Date/Time: Vaes Meereen — Days following Chapter 48
Angelus — First Person
We made it to the courtyard before I stopped groping them. We did not make it to the courtyard before the servants noticed.
The common area near the garden fountain had stone benches warmed by ambient enchantments and enough open space that passing staff could give us a wide berth — which they were already doing. I settled onto the widest bench and pulled both of them onto my lap. Kinvara on my left thigh, Melisandre on my right, their tails tangling with mine behind us.
My hands found their asses again. Kneading, stroking, the claws pressing just hard enough to dimple the scales through the fabric.
Melisandre shifted against me, and the movement exposed the back of her vestments. The fabric parted slightly where the claw marks from last night crossed her spine — deep, still raw, visible. The claiming magic in my Mark prevented them from healing completely.
I traced one mark with the tip of my claw. Melisandre shivered.
"You've decided to keep these," I said.
"They're yours." Her voice dropped to something warm. "The Mark on my ass tells the world I belong to you. These tell me."
I hummed. Low. The chest-rumble vibrated through both their bodies. I leaned forward, pushed the fabric wider with my snout, and dragged my tongue up the longest claw mark — base of her spine to between her shoulder blades.
Melisandre's breath stuttered. Her head dropped forward.
I kissed the next mark. Then the next. Then I bit her neck — not the claiming bite, but hard enough to draw a bead of crimson that welled against her scales. I licked it clean and watched the skin seal itself.
"Ah —" Melisandre's hand found my horn. Her claws scraped the surface.
A servant carrying a water pitcher appeared at the courtyard entrance, registered the scene, and executed a smooth about-face that suggested this wasn't the first time Wyrmborne staff had encountered their ruler in a compromising position during business hours.
I turned Melisandre's head with one clawed hand and kissed her. My tongue pushed past her fangs and into her throat, deep enough that her eyes went wide and her body locked rigid against mine. I held it for three heartbeats, then pulled back.
Melisandre made a sound that was half gasp and half whimper. Her scales had flushed dark.
Kinvara's tail lashed against my thigh. "I'm sitting right here."
I turned to her and did the same. Kinvara's response was different — she fought the kiss, not to resist but to match it, her tongue pushing back against mine, her hand gripping the back of my neck. When I pulled back, she was breathing hard, her warm brown eyes molten.
"Better?" I asked.
"Marginally."
We sat for a while longer — talking, touching, the morning sun warm on our scales. Kinvara asked about the operations timeline. Melisandre asked about Moqorro.
"Jhogo will have leads," I said. "His network finds everyone eventually."
Kinvara slid off my lap and straightened her vestments. "Then that's where we start. Melisandre?"
"Coming." Melisandre pressed her lips to my jaw and followed Kinvara toward the intelligence wing.
I watched them go. The claw marks on Melisandre's back were visible through the parted fabric until they turned the corner.
Then I sat in the morning sun and thought about Ciri.
I'd marked Daenerys. Yennefer. Triss. Artoria. Kinvara. Melisandre. Mikhail had her own mark from our dragon-form bond.
Ciri had been marked since the early days — the bite on her neck, placed during a moment of Elder Blood resonance. But I hadn't claimed her fully.
I stood.
Ciri — Third Person
The message came through the Soul Link while Ciri was demolishing a training dummy with a combination of Witcher sword technique and an Aard blast that sent the dummy's torso spinning across the yard.
Dinner tonight. My quarters. Wear something you like.
Her sword stopped mid-swing. The Elder Blood connection amplified the message, adding warmth and intent that the words alone didn't carry. Ciri's heart rate spiked.
She sheathed her blade, crossed the compound to her quarters, and opened the wardrobe that Angelus had personally stocked for her three months ago.
Angelus — First Person
She wore the green.
Deep emerald with gold threading that caught the light when she moved — a dress that bared her shoulders and followed the lines of her body without clinging. Her ashen hair was loose, brushed until it gleamed, and the Dragon Witcher mutations gave her movements a fluid precision that turned even the act of walking through a doorway into something worth watching.
"You look stunning," I said.
"You told me to wear something I liked." She grinned. "I like green."
"I can see why."
