18. A WIZARD AND HIS WORRIES

Sitting down at the table in the library, a cup of coffee for Antonin in one hand and Sam holding my other, I felt quite comfortable. It was a welcome change that I felt in control of my life despite Cynthia having disappeared for her job and Ev being largely absent recently. Even when Antonin wasn’t present and waiting for us in the archive as he usually was, I wasn’t thrown off. Instead, I listened to Sam swoon over me in excited little murmurs and guesses at what magic we’d be learning about today. Beth had stayed home, intending to give Sam and me a whole day together while also giving herself an opportunity to look up vegetarian recipes and alternatives to cook with Cynthia, whenever she returned.

Ten minutes after our agreed-upon time, Antonin came through the archive's wooden double doors carrying the unmistakable staff he had used previously. He glanced at me and then at the coffee, crossing the room purposefully to collect it. He picked it up, sipped, sighed, leaned against his gilded rod, and then said, “We’re going back into the testing chamber today. I just got done convincing the management to empty their storage capacity so we can let you off your leash and not risk overloading their fragile infrastructure.”

He then surprised both of us by turning to Sam and asking, “Samantha, would you be willing to assist us today?”

My loving companion was caught off guard, and she stammered, “Haven’t I already been doing that?”

Antonin nodded and brushed some of his wispy, ashen hair. “Perhaps I should elaborate. For our earlier sessions, I have been working on teaching you some of the fundamental concepts relevant to your position in our society; where you relate and differ from those around you, the basics of several schools of magic, what the public knows about you, and so on. In this time, I haven’t answered many of the questions that I have about you.

“Today, I would like to change that. I have planned to have us spend several hours in the grotto purposefully spending as much of your mana as possible. I will be instructing you in increasingly complex, typically inefficient methods of evocation, potentially moving into illusions if need be, so you will still be getting educational value from today, but the goal is to exhaust your supply. I want to test once and for all how dragons regenerate energy.

“Demi-humans recuperate small amounts over time depending on their location and the natural levels in the air, increasing somewhat if they meditate and focus on drawing the energy into themselves. Spirits do not regenerate energy until they return to their element and place of refuge, but their capacities are significantly greater than most humans.”

He paused momentarily, drawing his silvery eyes between Sam and me before continuing. “Today, I want to exhaust you so that we can determine once and for all if there is some source of innate regeneration, as we seem to have already concluded, or if you truly need caches of wealth like your peers from the past. Samantha, if it would please her, can assist you, both by using your reserves as well and by allowing me to compare the flows between the two of you as we progress.”

“Sounds like fun to me,” Sam replied with a shrug.

“Wonderful. No time to waste, then; Let’s be off.”

Antonin practically gleefully led us back through the natural staircase down into the depths of the earth below the archive. The warding pressure seemed to affect Sam less this time around, though she still held my hand tightly on the weathered stone stairs. I was actually worried that she’d be more distressed by the sensation now — having more mana now meant a greater tug from the warding, right? — but Antonin explained that her hyperacute sensitivity was the issue, and she would be less impacted as her own magnitude grew. I nearly facepalmed as he explained it; given how much less I had been bothered, my original hypothesis was laughable in hindsight.

Down, down, down we went, back into the chiseled room. Antonin again tapped the center of the domed enclosure with his staff, illuminating the arena for us. He wasted no time in immediately launching into instruction once we had light to work with.

We began with a simple repetition of the final exercise from our previous session, with a few added caveats. For starters, we had a score now, in addition to the timer. For each of the themed orbs eliminated, we earned five points. For each wasteful impact on the exterior boundary, we lost a point. We also had only five minutes this time, although roughly a third of the balls were removed. For each second remaining when we had collected them all, we got another point.

The gung-ho, shotgun-blasting approach Sam and I took last time was obviously wrong, but we didn’t have any time to coordinate or strategize before our first attempt. We ended up approaching a negative triple-digit score. Fortunately, Antonin gave us a few minutes to talk before he ran the challenge again.

Lightning and force were easy. Using the same approach from the first time, those two aspects efficiently collected all their points and never induced a penalty. Sam said she had a strategy for fire that she was pretty sure would work fine. Earth, ice, and water left me stumped. Sam and I tried to brainstorm anything, but Antonin called time and had us start far too soon.

Again, we gave it a valiant attempt and finished within the time limit, this time only several dozen in the negative. Sam’s approach with fire had been to burn through her mana and emulate the terror-producing stream of fire she had caused before. If she kept the length of her flamethrower just shorter than our radius to the walls, she could sweep it around the entire room, dragging it over every fire orb and collecting them all without ever striking the barrier. It was brilliant, and, with Sam leaning against me and breathing heavily when we had concluded, I understood what Antonin wanted.

This wasn’t an attempt to get us to gracefully solve a puzzle. The more restrictive time limit and point scheme was an attempt to get us to just go for it. He wanted us to go all out and create some way of tagging all the balls nearly instantaneously, without regard for efficiency or creativity. Hell, he had straight up told us that, and I was still trying to solve a puzzle.

The third time was different. I tagged all of the lightning orbs within a second while Sam was sweeping over the entire arena with dual-fisted flamethrower cones. I smashed the force orbs with massive, invisible propeller blades, spinning around Sam and me. Then I kept them going, morphing the force into a tornado that consumed nearly the entire room, tiny particles of earth mana buffeting everything in the whole dome. Sam, finished with the fire, added a storm mixture to my whirlwind. The room bore a stronger resemblance to armageddon than it did a secured testing chamber. My whipping twister of wind and dust was turned into a hurricane with Sam’s energy, hailstones and rain tearing through the once peaceful grotto at a hundred miles an hour. Our cyclone decimated the remaining orbs in an apocalyptic vision of destruction.

And then, we let it slip away. The timer, now visible again, remained at 4:34. Our score was massively positive even before the time bonus. Sam leaned heavily against me, her crimson locks sticking to her forehead from her perspiration. She was panting, but an unconquerable smile covered her face as she looked up at me with unadulterated joy. Looking into the oceans of her eyes, I realized that she hadn’t used a single drop of mana from me. All of that had come from her and her alone, and she was overwhelmingly proud to have done something with her own power for the first time in her life. Baking last night wasn’t where she wanted the bar to be. A cooperative cataclysm crashing down on the world as a public declaration of our love was what she wanted. What she needed. And now, what she had.

I was so struck by what I felt from her that I didn’t even realize Antonin had approached us until he cleared his throat and started talking.

“That was an outstanding display,” he began. “Exactly what I was looking for. How did it feel?”

“Exhilarating,” I answered without looking away from Sam. “Fulfilling. Satisfying.”

She nodded, “Yeah. Great — It felt really fucking great.”

“And how do you feel now? I could see that Samantha wasn’t drawing from you directly. I believe, given that display, we may need to have her reclassified before the day is out.”

Sam gracefully wrapped her arms around my neck to lean against me and support herself and then gracelessly yawned directly in my face as her eyes fluttered shut.

Antonin murmured, “Still D, then. Not as dire as I thought. But, how are you feeling now? That was an excessive display.”

