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  “Weysh!” he said in his gravelly voice. “Is you come to eat out meh whole kitchen, en?”

  He gave Weysh a couple of affectionate thumps on the back and let him go.

  Then he turned to Yenni. “Good evening,” she said. “I am Yenni Aja-Nifemi ka Yirba.” She stood and held out her arm like a proper lady, then gasped as Suli swept her up in a hug as well. Her shocked eyes met Weysh’s, and he had to bite down on his lips to keep from laughing.

  “Welcome, welcome!” said Suli.

  He stayed and chatted as well, expressing similar shock that Yenni was from the Moonrise Isles. “Imagine,” he said. “Is tree hundred years dis war done, an’ Sunrise Isles an’ Moonrise Isles stay like oil an’ water. You know who is to blame for dat, en?”

  As with Isaac, Weysh did not tell Suli that Yenni was his Given. Things were going remarkably well, and he didn’t want to put Yenni on the spot and upset her.

  “What a pair, de first woman of the Moonrise Isles to study in Cresh, an’ de world’s only Island dragon.”

  “Oh!” Yenni exclaimed, as if the thought had just occurred to her. But Weysh sighed. Suli was fond of telling everyone Weysh was the world’s only Island dragon.

  “For the Blessing of Byen, Suli. I keep telling you my dragon side is Creshen. The creature that sired me is certainly not an Islander.”

  “You is a dragon?” Suli asked.

  “Yes.”

  “An’ you is an Islander?”

  “Of course.”

  “Den you is an Island dragon.”

  Weysh knew this was an argument he would never win, and he couldn’t help but enjoy the way Yenni was looking at him, as if she were seeing him for the first time again, so he simply nodded. “As you say, Suli.”

  At last they finished up, and Weysh spent a good five minutes arguing with Suli, trying to pay, but the old cook wouldn’t take his money, so Weysh insisted he would make a free run for him sometime in the future.

  Weysh and Yenni headed back onto the boardwalk, strolling aimlessly. For someone with no sense of smell, Weysh was inconceivably content. His stomach was full, the night was warm and vibrant, and he walked hand in hand with his Given. Hard to believe that only hours ago he was sulking in his den, surrounded by empty whiskey glasses.

  “Weh-sheh, there’s something I want to ask you,” said Yenni cautiously.

  “What is it, lovely?”

  “Before, you said that your sister’s father is not your own, and today you said your mother wanted to get you away from him. Why is that?”

  Weysh sighed. “Well, Yenni, that’s a long story, but I suppose it’s time I told you.”

  As they navigated the boardwalk, awash with the light of gas lamps lining the way, he explained the circumstances of his birth, what his mother had done and what was done to his mother. Every time he glanced at Yenni her pretty eyes were a little wider, a little sadder.

  “The man who sired me is a rapist,” Weysh finished, struggling to say the words. “Does that disgust you?”

  Yenni squinted at him. “Have you ever forced a woman against her will?”

  “Never!” he hissed.

  “Then why should this disgust me?”

  “Ah, my heart, you don’t understand. They don’t teach you this in class, but being a dragon is a twice-pointed sword. As Byen’s divine warriors, we’re expected to be model citizens. Rape, violence, these things aren’t unheard of here, but for a dragon—a mated dragon—to commit such a crime is inconceivable. Guste is known as one of the most terrifying psychopaths in decades. I believe if it had been any another man of high standing, my maman would have taken the brunt of the blame. But Guste underestimated our society’s reverence—and fear—of dragons. He was disowned by his family and exiled once everything came out. Rightly, too, demon that he is. He’s likely on one of the smaller islands somewhere. So thank the Watcher the man who raped my mother was dragonkind, en?” Weysh muttered, bitter.

  Yenni squeezed his hand, her only response.

  “There are those who feel that somehow his madness has been passed on to me,” Weysh continued. “I can’t say I’ve done much to dissuade the notion. I probably shouldn’t have bounced from woman to woman as I did but”—he sighed—“it was comforting.”

