I wondered... “Hank?”
It snorted. “Do I look like acloch realta?”
Griffon choked and coughed beside me. The beast swung its head to him. “Why do you not flee, Son of Fae?”
He stuck his chin out. “I am her mate. I am her protector—”
“We need no protector!”
Griffon inclined his head. “Forgive me. I have yet to understand what is happening here—”
It swung its massive head to me again, then spoke in my brain.“Shall I dispose of him? You need no other—"
“No! Please don’t. Seriously. I never want him harmed, ever.” Then I wondered if I was losing my mind, pleading with a smear of colored air with a face. “This can’t be real. I have to be dreaming. There are no such thing as dragons. Maybe…” I turned to Griffon. “Maybe I’m hallucinating because I’m freezing to death in my sleep. I mean, look at me. I’m not even wearing a coat!”
With that little bit of doubt in my ability to keep myself warm, the cold started biting at my skin. I closed my eyes and willed it away again. An easy trick for someone who’s dreaming. When I opened my eyes, Griffon and the dragon were both shaking their heads.
“So afraid of touching. So afraid.” It emitted a long, drawn-out snort that might have been a dragon’s version of a sigh. “I will not harm you. We are we. Touch me and see.”
Griffon nodded. “I suggest you do it, love. It’s a leap of faith sort of day.”
This from the guy who could sprout his own wings. I wasn’t losing my mind. It was already lost. “Nothing to lose,” I said quietly. Griffon was by my side. At the first sign of danger, he’d whisk me away.
“That’s right,” he said. “Nothing to lose.”
I moved forward and noticed that my self-proclaimed protector held back. The dragon smirked, as if it read my thoughts, then it preened and half closed its eyes when I reached toward the side of its face, though there was nothing solid to touch. If it were real, I doubted I’d have the guts to get close, let alone reach for it.
This was not some sweet fairytale version of a dragon on the side of a lunchbox. The blue and green seemed whimsical enough, but there was a severity around the eyes, a terrible sharpness to its claws that hovered on top of the snow. And the veins in its wings were more bat than butterfly.
I’d never noticed if dragons had ears, but this one did. They were shallow divots in the side of its skull with a rounded shell that came to an elven-like point at the top. And there were more pointed claws on its half-furled wings with tips that gleamed like golden razor blades.
Winged death. You can’t be real,I whispered in my mind.
Only if you touch me,it answered back.We were meant for this moment, Marka.
“Marka?”
“Marka. It’s Irish,” Griffon said, from yards away. “It means rider.”
I started backing away immediately. “No, no. You’ve got the wrong guy. I’m not riding anything.”
“And yet, you have tasted of clouds.” It glanced at Griffon to make its point.
“Yeah, but I was usually unconscious, and when I wasn’t, he was holding me tight.”
“You must trust us.”
“I’m right here.” Griffon tried to sooth me with his voice. “Last experiment of the day, Lennon. You can do this. Trust it.”
“Her,” I said. I’d always known. I thought Hank was female when it wasn’t Hank at all. It washer, communicating through the star stone.
Clever girl. Now touch us, so that we may be.
I didn’t hesitate this time. She’d always been with me, after all. And she’d been with my grandmother before me. She was one of the family.
She lowered her head to make it easy. I reached out and laid my hand on her cheek, or at least where her cheek would be, had she been tangible. But my little act of faith must have been enough—my hand no longer hung in mid-air.
Nothing spectacularly dramatic. She was spirit one second and physical the next. The blue and green of her skin was darker than expected. Her claws were gold like the armband that was now part of me. The blue of the nine sapphires, which I’d somehow absorbed, matched the iridescent shine of her neck and underbelly.