We ate in the city. A Wyrmborne-run restaurant near the harbor district — private balcony, sea breeze, the harbor lights reflected on the water below. The food was Meereenese with Wyrmborne innovation — grilled fish over magically enriched grains, spiced vegetables that carried heat without burning, a wine from the Vaes Līrī vineyards that the integration teams had saved from the conquest's aftermath.
Ciri talked about her Sign training, the Dragon Witcher School curriculum she and Arya were developing, a Katakan variation she'd spotted in the hunting reports that didn't match any existing bestiary entry. Ideas tumbled over each other, her green eyes bright, her hands moving.
"— and the secondary venom sacs were in the wings, not the jaw, which means the whole Witcher approach to Katakan neutralization is wrong for this variant —"
"You're excited," I said.
"I'm always excited. You just don't usually see it because I'm busy being composed and deadly."
I listened. Fed her pieces of grilled squid from my fingers. Watched her lick the oil off her lips and pretended it didn't affect me.
"You're staring at me," she said.
"You're worth staring at."
"That's what you also said to Triss."
"It was true then too."
The walk back was warm. Vaes Meereen at night was beautiful — the enchanted crystal lighting turned the streets into corridors of gold and amber, and the distant sound of the harbor mixed with the hum of the city's magical infrastructure. Ciri's hand found mine. Our fingers interlaced — her smaller hand in my clawed grip, the Elder Blood resonance humming through the contact like a plucked string.
We reached her room.
R-18 Starts
The door barely closed before she was on me.
Ciri kissed like she fought — aggressive entry, full commitment, no half-measures. Her hands found my armor clasps and started working them loose while her mouth found mine. I growled against her lips and pushed her backward toward the bed, my own hands pulling the green dress over her head in a single motion.
She snarled. Actually snarled — the Dragon Witcher mutations giving her vocalization an edge that vibrated in my chest. She bit my lower lip hard enough to draw blood. I bit her back.
Armor hit the floor. Dress hit the floor. We crashed onto the bed in a tangle of scales and bare skin, growling, biting, hands everywhere.
My cock was already out — the permanent modification meant it responded to arousal without the need for a spell, sliding from the retracted sheath in my pelvis as my body temperature rose. Ciri's hand found it immediately, her fingers wrapping around the ridged shaft with a grip that was firm and curious and completely without hesitation.
"I've been wondering about this," she said against my mouth.
"And?"
"Bigger than I imagined."
"Flatterer."
I rolled her onto her back and kissed the Mark on her neck. The scar tissue was warm under my lips, and Ciri arched into the contact with a sound that went straight through me.
My hand slid between her legs. She was soaked, the Dragon Witcher's accelerated physiology amplifying her arousal until the slickness coated my fingers on the first stroke. I pushed two fingers inside her and she gasped, her hips rolling against my hand, her nails digging into my shoulders.
"More," she said.
I kissed her slowly this time. My thumb found her clit and circled while my fingers worked inside her. She moaned into my mouth, her body tensing, her thighs clamping around my hand.
I withdrew. Positioned myself between her legs. The head of my cock pressed against her entrance, and her green eyes found mine.
No words needed. She nodded.
I pushed in. The barrier gave. Ciri's breath hissed through her teeth. Her hands locked onto my forearms, nails breaking skin.
Then I was inside her, and the Elder Blood resonance hit us both like a wall of light.
The connection between us blazed open. Every sensation doubled — I felt her tightness around me and she felt my heat inside her, recursive and building, the Soul Link amplifying the feedback until the boundary between my body and hers blurred. Her green eyes glowed with the pale light that marked Elder Blood activation.
I started moving. Not gentle. Ciri didn't want gentle — she met my thrusts with her hips, matching my rhythm, her snarls mixing with my growls until the room filled with sounds that were more predator than person. The bed frame creaked. The stone floor vibrated.
*THOOM.* *THOOM.* *THOOM.*
"Harder," she said.
I picked her up. Her legs wrapped around my waist, her arms around my neck, and I slammed her back against the wall. *CRACK!* Stone cracked. Dust fell from the ceiling. My mouth found her breast and I sucked, my fangs dimpling the flesh, while my hips drove into her with enough force to make the wall shudder.
