the only thing I had available to me when I lived in the cave, and therefore I had clung to it.
Now that I had the freedom to paint by choice, I realized how much I’d missed it. Envisioning the final image in my mind, planning it out, bringing it to life… all of it was so satisfying.
I stood in the hallway, outlining the first mural I wanted to create. I’d decided to replicate the painting of the gods in the parlor — the same one I’d painted in Glendower’s cave that was inspired by my mother’s paintings in my childhood den. The hallway was going to be all dragon. Blue, green, and silver on one wall. Black, red, and gold on the other. All painted on a background of the sky at dawn, looking just the way I remembered it from my impromptu sunrise dance with my fae friend, Tal.
Since my mates were so accommodating of my wishes nowadays, perhaps they’d consider letting me fly with them. Aside from giving me a better perspective for my painting, I just wanted to shift again and fly on my own for the first time.
I was struggling to get the perspective of the wings right. Not that I could properly concentrate on what I was trying to do with an audience.
“Either speak or go away. Your sulking is distracting.”
Hiram huffed a laugh from where he was standing behind me, leaning against the opposite wall. I hoped he picked option one — I was sick of his brooding and this conversation was overdue.
“Are you going to look at me?” he asked curiously.
“Not yet,” I replied lightly, tilting my head to examine the spiked tail I’d just sketched on the wall. “It depends on what you have to say.”
“You’re not making it easy on me.”
“Good. I get the feeling you’ve had it too easy. A little groveling would do you good.”
“I fucked up.”
“I’m listening.”
“I said things I honestly didn’t believe and I feel terrible about them,” Hiram admitted.
“You should.”
There was silence behind me, and I could practically hear the thoughts whirring around Hiram’s head as he tried to figure out where to go from here.
“The word you’re looking for starts with ‘s’ and ends in ‘-orry’,” I snarked, echoing what Levi had said to him during my emergence. How could Hiram be so bad at this? I was so curious to meet his family, to see if they coddled him as much as the others implied.
“Right. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I said that stuff, but I’m really sorry I implied you were in any way damaged because I don’t believe that at all — I never have. You’re the strongest dragon I know, Shira. You’ve experienced shit I can’t even imagine. Who the fuck am I to judge, you know?”
I snorted. “Yes. I do know.”
I paused, my brush hovering in the air as I heard Hiram slide down the wall to the floor with a heavy sigh. Even before the hurtful words and the tension between us, I’d always felt wary around Hiram. He was all arrogance and jokes, I could never tell what was real and what was bluster.
I rinsed my brush in a jar of water and set it down to dry, taking my sweet time to extract the most amount of nerves from Hiram since I was still mad at him. Once I’d delayed it as long as I could, I moved to join him, sitting on the floor in the hallway. It was probably the most exposed place in the whole den we could have this conversation, but my other mates were notably absent.
If this confrontation hadn’t been carefully orchestrated by all five of them, communicating silently in their heads, I’d eat my left talon.
“How can I fix this?” Hiram asked quietly, a note of pleading in his voice.
“I’m not an expert on how this all goes, Hiram. For most of my life, I’ve only had myself for company. All I can tell you is I feel like I know you the least. How am I supposed to believe you’re genuinely sorry when I don’t know who you truly are? Maybe saying horrible things is normal for you.”
Hiram looked at me like that idea had never occurred to him before.
“Okay. Okay, I get that. For what it's worth, saying horrible things is not normal for me, but I understand where you're coming from. You need something… real.” Hiram nodded his head, brow furrowed like he was trying to talk himself into