Hemlock’s Whisper had three rules, technically. Do not lick anything unlabeled. Do not feed the sentient ivy after midnight. Do not let Ferox near the volatile cabinet without supervision unless the desired result was “scientific discovery by explosion.” Kiernan had written the third one after the ghost-pepper tincture incident, which was unfair because no one had told me the vial was pressurized, and also the customer’s eyebrows had grown back eventually.
The shop smelled like dried herbs, citrus peel, warm wood, rainwater caught in clay jars, old parchment, mushroom caps, lavender smoke, and Kiernan. That last one was not an official ingredient, probably, but it lived in the shelves anyway. Earth after rain. Crushed green stems. Soft moss warmed under late afternoon sun. A faint sweetness under it, like honeyed tea he always forgot to drink until it went cold. I had spent half my life in that smell. After school. After fights. After stupid human classmates decided Drakenbloods were “make-believe” and I learned that punching people made teachers pay attention in the wrong direction. After my own lightning got too loud under my skin and I needed someone who did not look at me like I was a storm waiting to ruin furniture.
I had other places now. Mira’s mansion with its ridiculous rooms and wards and too many people who were starting to feel like mine in a way I was not ready to examine under direct light. The Silverlake Row house where my parents still pretended they were not worried about me by sending too much food. The caves, the ruins, the stupidly dangerous places where history hid in broken stone and dared me to go looking. But Hemlock’s Whisper was different. Hemlock’s Whisper was where I knew which floorboards creaked, which drawers stuck, which tea tins lied about being empty, and which enchanted jar would bite if I sang off-key near it.
Also, Hemlock’s Whisper had Kiernan, which was very convenient because Kiernan was currently on a ladder in the back room reaching for a jar of dried mooncap petals, and I had been pretending for the last forty seconds not to notice how his shirt pulled across his shoulders when he stretched.
Not in a weird way. Obviously. Kiernan was my best friend. I had seen him covered in mud, glitter, flour, owl feathers, three varieties of swamp moss, and one time a curse that made his hair stand straight up for nine hours. It was not my fault that somewhere between childhood and now he had stopped being the lanky boy who hid behind me when thunder cracked too loudly and become a man with arms, which was rude because he had not filed the appropriate paperwork with my brain.
“Ferox,” he said without looking down.
I snapped my attention to the mortar in front of me. “What?”
“You are crushing the lavender like it owes you money.”
I looked down. The lavender was, admittedly, more paste than dried herb. “Maybe it does.”
“It paid yesterday.”
“Then this is about principle.”
Kiernan huffed a laugh, that low, warm sound that always made the shop feel smaller in a good way. He climbed down from the ladder with the mooncap jar tucked under one arm, silver-white hair slipping over his forehead, one green eye and one gold eye glancing at me with entirely too much patience. His heterochromia had fascinated me when we were little. It still did, though I had stopped saying so out loud sometime around fifteen because that was when saying people’s eyes were pretty had apparently started meaning things.
He set the jar beside my mortar and gently took the pestle from my hand. “We need the lavender bruised, not executed.”
“I was getting there.”
“You were getting to a crime scene.”
“Alchemy is messy.”
“This is an apothecary, not a battlefield.”
“Most things are battlefields if you commit.”
Kiernan smiled at me, soft at the edges in that way he sometimes did when I was not being funny enough to deserve it. I narrowed my eyes at him because it was suspicious.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“No, that was a look.”
“It was a normal look.”
“You do not have normal looks. You have owl looks. Very unsettling. Like you know where mice are.”
His mouth curved. “I often know where mice are.”
“See? Creepy.”
“Useful.”
“Creepy-useful.”
He leaned one hip against the worktable, close enough that his sleeve brushed mine, and began sorting the mooncap petals with quick, practiced fingers. He had healer hands. That was what my mother had called them once, when I was ten and Kiernan had wrapped my scraped knuckles after I defended his ears from three older kids with more teeth than sense. Gentle even when the work was sharp. Precise even when his mouth was saying something smug. I had hands that broke things, hands that reached too fast, hands that sometimes sparked when my feelings decided to be dramatic. Kiernan had hands that made broken things believe they could hold shape again. Which was a stupid thought. I needed breakfast. Or violence. Possibly both. A sharp crackle snapped through the room. Every jar on the back shelf rattled.