*THOOM.* *THOOM.* *THOOM.**THOOM.* *THOOM.* *THOOM.*
Ciri's head fell back. Her green eyes were half-lidded, her mouth open, the Elder Blood glow spreading from her eyes across her cheekbones in luminous tracery.
*SPLURT!*
The orgasm built like a thunderstorm. When it broke, I came inside her with a roar that rattled the windows, and Ciri screamed — not pain or not pleasure, but the raw detonation of Elder Blood and Draconic power colliding at the point where our bodies joined. The Soul Link feedback loop peaked and crashed, leaving both of us gasping, locked together against the cracked wall.
I stayed inside her. She stayed wrapped around me.
"Again," she breathed.
"Again."
R-18 Ends
Morning.
I cooked. Eggs, sausage, dark bread with butter, and a pot of the strong black tea that Geralt had introduced to the compound. Witcher-campaign portions — heavy on protein, light on ceremony.
She woke to the smell and sat up in the wrecked bed — sheets tangled, pillow on the floor, a crack in the wall behind the headboard that would need repair. Her ashen hair was a disaster. Her green eyes found me carrying the tray, and her face broke open — too happy to perform coolness.
"Breakfast in bed," she said. "I was warned about this."
"Everyone gets warned. Nobody listens."
I sat beside her and fed her. Pieces of sausage between her lips. Bread torn and shared. The tea, held to her mouth while she drank with her eyes closed.
She set the cup down. Took my hand. Pressed it against her cheek.
"I love you," she said. Her voice was steady. "I've loved you for months and I didn't say it because I wanted you to come to me when you were ready, not because I pushed."
The words landed. I pulled her close.
"I love you too."
"This was my first time." Her green eyes held mine. "Both the sex and the love. Both with you."
I kissed her. The chest-rumble building between us. She pressed her forehead against mine and breathed.
"I'm glad it was you," she whispered.
"So am I."
R-18 Ends
Ciri — Third Person
She found Yennefer and Triss in the private training arena behind the Lyceum. Yennefer was running Legna through aerial maneuvers while Triss cataloged the green-fire variants she'd developed from Enoch's bond.
Ciri walked in. Both women took one look at her and stopped what they were doing.
"Finally," Yennefer said.
"Was it that obvious?"
"You're glowing. Literally. The Elder Blood is still active around your eyes." Triss set down her journal. "Also, you're walking funny."
"I am not walking funny."
"You're walking the way I walked after my first time with her," Triss said. "The inner-thigh adjustment. It's distinctive."
Ciri's face went red. She sat on the training arena's bench — carefully — and crossed her arms. "Fine. Yes. Last night. She took me to dinner first."
"She always takes you to dinner first," Yennefer said, landing Legna on the arena wall. "It's her ritual. The date, the claiming, the breakfast. Triss got the harbor restaurant. Artoria got the garden. I got —" She paused. "Actually, mine started as a magical instruction and escalated."
"What was it like?" Triss asked, settling beside Ciri.
"Violent." Ciri's blush deepened, but she didn't look away. "There's a crack in my bedroom wall. The bed frame is bent. And the Elder Blood — it amplifies everything. I could feel what she was feeling and she could feel what I was feeling and it just kept building until —"
"Until you screamed loud enough that the guards checked the corridor," Yennefer finished dryly. "Yes. I heard."
"You heard?"
"Ciri, the entire east wing heard. Legna asked me if someone was being murdered."
Triss was trying very hard not to laugh. "The tail. Did she use the tail?"
Ciri's face achieved a shade of red that probably had a name in an artist's palette. "I'm not answering that."
"She used the tail," Triss and Yennefer said simultaneously.
"You know what's funny?" Ciri said after a moment. "Geralt might have opinions now when he finds out. The fact that his adopted daughter, his former lover, and the woman he still has complicated feelings about are now all in the same dragon's harem."
Triss pressed her lips together. Yennefer's expression went carefully neutral.
Then all three of them started laughing — loud enough that it bounced off the training arena walls and made Legna flatten his ears.
"That'll be interesting to see," Triss wheezed.