Without opening her eyes or lifting her head from my chest, Sam answered, “Yeah, I can feel it now. I’m pretty drained. Fatigued. Feels like I just stretched a muscle I wasn’t even aware I had.”

“Drakeling?”

I shrugged, “I feel fine. Exhilarating was pretty close to a perfect answer — I’m coming down from the adrenaline of being a part of that spectacle and all it entailed, but I’m not crashing. I’m just calm. I’m…” I paused, trying to find exactly the word I wanted. “Ready,” I settled on. “I’m ready to take on more. Ready to do more. I don’t know if this is an answer to your questions, but I might feel better than before we came down here.”

Antonin frowned. “You aren’t at all impaired after that display?”

“It only lasted a couple seconds and Sam did half the work. I don’t think I could’ve done her parts for her, but not for lack of energy. I felt like I was walking across a balance beam, if you will, and my speed was more hindered by my desire for control than by my physical limits. I could have made a bigger storm or held it for longer without any issues, but the control needed to keep it fit for purpose for the game we’re playing would’ve failed under the added complexity. But, like walking speed across a balance beam compared to a timed mile run, my limit was my experience and my focus, not my actual capacity.”

Antonin scratched his head, drawing his finger through his grey wisps. “That runs counter to every established principle. It is possible that dragons are just an anomaly like no other, but I remain skeptical for the time being. I didn’t believe that explosive unfolding would exhaust you, but it is utterly inconceivable that it left you refreshed instead.”

I smiled in light-hearted exasperation, “It doesn’t seem consistent with the results of our other lessons, but that’s how I feel.”

“Can we continue?” He asked, surprisingly gently.

After a moment, I nudged Sam, whose soft form had come to complete rest against me, smiling blissfully unaware. “Hmm?” she murmured, having missed the question.

“Can you do more or do you want to take a break?”

She took a deep breath, making me blush as she pressed her face directly into my chest as she did, before stepping back and adopting an authoritative, confident look. With her hands on her hips commandingly and her hair billowing the dying gasps of the storm we had conjured, Sam appeared to me like the complete version of the facade she presented in the past — self-assured, capable, secure, content with the world and her place in it.

“I’ll need to draw from you, but yes, I’d like to do more. You don’t know how much of a dream come true this is for me.”

“I think I do,” I responded, seeing a sparkle in her azure eyes that I couldn’t swear had ever been there before.

“I might not be up for a date after this, but I can’t imagine not doing this instead. I couldn’t fathom walking away from just cutting loose, playing with mana like this, with you and because of you.”

“That’s fine, Sam. We have tomorrow afternoon, as well.”

She looked a touch surprised, and I could feel her think that she was content just calling this our ‘date.’ Which would’ve been sad, not just that I wouldn’t be able to capitalize on my plans but that she would consider this magical workout a date. I understood that, from her point of view at least, this was a fantasy that wasn’t possible. But, just as her knock on my door last Saturday morning had shattered my entire world, somehow, I had done the same for her. Even if it was a long-held delusion of grandeur that she could be frivolously casting spells for no reason beyond indulgent enjoyment while holding hands with me, that was simply the world we were in now. I wasn’t content allowing the new baseline to fill the place of genuine development in our relationship, no matter how fantastic or novel it was at the moment.

We pressed on, solving increasingly complex challenges for Antonin. It started off somewhat grounded and connected to what we had done before — more moving orbs. These ones were dual-colored, though, and required contact from multiple elements before they’d be eliminated. Electrical current moving through water, miniature glaciers of ice and stone, and fire intensely hot enough to create pressure differences and exert force on the orbs. The water and fire mixture was challenging for me conceptually, but Sam just switched immediately to using an oily liquid as the water component, allowing the fire to be propelled with her spray.

Then Antonin had us make purely magical fireworks, using our understanding of mundane chemistry to get us to emulate specific substances in the explosion. I only realized it now, but none of Antonin’s demonstrations were real. When Sam and I made explosive, glittering displays, they really were explosions hovering in the sky, but Antonin merely used his illusion magic to show us the result or individual steps we were struggling with rather than exhausting himself executing the complicated evocation properly. Indeed, it was strange to realize that the average person would never be able to do this. Emmanuel’s words about lighting candles echoed in my mind, and I realized that even someone with an evocation proficiency would likely be limited to using the one or two elements that best resonated with them. No one else was running around creating huge maelstroms of multiple elements on a whim and then, in the blink of an eye, creating firework-esque displays of color streaking through the same space.

That was just me, and now Sam. The other dragons, probably, but given Antonin’s uncertainty, I couldn’t confidently claim that it was a dragon trait. And, they didn’t even seem real to me, basically a fairy tale of boogeymen in far-off lands. It could be something truly unique to me, a gift from the strange entity I had interacted with several times. Or, perhaps, a tool? It had wanted me to do things, after all. A payment or a piece of equipment I would need in the future was much more likely than a gift.

It was a fleeting thought, but as I modified the arrangement of the magically simulated elements in the core of the explosion I was manufacturing to better match the visuals Antonin wanted, I realized that Sam’s unwavering obsession with me had somehow gotten her even more than she could ever have imagined. I didn’t do this, really — I hadn’t even known it was possible — but she was now on track to be one of the most powerful witches in the world, if only because of her versatility. My draconic energy supplied her with a blank check to budget against any problems; an ace hidden up her sleeve; a skeleton key that she could use to open any lock she was confronted with. Over time, she would grow into the magnitude needed to be genuinely formidable in her own right, but for now, having the potential to solve any problem with magic was unique to us.

It made me incredibly pleased to see her shed the skin of insecurity. Her technically existing magical prowess was no longer a noose around her neck, connecting her to an anchor that kept her firmly in place, unable to chase what she wanted. Now, it was a set of wings, a flowing set of scarlet wings worn by the beautiful angel from my past. All of my doubts about our confusing relationship faded away as I watched her laugh with juvenile freedom. She giggled harmoniously in response to mirroring Antonin’s prompt, creating a red dragon in the sky that appeared to be flying backwards. Despite the reversed arrangement, she was far more competent in the minute details. Where my attempts looked fuzzy, as though viewed through a camera lens just out of focus, hers were crisp and perfect.

Antonin's next exercise had us play with what were essentially magic RC cars. He instructed us on projecting a tiny amount of force in roughly the size and shape of a toy car and then had Sam and me add an accelerating element. It was easier to just move the force component on its own, but he insisted that we use a magically replicated jet engine instead — the added complexity from controlling multiple elements simultaneously was what he was after.

He conjured an illusionary racetrack around the grotto and had us practice controlling our ‘cars’ around the loop. It started off as simple as that, merely trying to stay on the marked course, but once we had several laps under our belt and were no longer driving off into the wall or toward the center, it got more complex. First, Antonin began morphing the course, changing it from the simple oval into something approaching an F1 track, with rapid repeating curves and chicanes between straightaways, designed to challenge our control of the car. We had to use both speed and direction to keep the car on the track, ensuring we had to manage both elements at the same time.

