Chapter 51: He Gave Me A Dragon Talon And I Don’t Know What To Do With It!
"Yes."
The word sat in the air for exactly one second.
Then Neve’s brain arrived.
"Huh? Yes? No—" He turned to face Vaelthorn fully, which was a mistake because that put their faces very close together. He started waving his hand between them. "No. I said no. I don’t want... I didn’t mean yes, I was just — no. Absolutely not. Not right now. Not—"
Vaelthorn laughed.
It was a real laugh. A full sound that came from somewhere genuine and carried down from the podium clearly enough that the people below could hear it.
Several of them stared.
Neve suspected the dragon king did not laugh often in public, judging by the reactions of everyone within earshot.
"I understand," Vaelthorn said, when the laugh settled. "You’re exhausted. The leopard wore you out."
Neve’s face went the colour of his ears.
"That’s not—" He stopped. "I’m not exhausted."
"You are," Vaelthorn said, completely calm about it. "I can tell. It’s fine." He looked at Neve with something similar to a patient expression. "I’ll return when you’re ready. After my slumber."
Neve blinked. "Your slumber?"
"I need to sleep."
"You’re going to sleep," Neve said. "Now."
"Not now. After tonight."
"For how long?"
Vaelthorn considered this. "Normally, I sleep for decades."
"Decades," Neve repeated.
"Dragons require extended rest periods," he said. "I have been awake longer than is comfortable. I need to return to my mountain after this."
Neve looked at him.
He felt something in his chest that he had not expected to feel about a dragon lord he had technically only met properly in the last twenty minutes. Something that was not quite disappointing but was in the same neighbourhood.
He looked away.
"Oh," he said.
Vaelthorn was quiet for a moment.
"However," he said.
Neve looked back.
"Since I now have a marked mate," Vaelthorn said, "decades are not appropriate. I’ll return after winter."
"Winter is months," Neve said.
"Yes."
"You’ll come back after a few months of sleep."
"Yes."
Neve pressed his lips together. He was not going to say what he was thinking. He had already said one thing today without his brain’s input, and that was enough.
Vaelthorn looked at him with something that was almost a smile. "Are you already missing me?"
Neve looked at the festival crowd below.
He said nothing. Which was, apparently, enough of an answer.
Vaelthorn’s arm settled around him slightly more securely, and Neve let it because arguing with a dragon lord about seating arrangements on his own podium seemed like a losing position.
"What is that?" Vaelthorn asked.
Neve followed his gaze to the leopard tribe table. To the pot and Cael standing beside it with his hand on the lid, watching the podium with an expression that was performing calm and not entirely succeeding.
"Soup," Neve said. "I made it for the festival."
"No one has eaten."
Neve looked around. It was true. The festival had effectively paused when Vaelthorn arrived and had not fully restarted. Every tribe was in their positions, present, but the energy was suspended. Like everyone was waiting for permission.
He looked up at Vaelthorn.
"You should tell them to enjoy themselves," he said. "Dance, drink, whatever they do at festivals. They’re all standing around waiting."
Vaelthorn looked at the gathered tribes. "Am I supposed to do that?"
"You’re the king of beasts," Neve said. "They’re clearly waiting for you."
Vaelthorn looked at the crowd for a moment. Then he turned to face forward and spoke in a way that was not louder than his regular voice and somehow reached every corner of the festival space anyway.
"Eat. Drink. Dance. Enjoy the night."
Everyone was silent for two seconds. Then the festival erupted.
Cheering from multiple tribes at once, the sound of it broke whatever had been holding the night suspended. Music appeared from somewhere — instruments Neve hadn’t noticed being prepared, a rhythm that spread through the crowd fast. The wine distribution resumed. Children who had been frozen in place near their parents started running again.
Neve started to stand. "I’ll go get—"
Vaelthorn pulled him back down.
"One of them will bring it," he said.
"Who?"
Vaelthorn’s finger moved slowly and deliberately, surveying the crowd below with the patience of someone who had already decided and was enjoying the selection process. His finger travelled and stopped.
