heart was pounding, and his throat was painfully dry as he dug his cellphone out of the little bag he was carrying. He hesitated for only a moment, trying to decide who to call. He knew he should call Alric or even Baldewin. As the head of security for the clan, Baldewin would need to know about this mess he’d made.
This was so, so much bigger than his usual antics. It wasn’t a matter an apology and doing dishes for a month could make up for. He’d just outed his whole clan. Possibly implicated the ice dragons as well. Like, how many years of dishes would this take?
And were people even ready to come out of the closet? Alric and Rodrigo had been talking about it, debating pros and cons, but no one had arrived at a conclusion yet.
Yet. Ha, that was funny.
Funny because Ravi had taken the option out of their hands.
Alric might lock him in the dungeon with Gunter for the rest of his life. Ravi couldn’t think of a worse punishment than being confined to the dungeon, researching until his eyes crossed. He shuddered at the image.
No, there was only one person who could help keep his king from going through the roof.
“Ravi,” Cameron’s sleep-rough voice groaned in his ear the moment the call connected. “I thought I told you not to call me before the sun was up.”
“The sun is definitely up,” Ravi muttered.
“Really?” There was a pause and a rustling of sheets. “Huh. I guess it is, but it’s still too early.”
“Is Alric there with you?”
“Nope.” There was more rustling of the sheets and a happy sigh like the mage was getting settled in bed again rather than getting up. “He said he was joining some kind of dragon calisthenics on the mountain with Baldewin and Warin this morning. I think they were even going to drag Gunter out with them.” Cameron snorted. “Silly dragons. Not gonna catch a mage out on a mountain at this ridiculous hour,” he muttered.
“Cam, I-I’m going on a journey,” Ravi announced.
There was another long silence, but this one was different. The line was completely still. He couldn’t even hear Cameron breathing.
“What did you do?” Cameron demanded softly. His voice sounded calm, but there was a deadly seriousness to it.
“A looooong journey. Don’t look for me. And don’t let Alric watch the BBC news today. Keep Cassie off the internet.”
A harsh laugh erupted from Cameron’s side of the call. “You’ve just asked for the impossible. What’s going on, Ravi? Are you in trouble? Where are you? Should I send Baldewin your way?”
Ravi’s shoulders slumped, and he leaned heavily against a tree. Maybe he could stay here in these woods. Maybe find a cave to hide in for the next few centuries until this all blew over.
“I miiight be in a movie now.”
“You WHAT?” Cameron shrieked, his voice cracking as it jumped toward the ceiling.
“In my dragon form. That…sounded worse than it did in my head.”
“Ravi. I say this as your king’s consort. Get your ass back here, now.”
It had to be bad if Cameron was giving him orders.
Ravi spoke a mile a minute, hands gesturing in every direction as he tried to both explain and apologize to Alric all in one breath.
“—totally well hidden in the fog, I was set to come home without issue, and then I flew into this plane, and it was spiraling, and instinct took over—I guess it was flight instincts or something, maybe herding instincts—do dragons have herding instincts? I just couldn’t let someone crash in front of my eyes, so I lunged for it, caught the plane, and slowed its descent, and it was really, reaaaaaaally foggy, like, so foggy I could barely see my wing in front of my face, so it wasn’t until we were almost to the ground that I saw there was a camera crew and realized it was all a movie set. The pilot wasn’t actually in trouble—actually, I don’t know if he was in trouble or not, I didn’t stop to check, maybe he was? Anyway, I had no choice then, he needed me to get him down as I had complete control of the plane, so I set him down, and of course I couldn’t just bounce back up into the air, so I had to land, which may have been really bad because then they could do closeups. Sorry, I had no choice but to land, and I tried to talk them into not filming anything