“Edgar.” Aiden’s voice shook the room, a display of power that seemed to take even Aiden aback. He was young to be able to do that. Edgar had certainly never been able to shake anything. He didn’t have a treasure, and no one to care for, which made him weak as far as dragons were concerned. “Justin only speaks highly of you. That’s why I’m here.”
“You’re stronger than I first thought.” Edgar blinked several times. Aiden might be confused, but his dragon instincts were not. He acted unassuming. Perhaps he even thought he was not strong enough to have treasure yet, or that he was too young and immature.
“So are you,” Aiden returned, surprising Edgar again. Now, Edgar couldreallysee why this dragon was friends with Justin. This was one of Justin’s rebel-against-tradition-and-human-prejudices types. Edgar’s initial read had been correct, but he had not glimpsed the dragon Aiden could become.
Edgar looked down at the cuff he was wrinkling. “What did he say?”
“That listening to you was like how he imagined it felt to drink the way humans do,” Aiden supplied. “That I would either forget my problems for a while, or find the answers to them. He also said that when it came to romance, you were—”
“Don’t tell me!” Edgar cut him off with a near-screech. He took a breath, trying to remember that he was a dragon and was supposed to have dignity.
“He said you were not the one to go to for practical advice, but that if I wanted someone to spill my blood and read it like tea leaves, then I should speak to you.”
Edgar found it momentarily difficult to breathe. “Do you want that?”
“Justin’s the conqueror. Not me.” Yet Aiden was still standing before Edgar, waiting.
“Yes, he is.” Edgar closed his eyes, but the truth was already known and known well. “Justin is powerful and will only become more so once he finds his treasure. Which he will. Despite how easily Justin awes even other dragons, he is loving. He will choose someone strong. Not wrong. Not odd. A proper dragon, or dragon’s boy, for him.” Which Edgar obviously was not. But Edgar had never been seriously considered for Justin by anyone except their parents.
When Edgar opened his eyes, Aiden was frowning. “You’re a seer.”
“I like stories,” Edgar corrected, as he sometimes did when he felt more foolish than wise.
“You’re aseer,” Aiden repeated, stressing the word.
Edgar gave his cuff one final, frustrated tug. “Did you still want a story?”
“Edgar…” Aiden paused. “A bootlegger?” he asked instead of whatever he had been going to say.
“You would be fantastic,” Edgar assured him, suddenly quite sure of that. “Initially in it for private or petty reasons, but you keep at it because you like the challenge and flouting authority, especially an authority that impinges on your way of life.” Edgar was spinning nonsense out of straw, but sooner or later, it would become gold. “Those are the kind of people who admire Justin, but you aren’t intimidated by him the way some others are.”
“You’re not,” Aiden pointed out. “Are you a rumrunner with me?”
“I grew up with him.” Edgar pooh-poohed the interruption. “And of course not. I am barely capable of lying. If I am in a 1920s fantasy, I’m a helpless, hapless, rich bachelor constantly surrounded by unwanted engagements and interfering family members, who looks for the best in people and is thought of as silly for it. I would drink your illicit whiskey, but I would be terrible in any operation to smuggle it.”
“And where is Justin?” Aiden wondered innocently.
Edgar opened his mouth, then shut it with a snap. “Running a crime syndicate,” he answered wildly, though then it was only too easy to imagine Justin in a pinstriped suit and spats. He sighed. “With some pretty, willowy thing on his arm.” Edgar did not want to see this. He focused on Aiden’s paths. “Working outside the law, even a nonsense law, gives you divided loyalties. So….”
Edgar saw divided loyalties in Aiden for a reason, and since Aiden was here, talking of romance, it must have something to do with that. A love triangle, then, or a square, or a circle, or some sort of other geometrical configuration.
It was not only a federal agent that Aiden the Bootlegger had to guard his heart against, but a church-going widow or widower as well. Perhaps one who advocated for Temperance. Aiden certainly did not make things easy for himself. How confused and hungry he must be to come to a seer he did not know, and a dragon at that.
But only another dragon could understand how it felt to be unsure when dragons were not supposed to be. But if Aiden chose right, his hesitation now would only make him stronger later. For them. The treasures he thought he had to choose between.
Edgar forgot his spark of irritation with Aiden as he realized how much Aiden did not believe himself capable of taking care of two or more treasures. Aiden could barely imagine himself as a simple bootlegger. That meant Edgar was going to have to lead up to anything else.
“You poor lamb. I won’t even add romance if you don’t want me to… unless it puts itself into the timeline. I can’t help that.” But, of course, that was why Aiden was here, in addition to shutting up his parents for a while: this romantic entanglement he had yet to speak of. “Aiden,” Edgar gentled his voice even more, “they are just stories, until they aren’t. They are the possible and impossible. You don’t have to choose just one. I certainly don’t.” He patted the couch, so Aiden wouldn’t have to remain standing. “Maybe we will start with other ones, silly stories to pass the time. I can make up some fairy tales for you, the way I used to do with… others. Anything else can always wait for another day.”
When Aiden was ready for the answer.
If he ever would be.
Edgar wasn’t, and understood the feeling.
He smiled when Aiden cautiously perched at the other end of the couch without displacing the stack of manga.
Edgar wriggled to get more comfortable and then shut his eyes again. “Now then,” he began. “A long time ago, in a land not unlike our own, perhaps there was a prince.”