"Very interesting." Ciri wiped her eyes. "Though I hope he doesn't all of a sudden decides to complain about it when he's off in the frozen north bonding with a giant wolf. He doesn't get to complain."
"He's going to complain anyway," Yennefer said. "In that quiet, disappointed way he does, where he says nothing and looks at you until you feel guilty."
"The Witcher Stare," Ciri agreed. "I've been immune since I was twelve."
"Nobody is immune to the Witcher Stare."
"I am. I grew up with it." Ciri stretched, winced, and settled back on the bench. "She said she loved me first thing in the morning before the breakfast. Just said it like it was simple."
"Was it?" Triss asked, quieter.
"Yeah." Ciri's expression softened. "It was."
Tyrion Lannister — Third Person
Vaes Meereen had many qualities that King's Landing lacked.
The first and most important — the toilets worked. Tyrion had spent his first week marveling at the enchanted sanitation system. Flush mechanisms powered by ambient magic. Self-cleaning basins. Waste that vanished into a Transmutation grid and emerged as fertilizer. Every building in every Wyrmborne territory had them.
"If they conquered the Seven Kingdoms with nothing but plumbing," he'd told Bronn, "I'd support the invasion."
Three weeks into his probationary period, and the list grew daily. Vaes Līrī — the renamed Astapor, "the Free" in High Valyrian — was already functioning as the empire's southern agricultural hub. Four Wyrmborne cities, all connected by supply lines that ran with mechanical efficiency.
But some revelations had been more personal than institutional.
Artoria Pendragon.
Tyrion had walked into the Drakengard training yard on his fifth day, following a guard who'd offered to show him "something interesting." What he'd found was a woman in platinum-and-gold armor running sword forms with a blade that radiated holy light, a young Western Dragon producing real golden lightning from its perch above the yard, and a level of martial grace that made every knight Tyrion had ever watched look like a child with a stick.
"Lady Artoria," the guard had said. "First Drakengard."
Tyrion had studied her — the blonde hair with its crown braid, the teal-green eyes, the elegant features, the platinum scales that caught the light. But something nagged at him. The build. The bearing. The way she shifted her weight on the rear foot between forms.
"That's impossible," he'd said.
Artoria had stopped mid-form and looked at him. "Lord Tyrion."
"You're — no. No, that can't be right."
"It can, and it is."
"Brienne of Tarth is the tallest, homeliest woman in Westeros. You look like a painting commissioned by someone with excellent taste and a generous imagination."
Artoria's jaw tightened. "The conversion rebuilt my body. Angelus chose this form deliberately — she said I deserved to match who I was inside."
"That's — I don't —" Tyrion turned to Podrick, who had been trailing him as usual. "Pod. Is this actually Brienne?"
Podrick had gone very still. His eyes were wide. "My lady... when we traveled together, you once told me about the ball at Evenfall Hall. The one where —"
"Where every boy in attendance drew lots to see who would be forced to dance with me, and the boy who lost cried." Artoria's voice was flat. "Yes. That was me."
Podrick nodded. "It's her, my lord."
Tyrion had stared for a long time. Then: "Well. I've officially run out of things that can surprise me."
"You haven't," Artoria said. "Not even close."
She'd been right.
Podrick had resumed his role as squire — to Artoria now, not Tyrion, which suited both of them. The boy was training under both Artoria and Bronn, learning a style that combined Drakengard discipline with sellsword pragmatism. He was getting good. Fast.
Bronn had settled into Jhogo's intelligence apparatus. The pay was excellent. He'd mentioned this approximately forty times.
The Shae revelation had been quieter. And worse.
Jhogo's intelligence network had delivered the report three days after Tyrion's arrival — filed under "Background Information: Personnel Integration," which was Jhogo's euphemism for "things you need to know and will not enjoy learning."
Shae had testified against him at the trial. Every intimate detail, every private nickname, every vulnerability he'd shared in bed — weaponized, delivered to the court like a script she'd rehearsed. She'd called him a monster. She'd told them he'd confessed to wanting Joffrey dead.
And afterward, she'd been found in Tywin's bed.
Tyrion had taken the report to Angelus.