Then, to keep us on our toes once we had some experience with the new track layout, he added a timer. The first dozen laps were easy to complete, the time far more than we needed. Around the fifteenth lap, I noticed that I only had a few seconds to spare. As I passed over the starting line and my timer reset, I saw what I had been too focused on controlling my car to see. On each lap, Antonin was giving us one fewer second.

On the seventeenth lap, I missed my time by less than half a second, and the eight-digit display tauntingly transformed into a high-density LED facsimile to flash four skulls at me instead of a new timer. I let my car fizzle out of existence and watched Sam continue. She was just naturally better at controlling the car than I was; she was more precise in her adjustments and innately more skilled with her steering. She had the car drifting around some of the larger turns, and I could feel that she was actually rotating the angle of the engine equivalent downwards, making the acceleration lift the car off the ground a touch. It made it easier for her to drift around the edges and reduced her friction on the straights. And then, when she came to the weaving, tightly turning sections, she’d angle it up, pinning the car to the ground to keep a higher velocity through the turns.

Even with her far greater level of control, she only lasted another four laps before she, too, timed out. With a laugh and a cheer, she did a victory lap anyway, rejoicing in having beaten me.

Antonin continued with the cars but started instructing us on the basics of illusion principles. After half an hour of his expert instruction, we were projecting images of racecars onto our force blocks. Sam’s, predictably, had much more detail than I was able to control, making it look like a little miniature version of her was sitting in the car. It wasn’t entirely realistic because the illusion version wasn’t wearing a helmet and the vibrant streaks of red hair were flowing backwards like she was in a convertible with the top down, but it was still awe-inspiring to me.

The mixture of force and illusion gave me an idea, though. Something that Sam wouldn’t enjoy, so I didn’t test it right away, but I was confident that Beth would want to experience it. Once I was eliminated again, several laps earlier this time, as both the third added layer of complexity and my wandering mind inhibited my performance, I tried it on myself. It worked pretty well, doing exactly what I wanted and being challenging to resist, and it made me smugly anticipate the next time Beth and I were alone.

It was only another minute or two before Sam missed her target. Antonin, seemingly reluctantly, admitted that we were nearly out of the time he had allocated for this, as he had anticipated we would run out of energy long before we ran out of time. We again talked about how we felt — Sam was quite tired, although less acutely fatigued, having used my energy for everything after the first challenges. I felt good. Good enough that, when we went to leave, I again carried Sam up the stairs back to the archive. This time, she simply blushed and allowed me the pleasure, now seemingly quite settled with who she was. Antonin didn’t understand how I could have fueled both of us for the entire time, wastefully and inefficiently conjuring things on whims for several hours and still be cheerfully ready for more, but he couldn’t deny the evidence before him.

Back at the apartment, Sam crashed. She sat down on the couch to take her shoes off, slipped out of one, and then leaned against the back and sighed. It wasn’t purely physical, magical exhaustion; a good amount of her fatigue was mental as well. All of the little extra details she put into her evocations and illusions meant that she was cognitively drained as well as physically fatigued. Add in the emotional release she had from conquering the specter of doubt that was always lingering in her mind, and being beyond tired was perfectly understandable.

I kneeled in front of her, helped her take the other shoe off, and then got her something to drink. After sipping on the chilled glass of water and letting it linger in her mouth for a moment, she tried to apologize.

“Sorry, James. This is twice in a row now that I’ve messed up and haven’t been able to do what you have planned.”

“Sam, you don’t have to apologize,” I insisted. “I understand what a treat today was for you. It was for me as well. We’ll do the other stuff tomorrow, alright? As long as you understand that I’m not trying to get out of going out with you, and—”

“No, I would never. James, I know you want me. I always have. I didn’t know why and didn’t think I deserved it at times, but I don’t think you’re avoiding me. I’ve done this, not you.”

I kissed her. Gently, softly, intimately, I pressed my lips to her and felt her slow intake of breath. I felt the swell in her chest as we embraced. She sighed as I separated, and I said, “There’s no harm done, Sam. I really enjoyed today with you, and we’ll enjoy tomorrow as well, alright?” She nodded. “Alright. Let’s get you to the bedroom, then. You could probably use a nap.”

I lifted Sam up and carried her to our room without any complaints from her. I was interested to see Beth sitting in my desk chair in nothing more than a pair of pastel pink bra and panties, her own laptop set up next to mine. She was having a video chat with Rosa, which surprised me because I wasn’t sure when they would have had a chance to exchange details. I was happy she was, though — Beth, and Sam to a degree, but especially Beth, needed to have some amount of socialization that wasn’t centered around me. I was happy to see her reaching out and interacting with people that weren’t directly connected to me.

I waved hello to Rosa as I walked past Beth’s conversation, then gently set my redhead down in the bed. She sighed contentedly as I undid her pants and then slipped them off of her, quickly followed by checking to ensure we were out of Beth’s webcam view, then stripping Sam’s shirt and undoing her bra. She slid under the blankets under her own power and was asleep, seemingly before her head hit the pillow.

I slid quietly to the edge of the bed, where Beth looked at me and invited me into their conversation.

“Hey,” she said. “Rosa and I were talking about meeting up for coffee. She runs a book club for kids and reached out to see if I’d be interested in helping. We were going to meet up and talk about the details. If you’re not doing stuff with Sam, do you want to come with me?”

Rosa’s expression on the screen remained perfectly neutral as Beth asked, and I was interested in saying yes. But, in the end, I relented. I wanted Beth to feel comfortable enough to do things independently and live her own life, even if we were tied together.

“No, I don’t think so. I feel really energized after the lesson with Antonin, actually, so I was thinking about going to swim. I haven’t done that since we got here, and I’m kind of missing it. I know I have lots of excuses for why I haven’t been able to, but I don’t really want to use them. So, I’ll walk you out when you’re ready to go, but I’ll let you two do your own thing without imposing.”

Beth smiled amicably at my compromise and returned to animatedly yet hushedly discussing where she was meeting with Rosa. I gathered what I would need to swim and then checked the gym schedule online to ensure I could just show up and use the pool. Given that my other visit had been with a trainer’s reservation, it was a reasonable concern.

Fortunately, several blocks were marked out as “open swim,” including one in half an hour. Beth got dressed, and I walked her outside, our hands clasped together. She got off the train at the second station, leaving me to go to the pool alone. Once there, I checked in and entered the basement, letting myself into the locker room.

The chlorine smell permeating the air was comforting as I walked into the changing area. It was reassuring. Zoey had been absolutely right, even if she had a different reasoning than what came to be. She wanted me to do some intentional cardio training, just to use my body now that it was different. The fact that I was familiar with swimming already made it a good starting place. For me, it was reassuring, a semblance of sanity in the cauldron of chaos my life had become. The brand new jammers I pulled on in the sparsely populated locker room brought me back to times years ago when things had been simpler. They felt right in a way the business suits I wore, personal assistant I needed, and private tutor rapidly bringing me up to speed on magic just didn't.

I walked out onto the deck from the locker room, relishing the aroma's intensity and the setting's familiarity. There were only a handful of other people here, which wasn't surprising given the exclusive location and the fact that the open time had just begun. The pool was split in half, lane lines on the far side delineating four serious swimming spaces, while the nearer half was left open. A mother and her two young children were playing in the shallow end as I walked past, absentmindedly dipping my goggles in the water before I put them on.

