The Dragon's Match

XXXIV

XXXIV

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚ ˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊

"I am a dragon," Aëghan snorted derisively some time later as he swirled the last dregs of his whiskey around the bottom of his glass. "Of course, I bloody well let you win."

The occupants of the study hesitated at that, each sporting varying degrees of scepticism and surprise on their faces. Blayne tapped his glass thoughtfully as he leaned against the wall beside the hearth, a fire crackling in the grate and casting bronzed sheens to his skin and hair. Rogane lounged on the floor heathenishly, his long legs stretched before him and crossed at the ankles while he splayed his arms against the cushions of the sofa he was reclining against and Caëlhon had hitched himself upon Leowyn's stately, polished desk nearby. The last occupant, Finnegan Holt, reclined in the next available armchair, much like Aëghan, except instead of a tumbler of whiskey in his hand, he toyed with a copper coin of indiscernible origins, rolling it over and over his knuckles.

It was Rogane who grunted, the deep shadows that occupied the study due to the lateness of the hour seeming to envelope him. "I call bullshit. You won some Straecht* nights. What purpose would that have served you?"

Aëghan gave him an indolent smile. Idiotic male. Though noble, the Beastkeepers tended to favour the side of stupidity. Tonight being no exception. "Why, to keep you coming back for more, of course."

"Different opponents," Blayne concurred with a nod of his head. "Different battle, different signature to read."

Aëghan granted that perhaps Leowyn wasn't all that daft. He decided to throw them all a bone in any event to put them out of their misery- though he doubted anybody could be more miserable than him at present. "The more often Straecht occurred, the more interest developed," he explained over the rim of his glass. "Males, and some females, were travelling to compete against the Beastkeepers from different corners of the globe entirely. It hardly mattered who won or lost- it mattered what signature Dellanae could detect. None of them, as of yet, matched the shadows that were left from the The Reveal." He shrugged, tossing back the contents of his glass and finding it empty.

"You could have simply told us what you hoped to achieve," Caëlhon remarked sarcastically. "I was nearly unmanned during one of those battles."

"You can't unman something that was never there to begin with."

The youngest male present uttered a most foul oath in Aëghan's direction, to which he pretended to act suitably offended with a modicum of exaggeration. If he was honest with himself, his heart simply wasn't in as much of a mood as it normally was to rile up the males who had antagonised him for years with petty border disputes and battles simply to throw their weight around.

He slumped back in the chair, his finger toying with the rim of the glistening tumbler aimlessly, the liquor having moved swiftly through his blood to affect his head and warm his body. Gods, he missed her.

"Regardless, if Straecht continued, and new challenges arose, it was all the more likely that Dellanae would pick up something that we could channel," he deadpanned to the room, staring at the flickering hearth. "We surmised it could possibly be harnessed to create the same effect, or at least thread the two realities and grant us access to our realm once more."

"What makes you so sure that The Reveal was caused by someone?" Finnegan Holt said suddenly, the coin frozen on one of his knuckles. "Seems like an awful amount of power for one of you to have."

"Someone, something." Aëghan shrugged. "The signature is there- it was harnessed before and left traces just like we leave behind. The logic stands that if it has happened before, it could happen again. It did happen again- with Lillian."