At Isabella.
"You," he said, his voice carrying to her specifically without apparent effort. "Bring two servings. One for me and one for my beloved."
’Beloved.’
Neve heard the word and felt heat move up the back of his neck.
Isabella’s face did several things in quick succession.
She straightened and looked at Vaelthorn. She glared at Neve, sitting on Vaelthorn’s lap, being called beloved in front of every tribe at the winter festival and again, back at Vaelthorn.
"I am Princess Isabella," she said, with the strained dignity of someone reconstructing their composure in real time. "Daughter of the former chief. I’m not a servant. I don’t—"
The pressure landed on her.
Only her this time. It was focused on her, not the broad aura drop from earlier. She gasped, and her hands went to her own throat instinctively, her eyes going wide.
Neve watched.
He did not stand up. He did not say let her go.
She deserved it, and he was aware that was not a generous thought, and he was having it anyway.
"Do you still refuse?" Vaelthorn asked.
Isabella shook her head fast.
The pressure lifted.
Her hands were trembling when she moved to the soup pot. Cael was already there, watching everything with eyes that had not left the podium. He supervised without touching — standing beside the pot while Isabella ladled soup into two bowls under his observation, her hands not entirely steady, her jaw set in the way of someone doing something humiliating and trying to look like they weren’t.
She carried both bowls up the podium steps and knelt.
She stretched the bowls toward Vaelthorn with her head down.
Vaelthorn’s hands were around Neve, so Neve took both bowls. Isabella looked up just long enough for their eyes to meet and then looked away because the alternative was looking at Neve holding the dragon king’s soup while sitting on his lap, while being called beloved, while Isabella knelt in front of them.
She stood and descended the steps without a word.
Neve handed one bowl to Vaelthorn and kept the other.
Vaelthorn looked at the bowl and brought it close as his nose moved slightly.
"I can smell meat," he said.
"Yes," Neve said. "Eat it. Don’t smell it."
Vaelthorn looked at him. Then at the bowl.
He drank it.
In one long motion, the way Cael had done the first time, the way the chief had tried to do before Neve stopped him. The entire bowl, soup, meat and everything, gone.
He set the bowl down.
His eyes went slightly wide in a way that was subtle and would have been invisible on anyone else, but was significant on a face that usually did nothing.
Below, the soup had reached the crowd.
Cael was distributing it from the pot with the organised efficiency of someone who had watched Neve manage resources and absorbed the method.
Other tribes were drifting toward the leopard tribe table, drawn by the smell, and taking bowls and drinking and reacting in the specific way everyone reacted to the soup the first time... the pause, the widened eyes, the immediate desire for more.
Neve watched it happen and felt the warmth in his chest that always came when something he made worked properly.
"You seem happy," Vaelthorn said.
Neve nodded. He was. He couldn’t pretend otherwise.
He turned back to look at Vaelthorn.
Vaelthorn was pulling at his own finger.
Not the skin. The nail itself, and then with a sound that made Neve’s stomach turn slightly, the nail came away entirely, and Vaelthorn was holding it in his palm, and there was blood at the base of his finger.
"What—" Neve grabbed his wrist. "What did you just do? Why did you—"
"Hold this properly," Vaelthorn said as he held out the nail.
Neve looked at it. It was small and curved and dark. He took it because Vaelthorn was handing it to him, and he was not fully processing yet.
"Huh? Why do I need to hold a nail—"
The nail shifted in his hand.
One moment it was small enough to fit easily in his palm, and then it was not, and Neve grabbed it with both hands as the weight hit him... heavy, dense, the length of his forearm, a full dragon talon dark and sharp-edged and real.
He stared at it.
"A small parting gift," Vaelthorn said, and he was smiling in the way he had smiled when he first saw Neve on the podium. Warm and private, and like it was specifically for Neve.
Neve looked at the talon in both hands.
"W... what is this for?!!!" he said.