Chapter 52: Kelly. His Name Is Kelly Now. He Accepted It!
The talon sat heavy in both his hands, and Neve still did not know what to do with it.
Everyone below the podium was staring. He could feel it even without looking. The quality of attention from an entire festival gathering that had just watched a dragon lord pull his own nail off and hand it to someone as a gift.
He looked at Vaelthorn.
"What exactly am I supposed to do with this?" he said.
Vaelthorn settled back in the chair with the easy posture of someone who had given a gift and was watching the recipient figure it out.
"Many things," he said. "It can be used in healing elixirs. Ground down, it accelerates recovery faster than most medicines." He looked at the talon. "It can be used as a weapon... the edge holds better than any stone or bone you’ll find here." A pause. "And since I’m a fire dragon, if you learn to channel it correctly, it behaves like an enchanted blade. It can produce flame on command."
Neve stared at the talon.
"Fire," he said. "From a nail."
"From a talon," Vaelthorn said.
"That you pulled off your own finger."
"It grows back."
The system appeared in front of him, prompt and helpful.
{Dragon Talon acquired!}
{Item properties: Healing accelerant when ground to powder. Weapon edge, self-sharpening. Fire channelling capacity — requires practice. Enchantment potential: High. Rarity: Extreme.}
{Suggested uses: Medical kit supplement, primary weapon, fire source in emergencies.}
Neve read through it and then looked at the talon again with considerably more respect than he had ten seconds ago.
"Thank you," he said, and he meant it.
Vaelthorn looked at him for a moment.
"Use it to protect yourself," he said. His eyes moved briefly downward toward the festival crowd, toward a specific area of it. "From people like that."
Neve followed his gaze.
Isabella was below, reorganised, expression reconstructed into something neutral. Standing with her girl, but not looking at the podium.
Neve laughed. "I can’t kill her."
"I can," Vaelthorn said simply.
"Please don’t kill Isabella."
"She’s a problem."
"She’s my problem," Neve said. "I’ll handle her."
Vaelthorn looked at him with that expression that was quiet and attentive. Then he reached up and touched Neve’s hair. He was just touching, the way someone touched something they wanted to remember the texture of.
"I should go," he said.
The words landed differently than Neve expected.
He had known this was coming. Vaelthorn had said it himself. About the slumber, mountain, and returning after winter. He had known it was happening tonight. He had told himself it was fine; he barely knew the man.
"Already?" he said.
He heard himself say it and told himself to stop.
Vaelthorn looked at him.
"The snow is heavier now," he said. "I don’t do well in it. And you have your winter ahead." He tilted Neve’s chin up. "You’ll be occupied."
"Months, right?" Neve said.
"I’ll come back," Vaelthorn said. "I’ll come back faster than I have ever woken from slumber." He said it like a fact, not a promise. The way he said it was like it was already settled and decided.
Then he kissed him.
Neve had expected something brief. A departure kiss. Something polite and short that acknowledged the public setting.
That was not what happened.
Vaelthorn kissed him with complete certainty, taking his time, one hand at the back of Neve’s head and the other at his waist. Neve’s hands went to Vaelthorn’s chest without being asked, and he kissed back because there was nothing else to do.
Below the podium, the festival continued, but the portion of it that had been watching the podium went very quiet.
Neve was not thinking about that.
Vaelthorn pulled back and pressed his mouth to the bond mark on Neve’s neck. It glowed under his lips, warm and immediate, brighter than it had been all evening.
"Take care of yourself," Vaelthorn said.
Neve nodded. He did not trust his voice for a full sentence right now.
Vaelthorn stood. He lifted Neve from his lap with ease and set him in the chair. Neve settled and looked down at the talon on his legs. It was genuinely very heavy. He was not going anywhere quickly.
Vaelthorn turned to face the festival.
When he spoke, it carried the same way it always did, reaching everywhere it needed to reach.
"You have gathered in winter as your ancestors did before you. You have eaten and traded and stood together. This is the strength of the beast world... not the individual tribe but the gathering of all tribes." He looked across the festival grounds slowly. "Continue as you are. Grow stronger. What you build in winter lasts through all seasons."
That was it.
Short and cold.
But they all cheered happily.
Then he added: "My mate remains here in the leopard tribe through this winter. If I return and find that anything has happened to him—" he looked across the gathered tribes with the specific quality of attention that made people feel individually seen uncomfortably "—I will burn it down. All of it."
The cheering stopped and was replaced by bowing.
Vaelthorn touched the top of Neve’s head once. His hand was warm, and his touch was brief, and then he stepped off the podium edge.
He was already shifting before his feet left the surface.