  “Those people are wrong,” said Yenni with all the finality of a princess making a royal proclamation. Weysh squeezed her hand back and bent to touch his forehead to hers.

  “Thank you, Yenni.”

  He wanted the night to go on forever, but as they reached the edge of the boardwalk and the planks yielded to the black ocean, Yenni stopped and turned to him. “This has been such a wonderful night, Weh-sheh, the best I’ve had since coming to Cresh, but we should get home. We still have exams to pass.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d like to come back with me?” he asked hopefully, but Yenni shook her head.

  “Not tonight. Please take me back to my suite.”

  Weysh nodded. “So be it. But you must pay the fare regardless. It’s doubled, by the way.”

  “What? Doubled? But why?”

  Weysh shrugged. “Supply and demand, lovely. There’s nothing I can do.”

  “This is, how do you say it, extortion!” she said in mock outrage.

  “You’re royalty, you can more than afford it. Now come here and stop being cheap.”

  He took her soft face in his hands and kissed her. The dings of the buoys, the music, and the lapping of the ocean against the boardwalk all fell away. For long moments there was nothing but warm, sweet Yenni.

  “I collect the first half on setting out and the second half on delivery,” he murmured once they broke apart.

  “That was at least ten fares in one!” Yenni cried.

  “Nope,” said Weysh, grinning at her. “As long as we remain unbroken it counts as one. You really should have studied up on Creshen economics before leaving the palace, Your Highness.”

  “Oh shut up, Dragon,” she said and lightly slapped his arm. “Well, tell me this: what happens if I refuse to pay when we reach my destination?”

  “I’ll simply fly around with you on my back until you do. Forever, if need be. That, or I might eat you.”

  Yenni’s mouth dropped open. “Weh-sheh,” she whispered. “Have you ever . . .”

  “Oh, Kindly Watcher! Really, Yenni? Now who’s being ignorant?”

  “Well, I mean to say . . . so the answer is no?”

  Weysh rolled his eyes and shook his head. “No, Yenni, I have never eaten someone, but there’s a first time for everything, and you’re looking particularly delicious right now, so don’t tempt me.”

  “If you do, I will give you the worst stomachache you have ever had in your life.”

  Weysh threw his head back and laughed, loud and free. “Come, let me get you home before I get myself in trouble.”

  27

  It wasn’t until a week later, when they had both finished all their exams, that Yenni consented to go out with Weysh again. Aside from agreeing to study with him, she insisted on putting off any outings until they were done.

  “It’s important that I pass these exams and remain here,” she told him, and he couldn’t exactly argue. So when not with Yenni, and not running through drills, he’d spent the majority of his time with Harth and Zui, who were both happy and relieved to see him somewhat back to himself.

  Yenni had finally accepted the riding gear he’d bought her all those moonturns ago, so to celebrate the end of exams Weysh took her for a long nighttime flight. They went past the city, and even past the surrounding farms, and Yenni never once asked where they were going. But after perhaps an hour he felt her began to shift and squirm, even despite the riding pants. Weysh gave her the signal and swooped down onto a grassy plain where one giant tree stretched its thick branches skyward, as if reaching for the full moon.

&n
bsp; She dismounted and sat cross-legged, and he lay down and put his large dragon head in her lap. They sat listening to the cool breeze rustle the grass and the cricket’s lilting serenade. White lantern flies rose up from the grass, glowing silently around them and tingeing the air with magic.

  “Look at that moon,” Yenni said as she stroked the scales of his face. “It’s so big, it makes me want to dance.”

  He made a high moan she correctly interpreted as Why? She was very good at understanding his communication in dragon.

  “Right now on my island it is the Big Moon Festival. Every year I danced on the beach with the other girls of my tribe.”

  He made another sound, a low grunt, and she laughed.

  “All right, I’ll show you.”

