Pangea is dust covered and blazing when Draco finds the excitement he has been thirsting. The two-on-one fight in Loess left him feeling angry and chastened, discomfort blooming like poisonous flowers in his chest. He’d eat those flowers if he could, chew them up and swallow them and let them make him suffer until he is stronger.
Summer is hot, the sun beating down on the portions of Pangea that are not shaded by canyons. Draco peers at various tumbleweed and hardy-looking birds, briefly wondering if he could catch the avians’ eyes, would they fly away in fear? Biting down on that curiosity, the demon walks quietly toward the birds settled nervously in the trees. He suspects they will fly away before he can find their gazes. They do just that, loudly taking to the skies as Draco irritably huffs. No matter, he thinks matter-of-factly, they wouldn’t have been very fun, anyway.
Draco is on the border of Hyaline and Pangea, subconsciously drawn to where he thinks his father might be hiding—that, and he is making the small effort to move up in the kingdom. He cannot help but to like Anaxarete and her vision, so much more evil than his father, leaving satisfaction vicious and welcome in his heart.
That is why when Draco hears the loud, peaceful thoughts of a stranger, he turns to stare attentively where he senses they are coming from. He steps into a trot, spurred on by the vague thought of a successful lion-shifter. Suspicion builds in his chest. Hope flutters there, too, a quiet and delicate thing. A stranger that is probably thinking of his father? Perhaps this could be an answer to his searching.
Smothered hope is what sends Draco into absolute fury when he sees the source of the thoughts. A woman his father has spoken of absently but never kindly—a woman his father would not let return. So entrenched in Ilma’s thoughts, Draco does not hear the instinctual ones of Ana’s aliens, though he does spot them as they arrive shortly before him.
A smile, maybe a charming one, lifts the demon’s lips. He drops his pace to a leisurely walk, settling next to the aliens but not so close that they might be irritated. Draco is comfortable next to them, for the most part, knowing that his queen has forbade them from harming Pangea residents and knowing that their main mission now is to guard the borders. What he doesn’t know, though, is if they can understand his language. He suspects they can—maybe—and he wants to tell them that they shouldn’t let this one in. He wants to make sure she is unwelcome and a trespasser, and that she shouldn’t even be standing within Hyaline.
No enemy of his father will find Draco good company.
“We shouldn’t let this one in,” the demon suggests, lightly enough that he is not ordering them (he fears them, of course—he doesn’t expect them to do his bidding).
“Ilma, right? Interesting to find you within a Pangean territory, and next to a captive no less. Knowing what my father has said of you, and your unfortunate proximity to my brother’s child, I wonder if you’re thinking of stealing from us?” Draco tilts his head, coy smile on his face (oh, how he looks like his mother, now).
“I don’t think our queen wants you here, either. So,” he pauses, turns to peer over Pangea’s canyons, “I would leave Hyaline’s borders, if I were you.”
Y’all get a novel