I turned at once toward the reinforced warming cradle beside the inner wall. The dragon egg sat inside it like an accusation made of stormglass. It was larger than my head, deep violet-black beneath layers of translucent shell, threaded with pale veins that lit and dimmed in slow pulses. Tiny arcs of blue-white lightning crawled over its surface, snapping against the copper ward-ring Kiernan had built around the cradle. The magic caught each discharge with a hungry little hiss, then fed it down into the grounding stones beneath the table.
My heart did the annoying thing it always did around the egg, which was try to become too many feelings at once. “There you are,” I murmured, crossing the room before I thought about it. Another pulse rolled through the shell. Not a crack, not yet, just pressure, life pressing outward, lightning remembering it wanted a body.
Kiernan came up beside me, slower than I had, giving me space without making a production out of it. He always did that. Left room for me to decide whether to lean in or bolt or punch the nearest emotion in the face. “Stronger than yesterday,” he said.
“Yeah.” I crouched in front of the cradle, resting my elbows on my knees. “Little menace is getting impatient.” The egg answered with a snap of lightning that jumped to my nearest nail. It stung, bright and familiar, more greeting than attack. My own lightning answered under my skin, a faint tingle rolling along my arms and down my spine. I held still, breathing through it the way Thane had taught me when I was little and furious and too full of storm to fit inside my body. In through the nose. Hold. Out through the mouth. Name five things that are real. Shelf. Candle. Copper. Kiernan. Egg. The fifth one pulsed like it knew.
Kiernan lowered himself onto the floor beside me, long legs folding with infuriating grace. “The ward held.”
“You say that like you were worried.”
“I am never worried.” I looked at him. His gold eye caught the cradle-light. “Fine. I am often worried. I hide it with excellent posture.”
“Your posture is mid.”
“My posture is elegant.”
“You once fell asleep in a dried nettle crate.”
“I was sixteen.”
“You were sticky.”
“That was unrelated.”
I laughed, and the egg pulsed again, brighter this time. The lightning inside the shell flickered in jagged lines, quick and eager. My tail would have twitched if I had let it show in the shop, but we were open, technically, and while most of our customers were Veil-aware, not all of them were emotionally prepared for a Drakenblood tail knocking over the headache tinctures. My horns were glamoured too. My scales. My pupils. My claws. Human-facing enough, though my crimson eyes and magenta hair still made people stare. Let them. I was very stareable.
The egg hummed low, a vibration I felt in my teeth. I watched the pale lightning flicker beneath the shell and felt that familiar pull in my chest, equal parts hope and fear. “Do you think it knows me?” I asked before I could make the question sound casual.
Kiernan’s gaze shifted to my face. “Yes.”
That was too fast, too sure. I swallowed and poked the copper ring with one finger. “You do not know that.”
“I know how it reacts when you enter the room.”
“It sparks at everyone.”
“It sparks at customers who get too close. It pulses when you speak.”
“It likes my voice. I am delightful.”
“You are,” he said.
I glanced over, ready for teasing, but his expression had gone unhelpfully sincere. He was looking at me with that quiet, warm, stupidly intense softness he sometimes got when he forgot to be normal. The kind of look that made something behind my ribs take one step forward, then immediately trip over panic and fall down a staircase.
I cleared my throat. “Obviously. That was a factual statement.”
“Obviously.”
“You are agreeing suspiciously.”
“I would never.”
“You would. You are doing it right now.”
His smile returned, smaller. “Maybe the egg has good taste.”
“In voices?”
“In people.”
I stared at him for half a second too long, then looked back at the egg because the egg was safer, which was hilarious because it was an unhatched lightning dragon currently being contained by copper wards and vibes. “It is an egg. It has no people opinions.”
“It has you opinions.”
“My favorite kind.”
Kiernan’s shoulder brushed mine when he leaned closer to inspect the shell. “No cracks yet.”
“No.” I tried to keep the disappointment out of my voice and failed so badly even the sentient ivy probably noticed. “But it feels close.”
“It is close.”
“You keep saying things like you know.”
“I listen.”
“To eggs?”
“To living things.”
“That is so druid of you.”