"In the original timeline," Angelus had said, leaning back in her chair, "you escaped the dungeon the night before your execution. Jaime helped you. Varys arranged the route. You went to the Tower of the Hand first, and you found Shae in your father's bed, wearing his chain of office as a necklace."
"And?"
"You strangled her with the chain. Then you took a crossbow from the wall, went to the privy where your father was sitting, and put two bolts through his chest after confronting him."
The silence had lasted a long time.
"I killed them both," Tyrion said.
"Yes."
"My father on the privy." A strange sound escaped him — half laugh, half something else. "That's almost poetic. The great Tywin Lannister, brought low by his own dwarf son while shitting." He pressed his knuckles against his mouth. "And Shae. I strangled her."
"With Tywin's chain of office. She was wearing it in his bed."
"Of course she was." Tyrion's voice went flat. Cold. "She always did know how to wear beautiful things that belonged to more powerful men."
"You told him you were his son. He called you a —" Angelus paused. "He used a word. You shot him for it."
"What word?"
"I think you already know."
Tyrion had stared at the floor of Angelus's study for three minutes without speaking. Then he'd stood, walked to the door, and stopped.
"If I ever get the chance," he said, "I will make sure both of them regret every decision that led to this. Not with crossbows. With patience."
He'd closed the door quietly behind him. That had been two weeks ago.
The bodyguard situation resolved itself the way most things in the Wyrmborne resolved themselves — practically, unexpectedly, and with more blue scales than anticipated.
Tyrion walked into the tavern near the harbor district on a Tuesday evening, looking for wine and the kind of anonymity that came from drinking in a place where nobody cared about Lannister politics.
He found Seryth.
She was at the bar. Ice-blue scales covering a frame that was approximately twice his height and three times his mass. Broad shoulders, heavily muscled arms, a draconic face that defaulted to mild amusement. Golden-amber eyes. Two backward-sweeping horns and a tail that hung off the back of her bar stool. She was eating a plate of grilled fish with her claws and talking to the bartender about the harbor patrol rotation.
Tyrion climbed onto the stool beside her. The bartender glanced down, poured wine without being asked, and went back to the conversation.
"You're the Lannister," Seryth said without turning.
"I'm the Lannister. You're a very tall woman."
"And you're very short." She ate a piece of fish. "Word around is that you need someone to keep you alive."
"I hear the Wyrmborne assigns bodyguards to probationary advisors who keep asking uncomfortable questions about the supply chain."
"You asked Daenerys how many crowns per unit the toilet enchantments cost during a Council session. The Magistrates wanted you removed from the building."
"It's a valid question. Infrastructure spending is the largest single line item in —"
"I don't care about infrastructure spending." She turned to look at him. Her golden-amber eyes pinned him flat. "I care about whether you're going to do something stupid that gets you killed, because if I'm assigned to keep you breathing, I'd prefer the job to be manageable."
"I never do anything stupid."
"You asked the Dragon Queen about toilet costs."
"Well, that was strategically important."
Something that might have been a smile crossed her draconic face. "Finish your wine, Lord Tyrion. I'll walk you back."
The walk took twenty minutes and by the end of it, Tyrion had learned that Seryth was a former mercenary from the Free Cities who had converted Dragonborn three months after the Wyrmborne took Meereen, that her lightning element produced static discharges that made his hair stand on end when she was amused, and that she carried a Wyrm-Forged longsword across her back that she handled like it weighed nothing.
She also, at one point, picked him up.
A crowd had pressed through the market district — night merchants hawking wares, Dragonborn workers heading to the second shift at the forges, a pair of Drake cavalry riders clearing a path for a supply wagon. Tyrion lost his footing in the press. Seryth's hand caught him under the arms and lifted him to her shoulder in a single smooth motion.
"Put me down," he said.
"Can you see the path from up there?"
He could. The crowd parted around Seryth the way water parted around a ship's prow. From her shoulder, Tyrion had a clear view of the entire district.
"Yes," he admitted.
"Then stay."
He reluctantly stayed on her shoulders. Getting a strange feeling that he likes this more than he should.
Skara arrived two days later, and she arrived angry.
The doors of Angelus's administrative wing banged open — an impressive feat for a woman who barely cleared four feet — and a compact, purple-blue scaled Dragonborn with a white-silver spiky crest and a great hammer slung across her back stormed through.