The dragon that landed in the space below the podium was vast and immediate, and the sound of it was the sound of something enormous that existed on a different scale than everything around it. His wings spread. His head came up. He roared once, the sound of it moving through Neve’s chest like a physical thing, and then he was in the air.
Everyone bowed.
He became a shadow against the snow-heavy sky.
Then, smaller and just like that, he was gone.
Neve sat in the enormous chair with the talon across his legs, holding him down, and looked at the sky where Vaelthorn had been.
He was not going to think about the fact that he was going to miss him. He was already missing him, though.
He looked at the talon.
"I am not going anywhere," he said to no one. "This thing weighs more than I do."
Footsteps on the podium steps. Two sets, arriving at the same time, which immediately suggested a problem.
Cael reached him first and had both arms around him before fully stopping. "Are you alright? Did he hurt you? You were up there a long time and I couldn’t—"
"I’m fine," Neve said into his shoulder. "I’m fine. Everything is fine."
"He kissed you in front of everyone."
"Yeah... He did."
"In front of the whole festival."
"Yes, Cael, I was there."
Cael pulled back and looked at his face with the thoroughness of someone checking for damage.
Kael appeared on Neve’s other side and lifted the talon off his legs with both hands and a significant amount of effort.
"That’s extremely heavy," Kael said.
"I know," Neve said.
"He just gave you this."
"He did."
Kael turned the talon over, looking at it with the eyes of someone who understood exactly what he was holding. "Do you know how rare this is? A dragon talon from a living fire dragon is essentially—"
"He told me," Neve said. "Thanks, Kael."
Cael looked at Kael.
Kael looked back at Cael.
The specific look of two people who had not been properly introduced tonight and were both standing next to the same person.
"What are you doing up here?" Cael said. Not a question.
Kael smiled the way he smiled when he had information he was about to deliver and had already decided how. He took a breath.
"I’m glad you asked. My father wanted me to take a mate from the wolf tribe. I refused because I had someone already in mind. He strongly disagreed with this. The result is that I’ve been banished... or something similar to banished, the details are complicated... and since I have nowhere else to be, I’ll be staying here. With you. As your neighbour." He said all of it in one continuous delivery. "It’s wonderful to meet you properly again. I’m Kael."
Cael stared at him.
"Go back to your father," Cael said. "Get on your knees. Apologize. Go home."
"That’s a kind suggestion—"
"There is no version of this where you live near Neve."
"I think Neve has some input on that—"
Neve coughed.
Both of them turned to him immediately.
"Are you alright?" Cael asked.
"Do you need something?" Kael asked at the same time.
Neve looked between them.
Below the podium, the festival had returned to full energy... music, movement, the smell of more soup being passed around, tribes mixing in the way they mixed when enough wine had been consumed. Nobody was looking at the podium anymore.
He looked at Kael.
"Give Cael the talon," he said. Then: "I’m calling you Kelly."
Kael blinked. "Kelly?"
"Your names are too similar. You’re Kelly now."
Kael opened his mouth.
"Do you have a problem with it?" Neve said.
A pause.
"Not at all," Kael said. "How could I reject a name given to me by you?"
Cael looked at him. "Why is he staying with us?"
"Take me back to the cave, Cael," Neve said. "I’ve had enough attention for one night."
Cael’s posture changed immediately at the sound of his name said that specific way. He handed the talon back to Kael and picked Neve up and settled him on his shoulder in one motion.
"The festival goes until morning," Kael called after them. "If you want to come back—"
"How long?" Neve said.
"Tomorrow morning," Kael said.
"I’ll see," Neve said.
Cael was already moving down the podium steps. Neve looked back once. Kael stood at the top of the podium, holding a dragon talon that was longer than his arm and waving with his free hand.
Neve turned forward.
Below and around them, as they moved through the edge of the festival, conversations he was not meant to hear were happening.
A group near the bear tribe’s table was watching him go. Low voices.
"He treated a scorpion sting."
"Tonight? During the festival?"
"Before he came here. The brown-haired girl from our tribe. She’s alive."
"That’s not possible, no one survives—"
"She’s standing over there. Alive."
A pause.
"We need him in the bear tribe."
"The dragon king just said—"
"I’m not talking about stealing him. I’m talking about convincing him."
Their voices faded as Cael moved through the snow with Neve on his shoulder, heading home through the first real night of winter.
Neve looked at the snow falling around them and sighed.
"Cael," he said.
"Hm," Cael said.
"How many tribes are at this festival?"
Cael thought about it. "Twelve. Maybe thirteen."
Neve looked at the sky.
"Great," he said quietly. "Now, all of the tribes want me."