Chapter Twenty-six

OLLIE

Days slipped by until they blurred together in a haze of happiness. I couldn't decide which I loved more—being with Archer, the great sex we had, or spending the night with him. As we lay together in the dark, he told me a little about his father. He'd been the most charming dragon ever to exist, and he had fulfilled none of his head of family duties.

After he fell silent, I snuggled closer against him. "You know, it's never occurred to me to wonder what a family could do to depose their head if they wanted to. I guess in the old days they'd have flamed them, which would have been so much easier."

He tensed beside me, and I remembered this wasn't merely an abstract theory. I was talking about his father being deposed. Also, I realised with a rush of mortification, him.

"But don't you think there are quite a few elements of dragon society that need dragging into the twenty-first century?" I continued, desperate to move the conversation away from what I'd said.

"You're suggesting voting in a head? How long would they serve? How would you stop them offering bribes to get the position? And those are just off the top of my head."

"It's an awful lot of work and responsibility, so surely people who aren't suited to the position wouldn't want it." Despite my friendship with Jack meaning I'd been in and out of the Shaws' house my whole life, I'd never realised the responsibility a head of family carried until I'd come here and seen Archer at work.

"You'd be disappointed, Ollie. Most dragons see the status and have no idea about the duties that go with it. And others want the status and refuse to do the work. It's all very well saying that you could simply vote out someone who proved to be no good, but what damage might have been done in the meantime? Other families would be swift to take advantage of weakness."

"I think we're supposed to be ensuring we're less distrustful of other families," I told him, pressing a kiss against his chest, the closest part of him I could reach without moving from where I was so comfortable in his warm hold. I knew he'd want to leave soon to do his usual sweep over the Court, and I'd taken to joining him each night on those. I loved that time alone with him in the night sky almost as much as I loved perching beside him on the tower. With everyone else asleep, it felt as if the world were ours.

He drew me even closer. "I love that you look at things from fresh perspectives, but I think you're wrong on this one. How it is now isn't fair, it isn't democratic, and it's far from perfect, but the alternatives are worse."

"Unless we gave up on the whole family structure and dragons lived in a commune," I murmured, already half-asleep and lost in a strange dream of hippie dragons.

"Go to sleep," he said, and stroked my hair.

As I drifted off, I realised he'd said he loved the way I thought. He hadn't said he loved me, but surely it meant something. Didn't it?

* * *

Head of family duties were onerous, with Archer visiting members of the family at least three times a week. He usually asked me to go with him so that I could spend time with his family. I would always have said yes because it meant time with him, but it was also a handy excuse to ward off June's continuing invitations. I had no idea why she was so determined to be my best friend, but already I'd been to an art exhibition and a piano recital with her when I hadn't been able to think of an excuse quickly enough. It was nice of her to invite me, but they weren't really my kind of thing.

"Lillian's out of hospital now, so I'm going to visit her this evening," Archer announced at the supper table, and both Mia and Tim groaned. "D'you want to come, Ollie?"

"Don't," Tim said. "She'll talk your ear off about people you've never heard of and manage to insult you as she does so. It's a real skill she has." Tim had taken to joining the family meals, though there were still times he got riled over something Archer said. It was an improvement on how things had been, at least.

"True," Archer said. "Maybe it's better if you don't come, Ollie. You'll be bored."

It took a lot to bore me, and whatever this Lillian was like, I'd be with Archer. No way was I turning this down.

"That's okay, I'd like to come. But visiting the sick is more what a priest would do than a head of family, isn't it?"

Mia choked on the juice she was drinking. "That's the first time anyone's compared Archer to a priest," she informed me. "You evidently haven't heard him when he's burned himself on the forge."

"But is it expected of a head of family?" I couldn't remember Mr Shaw doing anything like that.

"It's an Archer thing." There was both resignation and admiration in Tim's voice. "Like his surgeries."

I cocked an eyebrow at Archer. "What, you perform operations now?"

"More like a politician-type surgery, where I sit in one of the family's houses in the centre of the city once a month and anyone who has any issues or concerns knows where to find me. Even if all they want is to chew the cud or tell me off. They could always come here, but they got out of the habit years ago." He closed his mouth firmly and sent me a warning look across the table.

He'd probably anticipated that I was about to ask, "Is that because your dad was so rubbish in his role?" Not exactly tactful, so I kept quiet, noting the way his jaw had tightened.

I realised how cautiously he navigated any conversation with Tim and Mia that referred to the past, always choosing his words with care. He'd never so much as hinted to them what he'd told me about his father being a bad leader. It was like he was holding together an ideal image for them, even at the cost of burying his own resentments and wounds.

His shoulders slumped slightly as we walked out to the car, as if he were weary beyond belief and could finally let it show, away from Mia and Tim.

"Thanks for not saying anything," he said quietly as I did up my seatbelt. "I want them to have good memories of Dad."

Yet another burden he carried alone. I leaned over and kissed his cheek, wishing I could lighten his load somehow.

"What was that for?" he asked, starting the engine.

"Just felt like it."