His mouth twitched. “An unforgivable flaw, I know.”
I bumped his shoulder with mine. “Could be worse. You could be a necromancer. Or one of those court people who pretends wine preferences are personality traits.”
“I do have opinions about wine.”
“Yeah, but yours are wrong in a humble way.”
“Comforting.”
The bell over the front door chimed before he could say anything else, and both of us looked toward the curtain separating the back workroom from the shop. Kiernan stood smoothly, already reaching for the apron he had tossed over a chair. I stayed on the floor for one more second, looking at the egg as another soft pulse moved beneath the shell.
“Do not hatch while I am selling someone fungus tea,” I told it. “That would be rude.”
It sparked.
“I mean it.”
Another spark, smaller this time. Maybe sass. Maybe electrical buildup. I chose to believe sass.
Kiernan held the curtain open for me. “Coming?”
“Are there customers?”
“That is usually what the bell means.”
“Could be a ghost.”
“The ghosts use the side entrance.”
“Pretentious.”
He smiled as I passed him, and for one weird second, the space between us narrowed around his scent and the warmth of his hand near my back, not touching, just there in case I forgot where the doorframe was and hit it with my shoulder. Which had happened. More than once. The man had known me since I was seven and still chose to stand close enough to be collateral damage. That was loyalty. Or poor survival instinct.
The front of Hemlock’s Whisper was already filling with late-morning light, softened by green glass bottles lining the windows. Bundles of herbs hung from the ceiling beams. Shelves curved along the walls, crowded with tinctures, balms, teas, dried roots, charm sachets, tiny warded jars, and several items Kiernan insisted were decorative even though one of them whispered my name whenever I walked past. The counter was old dark wood, scarred by years of use and one small lightning burn from when I was nineteen and had been told my ex was “probably just confused.” He had not been confused. He had been an ass. The counter survived. So did I.
A woman in a raincloak stood near the sleep draughts, squinting at labels. A young shifter with fox ears barely hidden under a hat hovered by the anxiety teas. Old Mr. Pell from two streets over had already found the chair by the window and settled in like a decorative gargoyle, which meant he wanted his joint salve, conversation, or both.
“Ferox!” Mr. Pell called. “You still alive after the royal nonsense?”
“No,” I said, grabbing a basket of labeled salves from under the counter. “I died dramatically and came back because the afterlife did not have enough snacks.”
He cackled. “That sounds like you.”
Kiernan moved behind the counter, slipping into shopkeeper mode with the ease of someone who had been born calm just to annoy me personally. “Good morning, Mr. Pell. Your salve is ready. Stronger ginger this time, per your request.”
“Good boy,” Mr. Pell said.
Kiernan accepted this with a slight bow because he was ridiculous. “I aspire to usefulness.”
“You aspire to overcharge me.”
“You aspire to complain even when I discount you.”
“I’m elderly.”
“You are fifty-eight.”
“In spirit, ancient.”
I snorted and helped the fox-eared kid pick a tea that would not knock him out before his shift at the laundries. Kiernan answered three questions about dreamless sleep tincture, refused to sell a focus stimulant to a student who looked like she had not slept since last week, and somehow restocked the feverfew without appearing to move. He had always been like that in the shop, quiet and efficient and everywhere at once, his magic brushing the plants just enough that they leaned toward him when he passed. I hated that too. Not really.
The egg discharged again in the back room. Every light in the shop flickered. The fox kid yelped. I spun toward the curtain, already moving. Kiernan was there at the same time, one hand catching the edge of the counter as a blue-white pulse spilled under the curtain and skittered across the floorboards in thin veins. The wards snapped it up before it reached the customers, but the air filled with the sharp, clean scent of lightning.
Mr. Pell lifted his brows. “New product?”
“Experimental ambiance,” I said. Kiernan gave me a look. “What? It sounded better than baby dragon.”
The fox kid’s ears popped fully out of his hat. “Baby what?”
“Nothing,” Kiernan said smoothly. “Ferox names electrical equipment.”
“I do,” I said. “This one is called Ferdinand.”
