Page 110 of Silent Jay

The sister’s gaze flicked to my lips, and her eyes shifted into her dragon slits. Butterflies beat their wings in my stomach. I started to put a single hand on her chest to push her away whenshe tore backward. Her horns poked up again, and she put a finger on each one, taking deep breaths and willing them down.

I had so many questions, but without a voice, I just stood and watched the show. When the two nubs vanished, she did a weird little dance to reach through the layers of her robes, briefly exposing one very sculpted, thick calf muscle. She smoothed down her clothing as if nothing happened and held up a white phone. “I should have thought to give you a pad and paper.”

I drummed my fingers against the book in excitement as she unlocked the device. This was the first phone I’d seen in the air temple, and she kept it hidden on the underside of her robes, so maybe they weren’t allowed.

‘You little minx!’ I wrote as soon as she handed me the device. ‘No wonder you sneaked your number onto my phone. I’m so sorry I didn’t message you back, I lost my phone in the eruption.’

Sister Abby flushed. Her face fell as she read.

“It didn’t occur to me that you lost it.” She looked anywhere but at me before straightening her shoulders. “It wasn’t really your phone, was it?”

I typed: ‘Rehan gave it to me, and Tyson put a bunch of security on it.’

“They’re working together?” Sister Abby cocked her head to the side.

I typed: Kinda. It’s a long story. Is technology allowed in the air temple?

Sister Abby hummed, noting my quick change in topic, but went with it. “I’m fairly new here. I can’t just give technology up.” She scowled. “My family’s complicated. It’s for emergencies… I just can’t be in the dark.”

I nodded in understanding and typed. ‘I get it. Knowledge is power. It’s much harder to hide from something if you don’t know where it’s coming from.’

She narrowed her eyes. “Anyway, games.” She waved her hands in the air. “What other games have you played?”

I listed a handful of euro strategy games from the early two-thousands when I’d gotten really into tabletop for a few years. As an afterthought, I added Tafl, which I’d played a lot of in Scandinavia before it fell out of favor for Chess back in the Dark Ages.

God the Dark Ages had been dull and dirty.

Lots of gray morality for you to master magic in, though.

I shivered as my memory filled with a man’s brown eyes surrounded by possessed red. I knew those eyes, and not from the Dark Ages, but something more recent.

“Ok.”

Sister Abby’s voice snapped me back to the present. I blinked a few times, struggling to orient.

“I’ve never heard of Tafl,” she continued. “And the rest of these are all older….”

Right, we were talking about games.

“…but you know your stuff. Card games always have a degree of luck to them.”

Whatever makes you feel better.

Be nice. Abby’s great. Maybe her lover has a brother, that smell.

Not again.

Sister Abby stared at me with a weird smile on her face.

“Games again, tomorrow, lunch, and dinner.” She put her hands on her hips and leaned forward. “I will take a win off you.”

I grinned and reached up to pat the single nub, once again trying to escape her head.

The following morning,I found my red bra and panties replaced with blue and silver ones, which were much more comfortable and mostly didn’t show through my blouse.

Aria met me in the little cafeteria and brightened my morning with constant chatter about her drama. It had moments of annoyance, but her joy uplifted my spirit. Instead of joining her in her classes, I wandered back to my room and dove intoThe Great Elemental Split,which turned out to be a detailed account of dragon shifter history beginning with the creation of the shield.

When they first came here, they’d all gotten along as much as dragon shifters could. But the island was small, and no one dragon could control the rest. Over a few years, they drifted into their new communities and set up leadership.

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