Only one other person was swimming laps; they had taken the farthest outside lane. I was well accustomed to sharing a lane from time spent in a team, and I imagined anyone swimming laps in public would be as well, but there was no need to share yet today. I stood at the lip of the deck, having selected the third lane from the wall, looking at the ripples as they propagated through the lane lines from the movement on either side. I waited for the person swimming to turn and start going the other way so that I wouldn't unnecessarily disturb them and then dove in.

The water felt pristine. I felt more aware, more connected, more in tune with my streamline than I ever had when I was swimming competitively in my previous life. Returning to the water felt like home in a way that I suddenly realized the city never would. Feeling the flow on my skin, my arms pressed to my ears and my legs lazily fly kicking, was cathartic and rejuvenating. The dragon in my mind preened himself, relishing my enjoyment. He had never felt so aligned with me. This is what we were meant to be. Cutting through the water was the closest I could come to flying in this form — that it felt so natural for me brought elation to him, a salve to his concerns. If I could find such comfort here, I could also find it flying. If I could find it flying, we would always have a touchstone, a place of resonance to center ourselves around, a commonality to ensure our disagreements never grew so large as to be unrecoverable.

With these thoughts in my mind, I performed a tumble turn underwater and began returning towards the shallow end. I hadn't even realized that I had traversed the entire length of the pool without surfacing. It just felt right to be entirely submerged in the fluid, surrounded by it and cooperating with it to progress. I hadn't yet begun to feel the burn in my lungs that signaled my body's demand for fresh air. I had an intrusive thought, compelling me to shift slightly, release my wings, feel the flow over their surfaces, and practice beating the fluid and propelling myself. The dragon and I immediately dismissed it, but it was a tempting fantasy for a fleeting heartbeat.

When I returned to the wall in the shallow end, lethargically stretching out to grab the gutter and lifting my head up to break the surface, I was surprised to find my hand inches away from someone's foot, manicured purple toenails level with the precipice of the pool deck. As my gaze rose from horizontal, the water drained from my face and I tugged my goggles off to look at this person. I immediately understood what had likely happened and felt some guilt over my shortsighted behavior. I hadn't done anything egregiously wrong, but the person looking down on me probably had a moment of panic due to my actions. The smell of anxiety still lingered in the air around them.

I didn't expect them to be frozen in place after I broke the surface and looked up at them, although I wasn't that shocked. The teenage girl wearing a red lifeguard's one-piece bathing suit and clutching the iconic float was lost for words after I appeared before her. The dragon suggested I use this opportunity as an introduction to proposition them, to which I mentally imagined rolling up a massive newspaper and swatting him as one would a naughty cat.

"Hello," I eventually offered, trying to break the awkward standoff that had developed between us.

"Hi," she basically whispered back.

"Did you need to speak to me?" I verbally prodded her, hoping to nudge her back into the authority position she was in.

"Yeah."

I sighed. Evidently, she wasn't capable of taking charge, so I had to supply what I had presumed caused her to walk over to me in the first place.

"I'm not allowed to dive in the shallow end, am I?" She shook her head without saying anything. "And then I didn't surface for a while, which probably scared you quite a bit."

"Yeah," she again answered.

"Alright, well, I'm in the water now, and I'll be sure not to dive again," I said, offering an assuring smile along with my words.

"Yeah. Okay. Thank you," she said quietly. I held my tongue as she began to step away, trying to swallow the absurdity of the interaction and get back to swimming when she turned around suddenly. "Are you him?" she asked, before her eyes grew wide and she started to turn away without waiting for an answer.

"'Him?'" I asked, freezing her in place before she could scurry away. She remained still for several breaths before elaborating.

"The new dragon. My sister said she saw him here working out upstairs and I didn't believe her."

Ahh. That explained her strange behavior, at least somewhat. Sheepishly, I responded, "Yes, that's me."

Her eyes flashed through a wild kaleidoscope of emotions. "Could I..." she said before trailing off, chewing on her lip as she tried to work up the courage to ask for something. "Could I take a picture with you before you leave?"

I almost laughed in her face, not because her request was insulting but rather because it was so mundane. It was a flashback to a previous life, where celebrities offered signatures and photos.

"We can do that. Are you here for the entire open swim block?" She nodded. "Then I'll see you when I'm done swimming." I smiled calmly as the girl, whose name I hadn't gotten, realized I had accepted her proposal and a wide smile spread across her face. She practically skipped back to the lifeguard's station, her teeth visible to everyone, several giggles joining her insuppressible smile. I didn't really understand the extreme reaction — but if I justified it as a friendly sibling competition, where the other sister had wanted to approach me for some reason, and now this one had instead, I could make some sense of it.

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I returned to my swimming with thoughts of teasing siblings rattling in my mind, a bittersweet memory of my own family echoing from my past. At some point soon, I would have to sit Antonin down and ask why exactly I couldn't tell them about me. The thoughts slowly faded as I focused on the exertion, intentionally clearing my mind to connect with my draconic half. Unlike when I had first stepped foot in the gym, where each exercise felt slightly off as I got accustomed to my new frame, swimming resonated immediately. There weren't any growing pains or slight inconsistencies — everything felt natural immediately. Each stroke of my front crawl felt like how I imagined gliding along in the slipstream of an air current, effortlessly carried through the water. The only disparity I found was that butterfly, previously my favorite stroke and specialty, no longer felt invigorating and extreme. I swam a hundred while the pool was still largely empty and no one had yet joined me in my lane. It felt cheap, a humble imitation of flying, the best a human could hope to do with their body. Like stepping out of a fighter jet to get on a roller coaster, it didn't feel bad in any way; I simply knew there was a higher summit of experience now.

Even if it wasn't as exhilarating as it was in the past, I enjoyed my time trying every stroke again, feeling stronger, faster, and more adept at gripping the water and handling its flow around me. I lost myself in the enjoyment of the sensation. Because I wasn't timing myself, pushing for specific performances at certain distances, or training for anything tangible, I melted into the monotony of the endless stroke pattern. My mind receded for a time, and I was simply the body, performing the action in the pool. People came and went around me, but I heeded them little, dissolved into my own world of quiet solitude.

I was drawn back to reality when a whistle pierced the muffling effect of the water. When I reached the wall, I found the lifeguard announcing the end of the open swim time. I had swam for several hours, burning through all of the time in a zen-like state. As I climbed out of the pool, the girl looked at me nervously, the reality of our agreement suddenly weighing down on her. I walked over to her slowly, letting her observe the other patrons safely. Then she had me stand still for a moment as she ran to the pool office, returning to me wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt, a drawstring bag over her back, intently playing with her phone.

We awkwardly took a handful of selfies, but when I looked at them afterward, I realized I looked like a really average guy who had just had a swim or a shower or got caught in a rainstorm. Unless you knew it was me, there wasn't much to distinctly identify me as a dragon. As the girl, whose name I had learned was Molly, tried to thank me and let me go change so she could leave, I asked her a few questions.