Kiernan closed his eyes for one brief, pained second. Mr. Pell cackled harder. We handled the customers in a very professional manner after that, meaning Kiernan handled them professionally while I tried to look as if nothing in the back room might explode into scales and teeth at any moment. The egg quieted again after the discharge, but I felt it behind the wall of the room like a second pulse under my skin. It tugged at me. Not words. Not even emotion exactly. More like pressure. A storm gathering at the edge of thought.
By the time the last morning customer left with three salves, two teas, and a warning from Kiernan not to mix the calming drops with firewhiskey unless they wanted to spend twelve hours apologizing to furniture, I had reorganized the same shelf twice and chewed through the inside of my cheek.
Kiernan flipped the sign to Back in Fifteen and turned the lock. “I am fine,” I said immediately.
He leaned against the door. “I didn’t ask.”
“You were about to.”
“I was considering it.”
“With your face.”
“My face is innocent.”
“Your face is a concerned owl.”
He pushed away from the door and crossed toward me, stopping just close enough that I had to tilt my head back slightly to meet his eyes. He had always been taller, but I had not always noticed the height as much as I did now, which was rude. “Roxy,” he said, soft enough to make me wish he had chosen any other tone, “you have moved the moonwort next to the emberleaf three times.”
“It wanted a friend.”
“Moonwort and emberleaf react badly.”
“So do half the nobles in Summer, and we still put them in rooms together.”
“That is not a storage principle.”
“It could be.”
His hand lifted, then paused before touching me. Asking without asking. I hated that he knew how to do that. I hated that my body answered before my pride did. I leaned a fraction closer, and he brushed a strand of magenta hair behind my ear. It had fallen loose from the half-bun I had done badly that morning, because my hair had a long history of betraying me.
“There,” he said.
My skin tingled where his fingers had passed. Lightning, probably lightning, definitely not anything else. “You do not have to worry about me,” I said.
“I know.”
“You are doing it anyway.”
“Yes.”
“That is annoying.”
“I have many qualities.”
“Name one.”
“I make excellent tea.”
“That is not a personality trait.”
“It is if the tea is good enough.”
I smiled despite myself, and his whole expression warmed like I had handed him something precious instead of a facial movement. Something twisted in my chest again. I ignored it with the skill of a woman who had ignored many things for many years and was very committed to continuing the tradition.
The egg cracked lightning against the wards again. This time, a jar of dried chamomile exploded. Not shattered. Exploded. Soft yellow flowers puffed into the air like someone had murdered a pillow full of anxiety remedies. I stared at the settling cloud. Kiernan stared too. From somewhere near the ceiling, the sentient ivy rustled like it was laughing. “That,” I said slowly, “was Ferdinand's fault.”
“We are not calling the dragon egg Ferdinand.”
“Temporary name.”
“No.”
“Fine. Egginald.”
“Absolutely not.”
I grinned and darted into the back room before he could object with paperwork. The egg glowed brighter than before, each pulse pushing pale violet light through the shell. The copper ward-ring was warm. The grounding stones hummed under the table. Little threads of lightning crawled over the glass, searching for weak points. My breath caught hard enough to hurt. “Oh,” I whispered.
Kiernan came in behind me and went quiet. The shop disappeared from my attention. No shelves, no customers, no exploded chamomile, no Mr. Pell likely telling three neighborhoods by evening that Hemlock’s Whisper had acquired electrical poultry. Only the egg. Only the storm inside it. I put my hand on the edge of the cradle, not touching the shell. “It is close.”
“Yes,” Kiernan said.
“Not today.”
“No.”
“You cannot know that.”
“No,” he admitted. “But the pulses are still irregular. Stronger, not patterned. It is testing the shell.”
“Testing?”
“Stretching. Reaching. Becoming uncomfortable enough to complain.”
“Relatable.”
He moved beside me, reading the ward-glyphs he had etched into the copper. “The cradle is holding. I can reinforce the grounding line before tonight.”
“Tonight?” His eyes flicked to me. “What is tonight?” I demanded.
“You forgot.”
“I did not forget. I temporarily misplaced the future.”
“Mira messaged this morning.”
“Mira messages constantly. Half of it is questions, half of it is emotional punctuation, and the rest is food opinions.”
“She and Naomi are getting people together at the Howling Moon.”