  She got up and moved away, then she began to dance, skipping and jumping and swinging her arms and rolling her hips as the lantern flies bobbed around her. She was lost in a rhythm only she could hear, and didn’t seem to notice when he changed to a man. Byen, she was so graceful and strong, her movements sensual in an effortless way. She probably wasn’t even trying to seduce him, but at that moment Weysh wanted nothing more than to throw her down on the grass and slowly tease her the way she was now torturing him.

  “You are so achingly beautiful,” he said.

  She stopped and faced him, and as the crickets chirped and the leaves and grasses whispered, they simply stared at each other.

  Weysh sat on the grass with one knee up, and he opened his arms to her. “Come here, my heart.”

  Yenni smiled shyly and shook her head as she took a step back.

  Weysh raised an eyebrow. “What’s this?”

  “You will have to catch me,” she said, taking another step backward.

  Weysh narrowed his eyes, and as he surged to his feet Yenni shot off, laughing. The two of them pounded through the grass. He was fast, but she was quick, even without her runes. Her lithe form darted like a doe ahead of him, and he couldn’t catch her. She reached the tree and scrambled up, and sat taunting him as he stood huffing below.

  “You can’t reach me up here, Dragon.”

  “And what makes you so sure?”

  “Because your hand is the size of my head, you big brute. By the time you haul yourself through these tight branches I will be halfway back to Imperium Centre.”

  He surveyed the tangled network of tree limbs. This was true. And it wasn’t as if he could fly up in dragon and perch like a crow.

  But she had never seen him half-change. Even as she sat swinging her legs and sing-songing at him he reached for his inner trigger. He felt the horns stretch from his head, felt the cool air on his bare torso once his shirt whisked away to otherspace at the touch of his wings. But thanks to the Law of Self-Preservation there was no pain. His nails became talons, but he stopped himself from changing fully, though it was a challenge to maintain, like walking on one’s hands.

  With a few strong pushes of his wings he rose, coming to land in a crouch beside her on the thick branch. She gasped.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he said. His voice had always been deep, but now it was not much more than bass, closer to his dragon’s rumble.

  “Weh-sheh?”

  “Yes, it’s me,” he said and moved toward her, pleased when she didn’t scoot away. “This is called half-change.”

  “Oh.”

  “We don’t do it often, because it’s difficult and tends to make people uncomfortable. It scared the piss out of my maman the first time I did it as a child.”

  “Your eyes are quite something.”

  “They’re my dragon eyes.”

  “Oh,” she said, mesmerized. She touched his horns, then cupped his cheek.

  “You’re not bothered?” asked Weysh.

  “No,” said Yenni. “It’s like seeing both you and Dragon at the same time. Amazing.”

  “Yenni, I am Dragon. We are one and the same,” said Weysh, and he covered her hand where it rested on his face. “Whatever you feel for Dragon you feel for me.”

  “Not quite,” Yenni whispered, and smiled at him.

  Weysh stood up on the massive branch, digging his claws in for balance, and reached a hand out to Yenni.

  “Come, let’s get down.”

  She went to him and he wrapped her in his arms, then jumped, gliding them safely to the grass. He kept his arms around her as he slid out of half-change back to a man.

  “My fare?” he asked.

  “What? For that little hop?”

  “A man has to make his living somehow, lovely.”

  “So if I am understanding correctly, you will starve and die without my kisses?”

  Weysh put his forehead to hers. “Precisely.”

  “Oh, I would not want that,” she said. Weysh laughed softly, took her chin in his hand, and gently brushed her lips with his, teasing. He did it again, and again, with slightly more pressure each time until finally Yenni grunted in frustration and threw her arms around his neck. She kissed him with such searing passion that by the time she was done his head spun like he’d polished off a whole bottle of cheap wine.

  “Wha—” He squinted at her. “Where did you learn to kiss like that?”

  “Instinct,” she said.