"Which one of you idiots reassigned me from the harbor patrol to babysitting detail?"
Seryth, who was leaning against the wall outside Tyrion's office, looked down. Way down. "That would be Commander Jhogo."
"Jhogo can take his reassignment order and shove it up his —"
"You must be my second bodyguard," Tyrion said from the office doorway.
The small Dragonborn whipped around. Her golden-amber eyes — identical in color to Seryth's, different in every other way — locked onto him. She was almost exactly his height. Her tail lashed behind her, broadcasting irritation in semaphore.
"You're the Lannister."
"I'm the Lannister."
"You're shorter than I expected."
"You're shorter than I expected, and I set the bar fairly low."
A beat. Her eyes narrowed. Then the corner of her mouth twitched.
"Skara," she said. "And I'm not a babysitter."
"Tyrion. And I didn't ask for one. But since you're here —" He looked at her hammer. "Is that practical for someone your size?"
The tail stopped lashing. Her chin lifted. "I cleared a building full of Master's loyalists during the Meereen integration alone with this hammer. Four of them had swords and two had crossbows. Do you want to ask again whether it's practical?"
"I do not."
"Good."
She stayed with them. The argument about the reassignment continued for three more days, but she stayed — taking position at Tyrion's left while Seryth took the right, the three of them forming a unit that drew stares in every corridor of the compound. Two blue-scale lightning Dragonborn of dramatically different heights, flanking a Lannister dwarf who was rapidly becoming the most effective analytical mind in the Wyrmborne's advisory apparatus.
Skara argued with him constantly. About the routes, the schedules, the correct way to evaluate a room for threats, whether his habit of wandering taverns after dark constituted a security risk or a personality disorder.
Tyrion enjoyed every minute of it.
Angelus — First Person
They were in my study — Tyrion in the chair across from me, Seryth standing behind him with her arms crossed, Skara perched on the desk's edge with her legs dangling because the chairs were too tall for her.
I'd been reviewing Tyrion's latest report on Westerosi feudal succession law when I cast Observe on him. Idle curiosity — I'd never bothered before. He was human. Humans read as human.
Except Tyrion didn't.
His physiological data was normal. But the magical signature beneath it —
There was a faint, ancient thread woven into his biology. It predated his birth. A divine fingerprint — a deity's hand reaching into the fusing of worlds and shaping a single soul.
Aulë.
Well, well, well.
The Dwarven Smith-God from Tolkien's mythology. The Vala who had created the Dwarves themselves — not out of the raw materials of creation like the Elves, but from his own desire to have children, to have beings who shared his love of craft and stone and the stubborn, unbreakable will to make things that lasted.
I stared at Tyrion.
He was still talking. "— which means the Tyrells' position is dependent on agricultural leverage that a single bad harvest could —"
"Tyrion."
He stopped. Seryth's hand moved toward her sword before she remembers who she's dealing with and retracts her hand. Skara's tail went rigid.
"I just learned something about you," I said. "Something significant."
"That sounds ominous."
"It's not. It's —" I leaned back. "Have you noticed anything unusual about your endurance since arriving in Essos? Your stamina, your resistance to illness, your ability to process alcohol?"
"I assumed it was the climate."
"It's not the climate." I stood. "Come with me. All three of you."
The portal opened to Vaes Drakarys — specifically, to the mining complex where the Balrog had been killed months ago. The tunnels had been extensively explored since then, and the Dwarven ruins discovered during the initial survey had been cataloged and preserved.
Vaelos met us at the tunnel entrance. The copper-scaled commander gave Tyrion a curious look but said nothing beyond the expected courtesies.
"The Dwarven section," I said. "The bodies and the recovered texts."
Vaelos led us deeper. The tunnels narrowed, the air growing cooler, the enchanted crystal lighting casting amber patterns on walls that bore the marks of picks and hammers.
The Dwarven dead lay where they'd fallen — preserved by the ambient magical field of the mines, their armor and weapons intact. Short. Broad. Heavily muscled even in death, with thick beards and hands that were built for gripping hammers and shaping stone.
Tyrion stopped walking.