“Oh.” The name hit warmly and weirdly. The Howling Moon. Grimwall. Hidden bar, secret entrance, daily magical theme, old hangout, bad decisions with decent drinks. I had only been there a few times with the newer orbit of Mira’s people, but it already felt like the sort of place that collected strays and pretended it had meant to. “That is tonight?”
“Yes.”
“I knew that.”
“You did not.” Kiernan smiled, but his gaze stayed on my face too carefully. “You should go.”
“I was going to.”
“You were going to stay here and watch the egg pulse for six hours.”
“Maybe the egg needs emotional support.”
“The egg has wards, heat, grounding stones, and an entire shop full of herbs if it gets dramatic.”
“Eggs can be dramatic.”
“So can Drakenbloods.”
I looked at him. “Say that with less affection.”
“I am physically incapable.”
The words landed, and for one second, I had the strangest feeling that he had not meant them as a joke. Kiernan looked down at the copper ring too quickly, adjusting a glyph that did not need adjusting, and his ears had gone faintly pink. Huh. Weird. Maybe the ward heat was too high. “You could come,” I said.
His hand stilled. “To the Howling Moon?”
“Yeah. Why not? You know Mira. Cousin privileges or whatever. Naomi probably likes you. Everyone likes you. It is irritating but useful. Also if the theme is something stupid like haunted mermaid casino, I need someone to confirm I am not hallucinating.”
His smile came back slowly. “You want me there?”
“Sure.”
“Sure.”
I frowned. “Do not say it like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I said something interesting.”
“You often do.”
“I say nonsense constantly.”
“Interesting nonsense.”
“Again. Suspiciously affectionate.”
He looked at me then, really looked at me, and the whole back room seemed to pause around the egg’s violet glow. “Maybe I am affectionate.”
My brain, traitor that it was, produced no useful words. Kiernan’s gaze softened, and there it was again. That look. The one I kept misfiling under friendship because the alternative was opening a door I had leaned furniture against for so long I no longer knew what was on the other side. He had looked at me like that when we were seven and I cried because everyone called me a liar. When we were twelve and I broke a bully’s nose for making fun of his ears. When we were seventeen and he found me behind the shop after a bad discharge, shaking so hard I could not speak. When we were older and I came back from fights I pretended were only for money, bruised and laughing too loudly, and he patched my knuckles without asking questions I was not ready to answer. Affectionate. Sure. That was a word. “Good,” I said finally, because my mouth had clearly panicked and chosen the shortest exit. “You should be. I am delightful.” He laughed, but softly, and something in the sound made my stomach flip.
The egg sparked again. The discharge leapt farther this time, snapping over the copper ring and kissing the metal table leg before the grounding stones swallowed it. Kiernan moved immediately, one hand extended. Green-gold magic flickered around his fingers, Spring Court warmth laced with something older and more patient. The ivy along the wall stretched toward him. The grounding stones settled. I watched his hand. “You have been practicing.”
His attention remained on the ward. “I own a shop full of volatile ingredients and you work here. Practice seemed wise.”
“No, not that.” I nodded toward the glow around his fingers. “That.”
He glanced at his own hand as if he had forgotten I could see magic. “Some.”
“You hid it before.”
His expression shifted, not guilt exactly but something closer to old caution.
“I did not hide it from you,” he said carefully. “Not intentionally.”
“Kiernan.”
“I shifted once in front of you when we were nine.”
“You turned into an owl and told me it was a trick cloak.”
“You believed me.”
“I was nine.”
“You were also very confident trick cloaks existed.”
“They should.”
His mouth twitched, but the humor did not fully cover the tension. “My mother thought it was safer if people knew less. Seara’s family politics were not exactly kind to her after she left Summer. Spring was home, but it was still court. Different flowers. Same thorns.”
“Mira knows?”
“Some. Not all.”
“You are her cousin.”
“Yes.”
“Her hot owl cousin.” He blinked. I blinked. The egg pulsed. Why had I said that? “I mean,” I said quickly, “objectively. You have cheekbones and the whole mysterious forest creature thing. I am stating taxonomy.”
“Hot owl cousin is taxonomy?”
“It is a field classification.”
“Should I update my business cards?”
“Yes. Kiernan Firebrand-adjacent, hot owl cousin, licensed apothecary.”