"Molly, what did you want the picture for? To show off to your sister and friends?"

She blushed but said, "Yeah. My sister said she thought you were here, and she was saying she was going to talk to you, and it became a big thing that I've heard about every day since. She kept bringing up how she just missed you or that you were busy and she didn't have a good chance to talk to you, but I figured she was just scared."

Having confirmed my suspicions, I had an idea. "Alright. Can you wait like two minutes here? I need to grab something first, but I'll get you a picture they can't deny."

She glanced at her phone, then nodded. I walked briskly to the locker room, grabbed my own phone, toweled my face and torso off, and then returned to the deck, still in my swimsuit and nothing else. That would be necessary for what I wanted to do. Back with the lifeguard, I stood with my back to the pool and wrapped an arm around her side. Then, while holding the phone out in front of us, I gave in to the impulse I had experienced while swimming and snapped off several photos. Molly shivered as I did, but she didn't give any indication that she realized what I had done.

Then I uploaded the pictures to my Fae Book account and tagged her in a post, thanking her for keeping everyone at the pool safe today and ensuring I had a great experience. Molly's phone vibrated with the notification, but she only looked at them after I encouraged her to make sure the post was alright. Her eyes nearly bugged out of her head when she saw the picture of her and me standing on the pool deck, the now pristinely settled water behind us largely hidden by my spread, maroon wings. Given that it was posted from my account, it was undeniable that she had really met me and had actually approached and interacted with me, something her sister hadn't dared to do.

Molly seemingly surprised herself when she found that she had hugged me, exclaiming, "That's amazing. Thank you so much!" before she sheepishly withdrew.

"It's no problem. But, if anyone asks," I whispered conspiratorially, "tell them you can't tell them how you paid for the picture."

Her eyes went wide with the realization that she might now be indebted to a dragon, "I, um, didn't pay for it."

I nodded. "And that's fine. But I don't want everyone else thinking they can get them without offering anything. By saying the deal is private, you can tell the truth and make it seem like it was something important to you. We'll call the picture my apology for scaring you earlier, and if you don't tell people what agreement we came to, I'll be happy."

Molly, still wide-eyed, nervously clutched her phone while staring at me for several more seconds. Then she smiled hesitantly, saying, “You’re not like they said you would be.”

“Maybe it’s a clever ruse, and I’ve secretly entrapped you in a devious scheme,” I responded with a performatively haughty affectation, leaning into the seemingly ever-present expectations of dragons being merciless, avaricious despots.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Well, for the time being, it’s been easier for me to hide in those preconceptions than to try and break them. I haven’t met any other dragons, so I can’t say for sure if they’re deserved or not, but I’d like to think they’re just a misunderstanding. Still, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t go around sharing the truth, at least for a while. Anyway, I’m sure I’ve taken up enough of your time.”

She looked stunned for a moment, then replied, “Oh, no, it was my pleasure. Thank you. Will you be coming back to swim soon?”

I nodded slowly, “Yes, but not exactly consistently. When my schedule permits it, I’d like to swim more. I really enjoy it — it feels quite close to flying — but I can’t commit to doing it habitually right now.”

“Okay. I’ll see you when I see you, then.”

I smiled at her, and she watched as I departed for the locker room. I had dallied with Molly for nearly fifteen minutes, so the room was deserted. I changed quietly back into my street clothes and left the gym. I did have a momentary pang of concern that posing for a picture like that could have been a mistake while sitting alone on the subway. Not for me, though. It was pretty clear that Aisling had told me the truth when I first arrived, and everyone besides her was dealing with me cautiously. I was a little concerned that I had potentially created a headache that Molly would be on the receiving end of, where people reached out to her to try and reach me. I committed myself to returning to the pool in a week or two, just to touch base and make sure I hadn’t caused her any strife with my impulsive decision.

I was still contemplating what I could offer as compensation for any trouble I had caused when I walked into the apartment. I could feel that Beth was still out, though she was at a different location than where she had gone for coffee. I could also tell that Sam was still asleep in the bed, as her mind was even more fuzzy and imprecise than usual through our bond. I figured I could cook something for dinner once I got in, looked around, and acquainted myself with what was in the pantry since I still hadn’t done any serious cooking yet.

I wasn’t expecting to find Evgenia sitting on the couch, seemingly waiting for me. She watched as I came through the door and sat patiently as I hung up my hoodie and removed my shoes. She was dressed surprisingly casually, in a black hoodie and grey pair of nondescript sweatpants contrasting against her typical business wear outfits.

“James, could we talk for a bit?” She asked as I took my first steps toward the hallway.

“Of course. Here?”

She took a deep breath before responding, “In my room, if it’s acceptable.”

“Sure.”

She stood and crept silently down the hallway, opening the door and letting me into her blacked-out domicile. I sat on the pristinely made bed, creating the first wrinkles in the sheets. Evgenia carefully shut the door behind us and gracefully sat in her chair, then paused for a few moments before starting to speak.

“First, I’d like to thank you for giving me this opportunity to explore myself. I’ve spent some time these past few days with friends, trying to figure out what you wanted and what I wanted out of this. I hope you can understand that it was odd for me to try and figure out what I wanted.”

“I can’t understand, no. Sympathize, sure.”

“It’s not a position I’m familiar with. But, I think I have several things I want to ask of you. And I have some things to explain to you since you don’t seem to be aware. Marjorie encouraged me to share everything and then ask for everything, but I don’t think I’m prepared to.”

I could tell Evgenia was building up to something substantial, and I didn’t want to interrupt her, but she paused as though waiting for an affirmation that she could continue. “When you’re ready to tell me, I’ll be ready to listen. And, you may as well ask for everything you could want, Ev. The worst that could happen is that I’ll say no.”

She lifted her head up sharply as I spoke and latched onto something I had said. “Then, to start, my name is Evgenia. Not ‘Ev.’ If you need to shorten it, it’s ‘Zenya.’”

Huh. I could hear it in her name when she pronounced it, but I never would’ve come to that conclusion on my own. It was embarrassing to realize that I’d been calling her someone else's name for a week and a half, and more concerning that she hadn’t corrected me before this.

“I’m sorry, Zenya,” I said, making a point to use her correct hypocorism to start retraining my brain. “I haven’t ever met someone with your name before, and I didn’t even ask you. I just assumed. I’ll be sure to tell Beth and Sam.”

She watched me hesitantly as if waiting for me to cruelly deny her, unwilling to accept that I would acknowledge her preferences.

“So, you know that I’m a vampire,” Zenya continued, pausing for my approval again.

“Yes.”

“Do you know what that actually means?”

Other than the myths I learned as a human before this insanity began? “No, not particularly.”

