be looking at. And this might in fact be my only chance to—
Zhing!
I yelp as Brank’ox suddenly bounces to his feet and draws his sword, staring straight up at the darkening sky.
There is something there. Hovering right over the ruins, just thirty feet away.
The blood drains from my face.
All the flying things on Xren are deadly.
10
- Dolly -
“Dollyyyy! You down there?”
I freeze. The shadow is talking to me.
With a girly voice.
In English.
The penny drops. “Miaaaa! I’m hereeee!”
“Okay, stay put! I’ll just land this dragon thing. My love, can we put down here?”
There’s a hard flapping of dragon wings and a metallic rattle of large claws, and then Kyandros has landed on the metallic grate above us.
Mia steps off his back, and I avert my eyes as the dragon Changes to his human form. Every time I see that process, it gives me nightmares.
Mia bends down to look at us and wave. “Hi! There you are. And Brank’ox. Greetings. Do you come up, or…?”
Without a word, Brank’ox jumps to the next level, and I let him drag me all the way up by the wrists.
He takes up station beside me, discreetly placing himself between me and Kyandros with his sword still in his hand.
Kyandros ignores him, pretending to look out at the darkness and the now non-existent view.
“Yeah,” I say when I’m face to face with Mia, feeling a little flushed from the sudden ascent. “He’s like an elevator, this guy. They should install him in hotels. So. Hi!”
She looks me up and down. “Everything okay here?”
I flatten the front of my dress. “Yep. We actually had a really good day. Found rubber and… well, all kinds of neat stuff. Then we wanted to explore this place. Just in case there’s anything cool here. And before we knew it, the sun had set. We thought it would be safer to stay here until the morning than walk through the jungle at night. We were attacked by dactyls earlier. A whole swarm. So, yeah. Everything’s okay.”
Mia lets her gaze wander over to Brank’ox and back to me, giving me an enigmatic little smile. “All right. I would offer you a lift home, but I’m the only person Kyandros will carry. And that only barely.”
“Not barely,” Kyandros pipes up without turning around, his voice smooth and cool and lethal. “It is with the greatest pleasure that I carry my wife and love through the sky. But it is true: anyone else who tries to ride me falls to the ground. As ashes. Yes?”
I take a small step back. That dragon threatens my life just by existing.
Brank’ox looks at me and rolls his eyes, totally breaking Kyandros’s terrifying spell and delighting me so much I can barely keep from laughing. He’s not taken in by the dragon at all. Well, he is a slayer. I should not forget that. Neither should Kyandros.
“Don’t worry,” I state. “I have a fear of heights, anyway.”
“Then I guess everything is cool,” Mia says. “I’ll tell the girls that you’ll be back tomorrow?”
“Sure,” I say confidently. “We’ll get an early start, I think. All this alien construction stuff is like a grille to keep us safe from dactyls.”
“I think Brank’ox would keep you perfectly safe from them anyway,” Mia says. “Okay, then I wish you— oh, wait.”
She opens her pack and hands me what can only be food wrapped in leaves, as well as a water pouch. “I kind of suspected what you two were planning. So I brought this. Aaaand…” she rummages through the pack and comes up with a lidded pot. “I mean, what is a night under the stars without tequila? Seriously, you might as well just stay in and read the phone book.”
I gratefully accept the pot, which is exactly the same size I brought. “Thank you, Mia. Stay and share a drink with us?”
Mia glances at her silver dragon husband. “Mmm. So, this is kind of date night for us, and we were planning to… umm... you know, to go to the library. Read some phone books.”
“Of course,” I deadpan. “Xren phone books are fascinating. I recommend Quan’tox through Run’zan. Can’t put it down.”
“Great,” Mia says. “Then I bid you goodnight. See you tomorrow, Dolly. Whatever happens.” She looks at Brank’ox again, gives me the most suggestive wink in history, and sashays over to her dragon, puts her arms around his waist, and whispers something that I’m sure is pretty naughty.
I look down as Kyandros Changes to his dragon form, then take a quick