His face had gone pinker. Fascinating. Hilarious. I was not sure why it made me want to bite something. He recovered first, which was rude. “Technically, I do not use Firebrand.”
“I know. Exiled aunt line. Spring father. Secret awkward family reunion cousin. Mira trailing after you asking too many questions.”
“She did ask many questions.”
“She still does.”
“She once asked why owls look judgmental.”
“They do.”
“I told her it was because they had seen men make laws.”
I barked a laugh. “That is good.”
“She stole it.”
“Of course she did.”
The back room warmed with the egg’s light, and for a while, we worked in the half-quiet that had always been easy between us. Kiernan reinforced the grounding lines while I sorted the intact chamomile from the exploded crime scene and labeled a fresh jar in handwriting he would later complain about. He brewed us both a tea that smelled like lemon, mint, and something smoky enough to make my shoulders unclench. I drank mine too fast and burned my tongue, which he noticed and fixed by silently sliding me a spoonful of honeyed frostmoss gel without even looking up. That was Kiernan. Always noticing. Annoying. Wonderful. Possibly too wonderful if I thought about it too long, so I did not.
By late afternoon, the shop had gone through another small rush: a merrow with scale itch, two human-facing glamoured fae looking for hangover prevention, a goblin child who wanted “the tea that makes homework die,” and a woman from Eldergate who bought three jars of calming balm and stared at the egg-room curtain long enough that my lightning crawled up my arms. Kiernan noticed that too and stepped closer behind the counter, not in front of me and not blocking me, but beside me, a quiet line drawn. The woman left, and my lightning settled.
He handed me a wax paper packet of dried citrus slices. “Eat.”
“I am not a horse.”
“No, you are a Drakenblood who forgets food exists until she becomes everyone’s problem.”
“I am charming when hungry.”
“You once threatened a chair.”
“It had bad energy.”
He leaned closer, voice lowering. “Eat, Roxy.” I ate because I wanted to, not because he told me to, which was an important distinction no one needed to question. The citrus was tart and sweet, dusted with a little sugar and powdered ginger. My favorite. He kept it under the counter because of course he did. I watched him turn away to help a customer, his silver-white hair falling forward as he bent over a ledger, his mismatched eyes focused, his hands steady. Something warm spread through my chest, so sudden and sharp I almost blamed the tea.
Best friend, I reminded myself.
Safest person.
Hot owl cousin.
No. Not that one. That one was not helpful.
When the shop finally emptied near closing, Kiernan locked the door and dimmed the front lanterns. Outside, rain had begun to mist against the windows, turning the street beyond Hemlock’s Whisper into a smear of gold lamps and wet stone. I loved this hour. The in-between hour. Shop not open, not fully closed. Day’s work done, night not yet demanding anything. Kiernan moved through the front room, straightening shelves and murmuring to the ivy when it tried to steal a ribbon from his hair.
My phone buzzed on the counter.
Mira: Howling Moon tonight. No strategy meeting. Naomi’s orders. Mine too. Just people being alive for a few hours. You coming?
Another message followed immediately.
Mira: Also if the tavern theme is cursed puppet cabaret again I’m leaving.
Then a third.
Mira: I am lying. I will complain and stay.
I smiled despite myself.
Kiernan came to stand behind me, reading over my shoulder without shame because we had never respected each other’s privacy properly. “Cursed puppet cabaret?”
“Apparently.”
“Do I want context?”
“No.”
“Are you going?”
I looked toward the back room, where the egg pulsed faintly behind the curtain. “I should stay.”
“The egg will not hatch tonight.”
“You said you do not know that.”
“I said I cannot know it with certainty. I can be reasonably confident.”
“Reasonably confident sounds like what people say before being eaten.”
“If the egg hatches while we are gone, the wards will notify us.”
“If the egg hatches while we are gone, I will never forgive us.”
Kiernan turned me gently by the shoulders. Not forceful. Just enough that I had to face him instead of the curtain. His hands remained there, warm and steady, and he looked down at me with that same unbearable patience. “Ferox. You need a night with people who care about you.”
“I have people.”
“Yes. And they are gathering at the Howling Moon.”
“I have you.”
His expression softened so much my throat tightened. “Yes,” he said quietly. “You do.” For some reason, that made everything worse. I looked at his chest because his eyes were doing too many things. “The Shroud is quiet.”