“The first relevant piece of information for you is that I don’t need to sleep like a human would. The death magic that keeps me alive resembles necromancers keeping their bodies in stasis. I don’t fatigue. My past masters have—”

My first reaction was confusion. If she didn’t need to sleep, why did Cynthia get so upset with me when she worked on something overnight? There was a moral argument to have about working conditions, but how did that translate to someone who didn’t need to sleep to recover and be effective? Of course, I hadn’t done it intentionally, and I certainly didn’t intend to make it a standard request, but it was nice to know that I hadn’t seriously inconvenienced her as I had thought. It did leave me questioning Cynthia, though — was someone whose first real interaction with me had been government-sanctioned kidnapping, did she have the moral high ground to stand on? Or, did having to do that to make a living make her even more sensitive to ethical offenses?

Either way, my train of thought was interrupted when Zenya said, ‘masters.’ I know that I had been that at one point, but I was hoping that my actions had countered that title.

“Ev— Fuck. Zenya, I’m not your master. Please tell me you don’t view me like that.”

She paused momentarily, trying to figure out how to phrase something before responding.

“You aren’t like them in demeanor or expectations, but you hold a similar level of authority. Even if you don’t exercise it frequently, I’m unsure of how else to refer to you.”

“Employer?” I offered. “Fuck, friend, eventually? Confidant, potentially?”

“I see. I’ll consider it. As I was saying, masters I’ve had in the past utilized the vampire’s sleeplessness to great effect. You haven’t. I’m concerned that you would learn this independently at some point and then punish me for not sharing it.”

I whistled, an exhalation of defeat. Despite my attempts to humanize myself in her eyes, Zenya still viewed me like everyone else did. Perhaps even worse.

“Okay, first, I would never punish you. I’m terribly sorry that others, presumably, have, but that won’t happen anymore. I appreciate you informing me about your capabilities, but I have no intention of using them for the time being. I’m not going to promise you that I’ll never take advantage of it, but I intend to treat you like a person, Zenya. That means ensuring you have a reasonable work schedule to balance with your life. Just because you could work without sleep doesn’t mean it’s fair for me to ask you to.”

“You should also know that I don’t need to eat. I’ve enjoyed partaking with you this past week, but I’ll understand if you don’t want me to in the future.”

“I don’t know if you are aware of this, Evgenia, but I apparently don’t need to eat either. Beth and Sam probably don't need to because of me. I don’t have any issues with you continuing to join us at the table. It’s still an enjoyable habit; if you like it, there’s no reason to stop.”

“I appreciate you saying that, but there are some specifics about being a vampire that change what I want to eat. Perhaps I should explain them before you make a final decision.”

“Unless you’re saying you want to have gold-encrusted steaks for every meal, I’m sure I won’t change my mind. Oh, is that what you’re leading up to? Do you want to have meat with your meals? That’s not a problem, Zenya. I’m just not going to; I don’t mind if you do.”

“No, actually quite the opposite. I can’t taste things as a vampire, so flavoring is unimportant, and texture and temperature are where I find my satisfaction. Meat, mammal meat, is actually quite unpleasant. It is too similar to something I would draw blood from, but it doesn’t have any of that kind of sustenance for me. It can trigger my feeding instincts but leave me unsatisfied.”

“Oh. But, you made the borscht with beef, though.”

“A bittersweet indulgence I impulsively took when you allowed me to partake at your table. It reminds me of home. Of my parents,” she said, with a pained smile on her face.

“That makes sense. But why would that change my decision to include you in our family dinners?”

“There’s no reason to waste the resources needed to make meals palatable for you on my portions if you still permit me to share.”

“I’d suggest you talk with Beth, and Cynthia when she gets back, about what you actually would prefer to eat. But I very much doubt they’ll have any issues with you eating what they’ve already made. It would probably be more effort to make you a different portion of something without any seasoning than whatever penny’s worth of seasoning and salt was saved.

“Look, Zenya, I have no issues if you want to eat with us. I want you to go and talk to the others, and we can construct a rotation of meals that we all will enjoy, alright?”

“Are you sure, James? I know I’ve asked for a lot.”

“Christ, you’ve only asked to be treated like anyone else. That’s not a lot.”

She stared at me for several moments, then plainly stated, “I don’t like dress clothes. They were required by my previous masters as a part of their business environments. Marjorie used me as a model during this week, using our different body structures to see how different patterns would look on different people, and I’ve tried on more clothes than I ever thought existed. You never outlined a dress code for me, so I continued as Aisling had instructed.”

I giggled at the absurdity. “There isn’t a dress code, Zenya. You can wear whatever you’d like around here. There will probably be times when I need you to dress up again for specific meetings and appointments where I need your advice. And, hypocritically, I might not join you in that. It makes an impression if I’m dressed down, and you’re fully professional.”

“Of course,” she said easily. “But, regularly?”

“Wear whatever you want. I mean, with some sensibility — I’m hoping you still want to wear clothes of some kind. Going full nudist or wearing raw animal skins or something wild like that would be a stretch, but if it’s really what you want to do, we can try to make it work.”

She shook her head sternly, “No. I was just hoping that I wouldn’t have to adhere to a uniform for once in my life. That I could wear pants or shorts or jeans.”

She paused for a moment, looking around the dimly lit room for answers that clearly weren’t on the walls. “Are you sure this is acceptable? I feel as though I’ve asked you for a multitude of allowances, far beyond any value I’ve provided. I haven’t completed any meaningful tasks for you yet; I don’t feel like I’ve earned any of this.”

“God, Zenya, you really haven’t asked for much today. I don’t — I don’t want to think about what could have made you afraid to speak up like this or how many of these issues stem from my own lack of communication with you. You really have only asked for clarifications about things I should’ve told you about the first day here, if I had known what I was doing. And, don’t worry about not having done anything for me yet. I’ve been in this world for two weeks tomorrow. There’s been nothing for you to do besides what you’ve done. Getting me that appointment with Marjorie was perfect, something I absolutely would have overlooked. I will need your assistance in the future. I don’t know if it’s this week; it might not even be this month, but I will need your skillset soon. It’s only fair that I sweeten my side of the deal because I imagine I will be placing a lot at your desk in the coming months if the messages I got before putting my Fae Book private were anything to go on.”

Evgenia looked seemingly relieved, but an air of tension still remained. “Thank you, James. It’s comforting to hear you speak so plainly and earnestly.”

“Zenya, I don’t like the position I’m in. I find it incredibly uncomfortable to just be handed power and influence and expectations. I don’t want to have this much control over other people's lives and after I read all of those messages I wanted to go build a cabin in the woods somewhere to hide from everything. But, since I was gifted these abilities for some reason, I can at least attempt to use them to better the lives of those around me.”

“If that desire is sincere, I have one more request for you. You asked me to come up with something that wasn’t easily attainable, something that I would want that wouldn’t otherwise be accessible to me. I’d like to show you what I want now, but it will require a number of explanations. I don’t know how many of them I’m comfortable sharing right now.”

“Zenya, I get it. You’ve known me for a very short period of time, and somehow, I’m not only the person who is now in the role of your master but I’m also now the head of your house. I’m the person you would go to to levy grievances against me. That’s pretty fucked, actually. So, I understand your reservations about sharing personal information with me. That’s fine. Tell me if I’ve asked something you aren’t comfortable answering or if I’ve overstepped my boundaries.”

She nodded, a tiny, minute wiggle of her head that was barely perceptible.

