22 Bowe
With a deep, ancient sigh, Bowe contemplated his charge. While they bonded at hatching, the years spent in the egg was time spent processing ancestral knowledge. The child had been captured again. Did he have a thing for bondage, leashes, and chains?
The primal bond allowed Bowe to see into his soul, though with far more clarity than Adric should be able to do with his connection to Lady White. Ancestral dreams of hundreds of pairings with great men and women. None of them had been idiotic enough to select mourned prince. The result of his resurrection had created a situation unique to all of those thousands of years of memories.
Normally, coatls were happy roaming the world, sleeping in caves for long periods of time, or staying in stables waiting for combat, hunts, or wars to participate in. Bowe huffed at his personal annoyance of being away from the action. Humans were small things anyway; one couldn’t maneuver in their cities as one should. One had to bring a human to one of the great dragon cities and hope they didn’t get eaten if one wished to experience cultural companionship with them. The ascendant games might be out, but the scales of change were gleaming, and the biggest obstacle was being the size of a small human house.
“I don’t see why we have to feed this lazy beast. The idiot prince is losing favor with the countess, the court, the queen, and the new Heir. Blessed Princess Rose.”
“It can hear you.” The stableman’s partner hissed.
It certainly could. Adric had arranged these lodgings while he was away. He’d seen how expensive lodging him at Whites manor, even with frequent hunting trips, had been. The plan had been to eat and sleep through the Games on his aunt’s coin to continue to put on the weight lost during Adric’s first demise. But the combination of the anchor tying Adric down and the slowly lowering of food quality delivered had been too much. A wicked bout of dragon gas woke him up earlier.
“The snake is out like a light. It basically eats gold. You’re the one who convinced me to skim off the top and replace a percentage with weed feed. Had to cut it twice as much this time. Stupid rock monster should have been a guaranteed win in the G leagues.”
Bowe sat silently with rage.
Weed feed, might as well have said poison. The diet wasn’t just to keep scales strong and full of luster. The biological needs of a dragon required fully vitalized skill organs, and to achieve this without live food, it required effort, time, and alchemy. Exchanging higher quality for lower quality but acceptable food was one thing. The version you could buy in Hazeldown was made from processed fish and mediocre, but cutting it with something poisonous was more than criminal.
Yet, he still had to eat. Hunger gnawed at the coatl.
The stableman banged on Bowe’s scales with a shovel. “See, out like the dead. Without a goal, these dragon-kin sleep for months or years, only waking up just enough to remain fat and happy. We can keep this grift going for months.”
Bowe had a goal, and the first step was to leave this box. But first…
The stablemen didn’t even have time to scream.
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