I felt like kissing him more and more often. Not only sex kisses, and that was increasingly becoming a problem. He had grown to be so important to me and, sooner or later, I was going to have to go home.

ARCHER

I left Ollie chatting to Alison and Amy while I went upstairs to see Lillian. She harrumphed when she saw me.

"Took you long enough. I was discharged last Tuesday, you know."

"How are you, Lillian?" I sat in the chair by the bed, which seemed sized more for a child than a grown man.

"If you break that, you're replacing it."

For the first time ever, Lillian sounded querulous. She was usually a force of nature, and I could only think that her fall and subsequent operation had brought her to a sense of her own mortality. Not wanting to spend an interminable half hour being ticked off for my shortcomings and having to listen to ancient history again, I had a brainwave. I told her about the moot.

"I don't trust that Abimelech Mortimer," she declared. "He's got shifty eyes. Not that I've met him, but he's always in the paper or on the news. He's a wrong ‘un."

Better for her ire to be turned against the Mortimers than me. I told her about the other dragons I'd met, and she was almost silent as she listened.

"I suppose this is gossip all around the family, and I'm the last to know, as usual," she complained when I finished.

"Actually, you're the only person I've told in this much detail."

Her eyes brightened and she sat up straighter against her pillows. "When are you going to introduce me to this strange dragon? I know you brought him with you because I sensed him the instant he crossed the threshold."

If she'd done that, she had senses no other dragon possessed. More likely our voices had drifted up the stairs to her room when I'd introduced Ollie to Lillian's daughter and her wife. I worked my phone out of my pocket and messaged Ollie.

"Are you surgically attached to that thing?" Lillian demanded.

Ollie appeared at the door.

"It's quicker," I told her, and she harrumphed.

Despite her disapproval of my methods, she studied Ollie with sharp eyes, and I made sure to greet him with a kiss, my hand lingering on his back. My family needed to know he was mine. The world needed to know he was mine and no one else's, ever.

I let Ollie have my chair—it was better suited to his size—and leaned against the window sill, watching them. Ollie and Lillian hit it off immediately. I didn't think there was anyone Ollie hadn't charmed, except for possibly June and Chris. June had been texting him invitations, but he'd said with a look of relief that he'd managed to find excuses for most of them. With her, I thought it wasn't so much that she was charmed by him as that she wanted to befriend him for her own purposes.

I came back to myself, aware that they were both looking at me. Ollie raised his eyebrows.

"I said," Lillian enunciated forcefully, "has Chris spoken to you about the library yet?"

"The library? You mean my library, at the Court?"

"Do you know another library?"

I kept my mouth shut about the enormous council-run one that was yards from her front door.

"He was asking me about it, but it's been a long time since you invited me to visit, and so I couldn't remember much," she continued. "I told him to speak to you."

"Chris was asking you about the library?" It made no sense to me.

"Does he need his ears cleaning out?" Lillian demanded of Ollie.

"Did he say why?"

"None of you youngsters ever explain yourselves. And when am I going to come and see the Court again?"

"You know you're always welcome. Once you're mobile, we'll make a date."

"See that you do."

Despite the command in her voice, she was looking weary.

"Time for us to make a move, Ollie. Lillian, I'll be back to see you soon."

"Bring this one with you," she demanded, pointing at Ollie. "He's better company than anyone else in this house."

"I'll see what I can do."

Ollie sent her a glowing smile, and she harrumphed to hide the smile that had briefly creased her own cheeks. There was no resisting Ollie.

"She's something, isn't she?" Ollie asked as we drove home. "How old is she?"

"I don't know, and I'd never dare ask. Alison, her daughter, is seventy-one, if that helps."

"What was that stuff about the library?"

"No idea. Lillian used to be friendly with my grandmother and they were the ones who catalogued the library, but I don't know why Chris would be interested," I said.

"Tim said she likes to talk about the past a lot. Maybe Chris was indulging her—or maybe he didn't have a choice in the subject matter."

"Could be. I hope he doesn't actually have any questions, because no one else knows anything about it."

"Not even you?" Ollie asked.

"I know where the library is, and that's about it." I glanced at his shocked expression. "Don't really have time to read."

"That is so wrong," Ollie declared. "You need to start taking some time off."

"Actually, I was thinking when Tim has his friends here, we could go up to Avebury one night."

"I'd love that," Ollie said. "And could we go to that wood again tonight and fly? Just the two of us."

Sounded damn near perfect, and I took the next turn away from the Court, towards the woods.

It was perfect, flying with Ollie. Tim and Mia tended to fly with their friends rather than me these days, and I hadn't realised how lonely it had become, flying alone. Ollie gambolled around the sky like a lamb on steroids, and I found myself responding to his utter glee, chasing him and catching him. I wrapped my wings around him until we rolled over and over as we fell together through thick, wet, clinging clouds, eventually parting to race one another high into the sky and do it all over again.

Flying had always thrilled me, but flying with Ollie? When I flew with him, I felt like a young dragon again, as if he'd set me loose from the bonds that held me.

I didn't want to go home. I wanted to stay out here forever, with Ollie.