“To start,” Evgenia began explaining, “I don’t want to use blood to heal. Ever. I am physically capable of using it in absolutely dire circumstances, but I refuse to. I haven’t in years. It is not something I find agreeable. I don’t want to store any here, and I don’t want to collect my tithe from the blood banks.”

I wanted to ask a plethora of questions, mostly about where she was going with this and why it was relevant, but all I said was, “Okay. I’m not going to ask you to.”

She whispered, “You might.”

Then, she stood up and pulled her hoodie off. The sweatpants slid down her long legs and she kicked them off. She had nothing on underneath them. This picturesque runway model of a woman had just stripped completely nude in front of me, but there was nothing sensual or seductive about it. She had been efficient, not erotic, in disrobing.

When she turned around, I clapped my hand to my mouth in sheer horror. I didn’t say anything, didn’t gasp or exclaim any expletives, my stomach didn’t turn and flip, and I didn’t step forward to comfort Evgenia. All of those would’ve been appropriate responses to the abomination I witnessed.

Evgenia’s back, from the base of her neck to her knees, was an absolutely cratered wasteland of scars. Crisscrossing her posterior was an innumerable mesh of straight-lined peaks and valleys, every inch of the surface distorted and destroyed. Her ghostly white skin suddenly changed into a cacophony of angry pink scar tissue, the landscape of her body horribly mutilated and mangled. The sheer quantity of overlapping, neverending lines permanently marring her features made her back resemble an ice skating rink at the night's end; thousands of slightly offset grooves left behind where skates had passed through.

Then she twitched, shifting her weight slightly under my penetrating gaze. Her back shimmered.

This time, I did gasp. After Antonin's chemistry lesson this morning, I could feel the elements I had just seen.

It wasn’t awful enough to see that someone had placed a countless myriad of whip lashes on the woman standing here. As horrible as that was, given her beaten and contextually terrified demeanor, I had expected something like that. The psychological scars were evident, even if I was only seeing the physical ones now.

Somehow, in the remnant of every lash laid upon her back, a fine layer of silver infested her body. The mangled skin had healed over and around a layer of silver particles permanently embedded in her. There wasn’t a square inch of unblemished skin anywhere to be seen, and all of it coated a silver film.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Zenya,” I stammered out after a minute of taking in the living shrine celebrating suffering etched into her body.

“I’d like you to heal my back, James.”

“This is why you were curious after I healed your hand,” I absentmindedly murmured.

“What?”

“I can smell your emotions. I could feel that there was something you wanted, but you didn’t ask. It was this. Holy shit, Evgenia, what on earth happened? Who did this to you?”

“No one of consequence, James.”

“Please tell me you’re not protecting them because you’re uncomfortable sharing with me. This is abhorrent, Zenya. This needs to be brought to light. Whoever did this needs to—”

“Shh, dragon. It was a long time ago, far away from here. They were dealt with a long time ago. It means much to me that you responded in such a way, but I only asked you for healing. Can you heal my back? Can you fix me?”

“Yes. Yes, I can.” I swallowed, my mouth suddenly cottony and dry. “But, this doesn’t count. This isn’t your request, okay?”

“What do you mean? I requested it, didn’t I?”

“Yes, but I’m doing it because I need to do it. There is no way I could call this payment and feel good about it. Fuck it, we can argue about this later, just lay down.”

Surprisingly, without a word of argument, she did. Evgenia climbed onto her bed and lay on her stomach. She tossed her head to one side, pulled her hair up into a ponytail to uncover her neck, and then looked at me patiently.

I stood up and turned around, kneeling on the edge of the bed over her. I still didn’t have much experience healing directly like this, but at the very least, I knew it would work. Didn’t make what I was about to do any more comfortable. What a mess.

I spat into my hands and rubbed them together, cringing as I prepared the world’s grossest massage oil for use. Then I placed my hands on Zenya’s neck and got to work.

Despite being a massage with a beautiful woman, which in any other context would be wonderful, it was awful. Evgenia lay on the bed completely motionless, leaving me feeling like a mortician preparing a corpse. I would rub my saliva into a wide patch of her skin and then go back and knead small sections, coaxing the tiny lumps of silver out of her skin, leaving a pile of them slowly stacking up on the bed.

After half an hour, I had only completed her neck and shoulders, barely moving down onto her ribs. My mouth was drier than the Sahara, and my back ached from leaning over Zenya, so I took a momentary break. In the kitchen, I found Beth and Sam quietly sitting on the couch, their legs intertwined and snuggled together. Sam tried to ask me what I was doing, but I shook my head and told her I would explain when we went to bed. I filled a glass with water, drank it in one gulp, and then decided it wouldn’t be enough. I returned to Evgenia’s bedroom with a gallon pitcher and sat it on her desk. She remained exactly in the position she had been when I left.

It took another two laborious hours of leaning over Evgenia’s still form, applying saliva in a variety of manners just to keep myself from going insane, and then massaging her until the silver was removed and the skin returned to a pristine, pale, smooth and flawless surface while drinking some of my water every couple minutes. I straight up licked along her spine as I progressed down her ribs. In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have. It was almost certainly an overstep and a breach of the boundaries we should have had, but I had grown to hate the feeling of licking my own fingers and dribbling my saliva down onto her felt even less appropriate than licking her.

I did not lick her bottom. I licked my fingers and tried to ignore how taut and firm hers was. Zenya didn’t have Zoey's musculature, but that was the closest comparison. Against my wishes, my mind found ways to compare her against the other women I had interacted with recently. Evgenia had a lean, capable build. She wasn’t the voluptuous fertility goddess Sam was, and she wasn’t the petite pixie just progressing to the right side of malnourishment Beth was. Despite her muscles, she also wasn’t the carefully sculpted, perfected-for-performance athlete Zoey was. She had the body of someone who ate cleanly and worked on their feet for a living. Despite my attempt to remain ignorant, it was impossible to not notice how she felt under my hands as I worked over her thighs and back. I couldn’t touch her and not feel her, no matter how hard I resisted and how vile it felt.

Eventually, I finished. Evgenia’s body was perfect underneath me, and there was a fist-sized collection of silver fragments on the side of the bed that made me nauseous to look at. When the final piece wiggled out from under her skin, I was mentally and emotionally exhausted, and my hands and forearms were tired in a way I hadn’t felt in weeks. Evgenia lifted herself up and turned around on the bed. She wrapped her arms around my neck in a way that managed to make her seem small yet still distant. Despite being naked and draping herself against my chest, she was cold and hesitant.

She whispered, “Thank you, James,” robotically. It had clearly been essential for her to have this happen, and it had been a struggle for her even to ask for my assistance, so the absolute lack of sincerity in her thanks caught me by surprise. As I returned her grasp, slowly and gently hugging her back, I realized it was because it wasn’t yet real for her. The constant irritation and reminder of a horrific past had been a part of her life for so long that despite it now sitting in a loose collection beside her instead of inside her body, she hadn’t yet internalized that it wasn’t there anymore.

