older brother, Yrian, who I gather wasn’t around when Kashi ‘became’ Bael.”
“Wow, that’s just ...I mean, everyone knows about Bael,” Elle said, blinking a few times.“But isn’t he out of commission now?I thought I heard he was stuffed into some afterlife.”
“The Egyptian underworld, yes,” I said, tapping in a quick message when Aisling texted to ask if we were ready to go.“It’s called the Duat, and the First Dragon’s brother Osiris runs it.”
“Osiris?You mean the actual Osiris?The god one?”she said, gawking at me.
“That’s him.And just to totally blow your mind, you’ve heard of Odin and Freya, yes?”
Her eyes huge, she nodded.
“Freya’s his sister.He has a lot of cutting things to say about Odin, but I gather he and Freya are pretty close.She invited us to visit them so I could meet her, but that will have to wait until things have calmed down with the dragons.”
Elle shook her head.“I have no idea how you cope with the fact that actual gods straight from mythology are your in-laws, but since you’re more or less married to a demigod, I guess it’s all par for the course.”
“Something like that.Oh, here we go.Aisling usually hosts these, because her wyvern, Drake, is very techy, and has set up a whole system for her to host the mates’ chats.”
A woman with curly brown hair popped onto the screen and smiled.“Hello, all!I’m afraid we’re going to have limited numbers due to the short notice, but I did send everyone the information.”
“My apologies for the rushed request,” I said, making a face that I hoped accurately expressed my regret.“It’s kind of an immediate problem, so I hoped you wouldn’t mind.”
“Bee says she’s not leaving the bathroom for the next three months,” Ysolde said, glancing up from her phone.
I muted myself and quickly told Elle, “That’s Aisling Grey in the upper left corner.Ysolde is the blonde.She’s Baltic’s mate.The woman who just logged on and looks like a nineteen twenties flapper is May, mate of the silver wyvern, Gabriel.Bee is the sister of another wyvern, and another mate, respectively.She and her wyvern, Constantine, are expecting their second child.”
“Ugh.I so don’t miss those first months,” Aisling said with a grimace, then glanced to the side when a big black Newfoundland dog shambled in and plopped itself down next to her.
I unmuted to say, “Thank you all for coming.This is my friend Elle, who has been staying with us for the last ten days, and is very discreet, so you don’t have to worry about saying anything in front of her.”
“I’m a psychiatrist for angsty spirits, shades, and revenants,” Elle said, giving a little wave at the laptop’s camera.“So I’m very familiar with nondisclosure as a working concept, and absolutely agree to keep anything heard here to myself.”
“We’re always happy to know a friend of yours,” Aisling said politely, then quickly ran through the introductions.“Not that I want to pressure you to hurry, Charity, but we’re leaving for Paris in two and a half hours, and Drake’s about at the end of his patience trying to get everything wrapped up here in Hungary so we can spend a month in France.”
