Page 11 of Becoming D'Vaire
“Thanks, do you grow flowers or like vegetables and stuff?”
“A little of everything,” Dravyn replied. “I like to experiment and create hybrids as well as new flower types.”
“After you see the amazing garden you can find me, and we’ll start decorating your room,” a woman with the orange eyes of a dragon invited. “Hi, I’m Larissa. What are you, like five foot nine?”
Delaney shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“Great, I’ll get started on your pajamas right away,” Larissa replied. “This is my mate, Madeline.”
The blue dragon shifter offered him a smile in welcome. “Nice to meet you, Delaney.”
“You too, Madeline.” He turned his attention back to Larissa. “Pajamas?”
“I make them for everyone,” Larissa said with a nonchalant wave of her hand. “So…your room. We’ve been working on Gedeon’s. He’s the sentinel over there in the jeans. It’s teal and green. What colors are you thinking?”
“I was only in there for a minute, but there was already plenty of furniture. It’s probably the biggest bedroom I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“Well sure, there’s stuff, but none of it’s you. It needs to be personalized, and I’m thinking maybe an area dedicated to Greggory?” Larissa continued.
“Oh, good idea. We could make him a private area with a bed and maybe some shelves,” a gray-eyed woman said. Delaney recognized her as a necromancer.
“My room really is turning out nice,” the sentinel named Gedeon remarked. The only other sentinel in the room was sitting several feet from the rest of the crowd and wearing the traditional gray uniform of his people. His eyes were a bronzy brown, and Delaney could not shake the feeling that he was sad, which was weird because sentinels were elite assassins.
If he could kill anyone in a second with a deadly poisoned blade, he didn’t think he would let anyone make him miserable. He would just slit their throat and be done with it. Delaney swallowed down a chuckle at his silly thoughts.Maybe I need to stop watching so many horror films.
“Blodwen, you didn’t introduce yourself,” a hybrid man sitting next to her commented as he adjusted his glasses. “I’m her mate, Trystan. Her sentinel is Gavrael, he’s to your left.”
“Sorry, Delaney. I was excited about decorating and forgot to say hello first,” Blodwen apologized.
“It’s nice to meet all of you,” Delaney said after Gavrael nodded. Sentinels did not touch people, so he didn’t offer his hand to the only person in the room who hadn’t said a word. “Can I ask when I’ll get to meet the rest of the D’Vaires?”
“You can ask whatever question you want,” Aleksander replied as he took a seat in an oversized blue chair. “And you’ve met all of us. This is the entire Court D’Vaire.”
“Wow,” Delaney said. Vadimas mentioned that the D’Vaires were a family, and Delaney had heard that dragon courts generally numbered at least a hundred or so. Vadimas had called D’Vaire small, but he had no clue this was it. He hoped they all liked him; it would be impossible to get lost in the shuffle in such a tiny household.
“So, back to the room. What’s your favorite color?” Larissa asked.
Delaney remembered when he was four years old and Vadimas asked him the same question. At the time Delaney had no real idea—despite being coined with the name Scary—how his favorite hue would affect his future.
“Larissa, seriously? Wizards are like dragons. What’s your favorite color?” Dra’Kaedan asked.
“Orange.Duh. It’s my dragon.”
“Delaney’s magic is black, so that’s his favorite color.”
Larissa lay back against the sofa cushions and closed her eyes. She lifted her hands up to her temples as she spoke. “I haven’t had the opportunity to do a black room before. What am I seeing? Greggory’s a dragon. We’ll need dragonskin.”
“Velvet too. Magickind uses it on their cloaks, and can you imagine it in jet black?” Blodwen enthused.
“Tufted headboard and footboard. Silver buttons.”
“Nope, gotta be gold. He’s going to be High Arcanist,” Renny corrected.
“We’vegotto paint at least one wall black,” Blodwen said.
“Do you think a chandelier is too fussy, Delaney? Something about you is screaming full-out elegance,” Larissa remarked.
“Um…uh, I guess it’d be okay?” He did not understand how she could look at his scruffy sneakers and messy hair as elegant, but he didn’t want to argue with her. Delaney liked her ideas; he simply had no clue how they related to him.