He stood in the tunnel, looking at the nearest body. His breathing had gone shallow.
"They're real," he said. His voice was barely audible. "Dwarves are real."
"They're real. They lived in these tunnels for centuries before the Balrog drove them out. The past Conjunction likely brought their mines, their ruins, and their dead into this world."
Tyrion knelt beside the nearest body. His hand hovered over the dead Dwarf's armor — beautifully crafted, even after all this time, the metalwork intricate and precise.
"The books," I said.
Vaelos brought them — three volumes recovered from a sealed chamber deeper in the mine, their bindings damaged but their contents largely intact. Tyrion took the first one and opened it.
He read. Fast — faster than I'd seen him read anything, his eyes moving across the Dwarvish script with an intensity that made Seryth shift uncomfortably.
"I can't read the language," he said. "But the diagrams — the engineering schematics, the forging techniques — I understand them. The logic I mean. The way the structures connect." He looked up at me. "How is that possible?"
"Because you were made by the same hand that made them."
The tunnel went quiet.
"Tyrion, your body is not a birth defect."
His head came up. His mismatched eyes — green and black — fixed on me.
"The past and current Conjunction merged everything when the worlds fused. Geography. Creatures. And divine influences." I crouched beside him, bringing myself to his eye level. "A being called Aulë — the god who created the Dwarves — reached across the boundary and touched you. Probably because he recognized something in your soul."
"Recognized what?"
"A Dwarf." I let the word land. "The stubbornness. The refusal to break. The mind that works like a precision instrument. Those aren't Lannister traits, Tyrion. Those are Aulë's fingerprints."
Tyrion's hands were shaking. The book trembled in his grip.
"Your height. Your proportions. Everything Tywin called a deformity." I held his gaze. "Those are gifts from a god of creation who looked at your soul and said 'this one is mine.'"
Tyrion stared at the Dwarven bodies. Then at his own hands. Then at me.
"My father," he said, and his voice cracked, "spent his entire life ashamed of me. Always trying to find ways of getting me killed. Along with Cersei helping him on occasions."
"Your father was ashamed of a son who was favored by a god. While Cersei was likely just jealous that you're smarter than her and she doesn't want to admit it."
Tyrion pressed the back of his hand against his mouth. His eyes were bright. Behind him, Seryth had gone very still, and Skara's tail had stopped moving entirely.
"After all this time," I said, "Tywin was ashamed of you because of your appearance and height, when in reality, you were blessed by a Dwarven God." A chuckle escaped me. "Imagine Tywin's and Cersei's reactions if they found out."
Tyrion's composure broke. He laughed — short, sharp, building into something that echoed off the tunnel walls.
"I won't lie," he said, wiping his eyes. "I'm eager to find out. Actually, you know what? I will tell them. When the time is right. I imagine my sister Cersei might literally lose her hair over the revelation." He laughed again — freer this time. "Hahaha!"
Vaelos contacted me through the communication array to confirm the portal back was ready. I opened it, and Tyrion stepped through, the Dwarven book clutched against his chest, his two blue-scaled bodyguards flanking him.
Back in my study, Tyrion set the book on my desk and stood looking at it for a long moment.
"You'll need to train," I said.
"Train." Tyrion looked down at his hands. "You want me to train."
"I want you to find out what that body can actually do."
Something changed in Tyrion's expression. The sardonic mask that he wore often shifted. Beneath it, briefly, was something raw and hungry and fierce.
"I'll start tomorrow," he said. He picked up the book and walked to the door. Seryth and Skara fell in behind him.
At the threshold, he stopped.
"Angelus."
"Hmm?"
"Thank you. For seeing it."
Then he was gone. Seryth ducked through the doorframe. Skara's hammer caught the edge and she kicked it free without breaking stride.
I leaned back in my chair and stared at the ceiling.
How many more surprises will this world throw at me?
The Kulve Taroth hatchling chirped from her nesting basket beside my desk. She'd been sleeping through the entire meeting, and now she was awake, her amber-gold eyes blinking at me, her tiny golden horns catching the light.
I reached down and scratched behind her horns. She chirped again and pressed into my hand.
I can't wait to find out.
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End of Chapter Forty-Nine