“Of course, Zenya. But that doesn’t count, alright? We’ll find something else: Something that’s actually an incentive, not a righting of past horrors. And, if you want to talk about it, I hope you feel like you can come to me. Or Beth or Sam, if not me.”

“I’ll see.”

“That’s all I’m asking. For now, what would you like to do with that stuff?” I spat the word, disgusted to have to reference it. But I felt I needed to ask. I didn’t want to just leave it on her bed unless she wanted me to. I didn’t imagine she would want it, but I could imagine a world where it was upsetting to simply be near it. I didn’t want to take it without her consent, nor did I want to simply leave it here and make her handle it if that would be upsetting for her instead of therapeutic.

“I’m not sure, James. I don’t want to make a decision today.”

“That is one of the most reasonable things you’ve said. Do you want to hold onto it, or do you want me to?”

She looked at the pile of precious metal I had built, grimaced, and shook her head. “You’ll hold onto it?”

“Until you tell me otherwise.”

“Then, please, take it for me. I don’t want it near me, and I don’t know what to do with it, but it feels wrong to dispose of it. Like I’d be disposing of some of myself after carrying it for so long.”

I nodded and carefully collected the offensive sterling shards.

“Was there anything else you wanted to talk about today?”

She shook her head, still kneeling nude on the bed and leaning against my body.

I took my leave from her room without saying anything further. She stood and looked at herself in the mirror as I left, running her hand over her back as silent tears fell from her eyes.

Beth and Sam were both waiting for me in my room. Sam looked concerned for me, and she asked, “That was quite a long talk with Ev. Is everything alright?”

I exhaled defeatedly and softly deposited the silver onto my desk. “No, not really.”

“What’s all that?” Beth asked.

Running my hand through my hair, I explained, “First, Evgenia doesn’t want to be called Ev. Either her entire name or Zenya. I guess that’s the actual familiar form. Second, that silver was, up until a few minutes ago, underneath the skin on her back. Someone, at some point, whipped her back and somehow injected her with the silver so that the skin healed over it. If she was a human, she would be dead.”

Sam furrowed her brow, “Wait, you could see scars from it? But, why didn’t she just heal herself? I mean, if it was bad, it may have taken her several months worth, but all vampires are provided with blood for emergencies.”

“That’s the thing, there’s clearly a different trauma going on there because she was quite adamant that she would never use blood again if she had a choice. So she asked me to heal her back. There wasn’t a thumb width anywhere from her neck to her knees that wasn’t a mangled mass of scar tissue over a lump of silver and I’ve been massaging it since I got back and I feel fucking disgusting and would like to go to sleep.”

Beth and Sam both stared at me quietly for a beat, and then Beth softly asked, “Did you want dinner first?”

“No, I don’t have any appetite anymore. I just want to put some distance between myself and having to do that. I don’t want to think about how long she’s been carrying that inside her or how no one else has done anything about it or how someone thought that was acceptable to do to another living thing. I’ve corrected some of it, and now I’d like to go to bed so I can wake up in a world where there isn’t a pile of silver on my desk that Zenya’s been carrying in her body because she was too damaged to take care of herself. Fuck.”

I swallowed, took a deep breath, and then continued more calmly. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be short with either of you. I just, I woke up one day and was told I had magic, right? I figured that I would be joining a community that was secretly working to solve the world's problems, but all I’ve seen so far are a bunch of selfish, narcissistic sycophants furthering their own interests, typically at the expense of others or at least with disregard for anyone else. And they all look at me with equal parts avarice and fear. I’m barely not a kid and for some reason, I’m expected to be a golden goose and a murderous tyrant and it’s just emotionally exhausting and I just want to take the two of you and run away and hide somewhere in Siberia to leave the world to its mess. Then I feel guilty about having those impulses, because I should be doing something with these seemingly unearned abilities of mine. I should be righting these wrongs, but I don’t think I have the stomach for it. I don’t think I can handle knowing they exist.”

Beth hugged me and started to say, “J, it’s going to—”

“No!” I interrupted her. “It’s not going to be okay. Don’t tell me it’s going to be okay. This genie doesn’t go back in his bottle, alright?” I could feel hot tears dripping down my face. I wasn’t sure when they had started, but I could taste the salt and feel the liquid trailing along. “There’s a woman in a room down the hall who was too fucking terrified to tell me what her fucking name is because I’ve been made the god-emperor of her entire existence. I am the one she now needs to see to complain about how I’ve acted. Her life was simply passed along, given to me with as much thought as you would give a coworker a card for their birthday. I just, I don’t think I’m cut out for this. I don’t know if I can handle another week of this. I want out, alright? I don’t want to be a dragon. I want out.”

Despite being unable to see, my vision blurry with tears, I could feel the heat of the storm raging inside me receding. Beth was holding onto me, trying her best to soothe me verbally, trying to level out the unraveling I was experiencing. I didn’t even know where this had come from, but I got swept along in it all at once. The dragon inside me hung his head, offering his unsurprised commiserations. He knew something like this would happen eventually — a consequence of being abruptly tossed into the deep end. There was nothing else to do besides let my storm rage until I burned myself out.

Of course, that was his predicted course of action. Sam had other ideas. I could feel her hand on my heart, soothing my soul and caressing my conscience. Beth pulled her into a triangular hug as the redhead joined me in crying heavily. She wasn’t just upset in sympathy for me, though. She was actively cultivating her experience as an empath, literally pulling the fire from the furnace raging inside me and processing it herself, sharing the heartache I experienced. She smoothed out the extraordinary spike in my emotions by taking the peak of the burden into herself.

I wasn’t sure how it happened, but I found myself in the bed, Sam in my arms, still crying. I could still feel her magic lingering on me, and I was no longer upset. Instead, I felt utterly drained, a dried-out husk of a man, a fraud with nothing to show for himself. Beth was by my side, her dainty arm rubbing Sam’s back as she watched the two of us spiral through our emotions with nervous, concerned eyes. She had gotten some of my dread as feedback through our bond, though nothing compared to what Sam got after the redhead began channeling it into herself. But, where Sam knew what would happen and was somewhat prepared for the results, Beth was wholly out of her element.

She had no idea what to do. She hadn’t ever had to care for anyone like this. Since setting out on her own voluntarily, there hadn’t been anyone she had gotten close enough to. This was why she had been determined to include Sam. She tried to emulate what she had seen others do, and when it hadn’t been effective, she froze. Now, she was eating herself alive for being useless. Her old insecurities were rearing their ugly head because I needed something, yet she couldn’t offer anything.

I didn’t care. She tried. She was there for me while the walls of my world were crashing down. She had no idea what she was doing and she had tried to help. Sam held the ceiling up and kept us all from being wiped out, and I knew I would be eternally grateful for the life preserver she threw me in the morning when I could feel anything again, but she had the tools to do it. Beth had nothing and tried anyway.

The eldritch abomination I was convinced had been lingering inside me this entire time twitched. The dragon fled, departing to the deepest depths of my soul and hiding himself, determined to survive for as long as he could, convinced death was inevitable here. But, the other thing had nothing but information for me.

“YOU’LL NEED THEM ALL,” it whispered to me. “THEY ALL NEED YOU, TOO.”