Forbidden Honor (Dragon Royals #1)(25)

Well, that was rude. I could call my dragon a mistake, but no one else needed to say it. “What about the prophecy? What was that about?”

“Don’t worry about the prophecy.”

“Are you kidding me right now? You seem to be part of a magical prophecy but meh, no need to think about that too much!”

His lips quirked. “You only have to worry about surviving the next few months.”

“You’ve got a really positive outlook on life. But I have news for you: I am terrific at worrying. I can worry about all kinds of things, all at one time. You can’t put limits on me and my ability to worry.”

He gave me a strange look, then led me to one side, toward a dark house.

“What’s this?” I demanded. There was no way a dragon royal lived in such a random little house, with what seemed to be an antique shop on the first floor and an apartment above. The Order of Dragons had an enormous mansion on the city limits, far bigger than necessary given there were only a few dozen of them altogether.

“A safe house,” he said.

“Is it safe for me?”

“You talk so much I’m starting to think no place is safe for you.”

He took me through the shop, which glittered with various treasures, turning on a few lights as he went. I stopped and looked over a display of jeweled daggers, glancing at him to see if he was watching me.

He was.

I resisted the impulse to slip something stabby into my pocket and followed him the rest of the way across the shop, through a door he unlocked, then up the stairs.

He walked ahead of me into a warm, cozy little apartment. He snapped his fingers at the fire, and suddenly it blazed.

I stared at the dancing flames, wishing I wasn’t awestruck. We didn’t gain our full magic until we began shifting, and our powers were different depending on our soul creatures. Dragons were, of course, the most powerful. “Can you teach me how to do that?”

“One thing at a time,” he said.

One more thing to learn eventually, then, in a very long list. “I don’t understand any of this. How I’m supposed to pretend to be a man, how I’m supposed to work two jobs at the academy, how I’m a dragon!”

He didn’t answer me, or even meet my eyes when I sounded as if I was coming unwound. But on the plus side, he didn’t seal my lips shut. I was starting to have a very low bar of expectations for the Order of Dragons.

“I’m going to put a spell on you,” he said. “And I’m going to teach you to turn it on and off.”

“Speaking of spells,” I said. “What did Teris do to me?”

“Lord Teris,” he corrected mildly, “put a spell on you to prevent you from blabbing the truth to anyone. Given how…chatty… you are, I think it’s for the best.”

“He’s just going around putting spells on people?”

“Better than going around murdering them,” he said cheerfully. “And since the dragons can communicate telepathically, and you seem very… leaky… the spell is a blessing for you.”

“Excuse me, what? Communicate telepathically?” I did not want the dragon royals to saunter inside my brain.

He grabbed my arm and pulled me in front of a mirror, his touch firm but not brusque. “Close your eyes. One thing at a time, little dragon.”

I heaved a huge, nervous sigh but obeyed.

He murmured words in magic, touching my face—his fingers sent my skin tingling even before I felt magic racing over it.

I opened my eyes with a gasp and met the gaze of a man in the mirror, a man with chiseled features, generous lips and long reddish hair.

I looked like a slender, short man, especially next to Damyn’s massive, muscled bulk. But I was a handsome man—pretty, even.

“Yes, you are,” Damyn said. “But you probably should never be a spy, given your tendency to blurt out your thoughts.”

“There’s a lot going on in my mind at the moment, all right?”

He started his spell, but it suddenly occurred to me that as long as he was changing my hair and eye color, it could be anything. “How about white-blond hair and violet eyes?”

He looked at me as if I were stupid.

“Fine,” I grumbled. “Green eyes? And… hair with really great highlights?”

He touched the top of my head, and my hair curled around my ears. “You need to look like Lucien Finn. Maybe… less like Lucien-Finn-in-the-dungeon and more like Lucien-Finn-ready-for-the-academy.”

“That’s the opposite of what I asked for,” I complained. But my new, reddish-blond hair looked good shorter. I grinned at myself, admiring my bigger jaw, my broad nose, my bright brown eyes. This was weird, but it wasn’t the weirdest thing to happen to me today.

He taught me how to change back, discussed how I’d get through my days at the academy, and then told me he’d see me back home while I was still trying to catch up.

He hustled me out of his house—or was it his house— and down the dark streets, and I glanced back, trying to memorize the route though I had the feeling he was purposefully winding us back and forth, taking a longer route than needed.

“I need to talk about pay,” I said. “I don’t think I’ll be able to manage long as a housemaid and an academy student all at once—”