  “Is that right,” he said dryly, but he could hardly fault her for having kissed or even slept with other men in the past. Byen knew he hadn’t exactly been celibate. He tuned out the insecure whispers trying to stoke the embers of his jealousy. It was him she was kissing now. “Well, I don’t care how you learned to kiss like that, as long as you promise to do it again,” he told her.

  In response she embraced him and put her head against his chest.

  “Yenni,” he said, running his fingers through her braids. “I want to introduce you to my family. As my Given.”

  She was silent, too silent. In the quiet the whispers of insecurity grew louder.

  “Yenni?”

  She looked down at the grass. “If I meet your family then this becomes real.”

  Weysh let her go, frowning. “It’s already real, at least to me it is. But if you’d rather not meet them yet, then I won’t force you.”

  Yenni stepped back and wrapped her arms around herself, chewing on her bottom lip. “Weh-sheh, when I first met you, you were just like everyone else who has ever told me who to be, how to act, how to live. But now you listen to me, and respect my freedom to choose. Why?”

  “Because I love you,” he said. It came out easily, like singing in the bath, like the truest truth in the world. He was no longer in love with the idea of her, but her: Yenni Aja-Nifemi ka Yirba, the Moonrise princess who beat up thugs, mastered complex spells in a matter of weeks, and always spoke her mind.

  “I know you can’t say it back yet, but you will,” said Weysh, to himself as much as to her.

  Yenni opened her mouth, closed it, then nodded. “Take me to see them.”

  28

  A few days later, near the end of their midyear break and after Yenni had confirmed—with great relief—that she had passed all her midyear exams, Weysh flew her to his family’s manse. Now he stood in front of the familiar white double doors with their engraved borders, his stomach a knot of nerves. He wished he could smell what Yenni was thinking.

  At Yenni’s request, he didn’t reveal her royal lineage to his family, and just as well. His maman had gone into a fit over Yenni, sending him multiple notes a day through the hourly post, based on the assumption that his Given was simply a wealthy international student. Watcher only knew what it would have done to her if she realized she was entertaining a princess.

  Montpierre would be dining with them as well, which was the main source of Weysh’s apprehension. But he couldn’t keep running from his problems, and he refused to let Montpierre keep him cowed. It was important to him that his family meet Yenni. As his Given, she was his
family too. He would simply have to do his best to maintain his composure. It was Weysh’s first meeting with Montpierre since his outburst, and he wasn’t sure if he was glad to have Yenni with him for support or worried about embarrassing himself in front of her.

  Beside him, Yenni wore the Prevan uniform for formal events. She hadn’t had the chance to buy any dress wear before the mugging. Weysh had offered to buy her something, but predictably, she’d refused. It was just as well—many students wore their uniforms outside of school as a sign of prestige, and as with anything she wore, Yenni wore it well. She was decked out in a long-sleeved green dress that clasped up to the neck, accented with two rows of silver buttons. She also wore black gloves, tall black boots with a small heel, and a sloping, wide-brimmed hat.

  And—Weysh smiled—the ivystone necklace he’d given her.

  Weysh raised the fancy brass knocker and gave the door a couple of raps. “We don’t have to stay too long,” he said under his breath as he waited for the door to open. “If you want to leave at any time just give me the word, en?”

  Yenni squeezed his arm and smiled knowingly at him. “I will try to last as long as I can,” she said, tugging at the neck of the dress. “I am eager to get out of these clothes.”

  Weysh bit back his own retort about getting Yenni out of her clothes.

  Good. Be good.

  But something must have shown on his face, because she squinted at him. Thankfully, Genie opened the door and saved him.

  “Master Weysh, welcome home,” she said, her eyes twinkling.

  Weysh laughed. “Master Weysh? Really, Genie?”

  Genevieve simply pursed her lips, holding in laughter.

  “This has Maman written all over it. Very well.” He took Yenni by the shoulders and gently guided her to stand in front of him. “May I present Mam’selle Yenni Aja-Nifemi ka Yirba.”