“I know.”
“Quiet means hiding.”
“I know.”
“I hate when things hide.”
“I know.”
“I am not good at sitting around drinking while danger exists.”
“You are excellent at drinking.”
“That was not the point.”
His thumbs moved once against my shoulders, grounding. “No. The point is that danger will exist whether you rest or not. The Shroud does not deserve every hour of you.”
I hated that. Not because it was wrong. Because it sounded like something I needed to hear, which automatically made it offensive. “You should come,” I said.
“I will.”
“You answered too fast.”
“I knew my answer.”
“Because of the tavern?”
“No.”
“Because of Mira?”
“No.”
“Because of Naomi?”
“No.”
I looked up. Kiernan’s eyes held mine, green and gold, forest and sunlight, infuriating and too gentle. “Because of you.”
The room went very quiet. My brain produced a sound like a tiny clerk dropping every file it had ever organized. “Oh,” I said. His face changed like he was waiting for me to understand something. I did not. Well, I understood the words. Because of you. Very normal best-friend loyalty. Obviously. Kiernan had been coming places because of me since we were children. School meetings. Herb caves. Bad bars. Worse festivals. That was what we did. We went places together. He was saying he would come because I asked him to come. Totally normal. So why was he looking at me like that?
The egg discharged in the back room with a loud crack, making both of us jump as the curtain flickered blue-white. “Egginald disapproves of emotional tension,” I said, because if I did not say something stupid, I was going to stand there and keep looking at Kiernan’s mouth like an idiot.
Kiernan closed his eyes and laughed under his breath. “We are still not calling it Egginald.”
“Temporary name.”
“No.”
“You never let me have anything.”
“I have let you store four boxes of unidentified rocks in my apartment.”
“They are not unidentified. They are pending classification.”
“You labeled one ‘maybe spicy.’”
“It had a vibe.”
He shook his head, smiling, and the moment loosened enough for me to breathe again. He reached behind the counter and tossed me my jacket, the black one with too many pockets and a frayed cuff I kept meaning to mend. “Go change if you want to. I will reinforce the cradle once more, close the shop, and then we can head to Grimwall.”
I caught the jacket against my chest. “You do not have to babysit me.”
“I am not.”
“You are absolutely babysitting me.”
“I am accompanying you.”
“With concern.”
“With affection.”
There was that word again. I wrinkled my nose at him. “You are being weird today.”
His smile turned soft. “I know.” That was not denial. Suspicious.
I pointed at him as I backed toward the stairs. “No owl behavior at the tavern unless the theme requires it.”
“I make no promises.”
“And if Mira starts aggressively interrogating you over mocktails about whether you ever judged her in owl form, lie.”
“I did judge her.”
“She was probably doing something judgeable.”
“She tried to teach a spoon to dance.”
“Was it dancing?”
“Eventually.”
I grinned. “Then no judgment.”
Kiernan looked at me like I had proven some private theory again, too soft, too much, too obvious in a language I apparently did not speak, even though I could translate fragments of ancient Drakenblood prayer from cave walls with half the letters missing. I escaped upstairs before my face could do anything incriminating.
Behind me, Hemlock’s Whisper settled into evening. Rain tapped the windows. The ivy rustled. The egg pulsed in its cradle, lightning gathering and quieting, gathering and quieting, close but not ready. Not yet. Beneath my boots, the old floorboards creaked the same way they had when I was seven and Kiernan told me I was not alone. The same way they had when I was seventeen and pretending I did not need anyone. The same way they did now, when I had people waiting at a hidden tavern in Grimwall, a dragon egg humming in the back room, and my best friend downstairs looking at me like I was a storm he had already decided to stand in.
I pulled on my jacket and caught my reflection in the small mirror by the stairs: magenta hair half loose, crimson eyes too bright, lightning tattoo crawling down my arm, mouth tilted like I was amused by a joke I had not understood yet.
“Normal night,” I told my reflection. The egg sparked below. Kiernan laughed softly in the shop. My phone buzzed again with Mira sending what appeared to be a blurry picture of Cassie glaring at a pair of shoes, followed by the words emergency tavern outfit debate. I grinned. “Normal enough.”