Just before sundown, Peter came down the stairs and asked that Aurelie set the table. Apparently, they were having a party.
A thick chunk of green paint clung to his sideburns, and his fingers reminded her of a mixing pallet with all the different colors that clung to them. The amount of paint on him altogether could have completed a small painting.
When she reached for a stack of plates, Peter stopped her by placing a hand on the plates that she wanted to pick up. "No, not that many! How many people do you think can handle my wit?" he asked.
She assumed that setting the table meant setting the entire table. "I don't know, Peter. How many?"
"Three."
Aurelie nodded and took three white plates from the top of the stack.
If it was going to be a party which Alysia , Aurelie wasn't going to make it past the first bite. The paintings and the stories she could live through, but having him set a place for a dead woman would be too much. What if he made them speak? Did common courtesy suggest that she pushed through it and pretended to speak to someone who was not there? She wrestled with the idea of him having an imaginary friend for a few hours, thinking up scenarios of what this woman could make him do. Among them all, feeding wasn't the worst she could come up with. Aurelie was, after all, living in his house wage free, and he had started feeding her more. If she had to, she'd speak to Alysia. Gods, she'd even spoon-feed her.
Aurelie turned to hide her smile and shook her head.
"Is the third plate for Alysia?" she asked casually while walking out of the room. Normality was the way to handle these things, she guessed.
Peter did not respond and Aurelie turned to find out why. He stood with his hand on his hip, with a bewildered look on his face.
"Good God, child, how mad do you think I am?"
"I don't think you're mad," she lied.
Her words sparked a feeling of guilt within her. She had just roamed his house against his will and forced him to tell the truth, and now she was letting her hypocrisy lead her. Before he could call her out, she spoke again, "I'm sorry, Peter, that was a lie. I did not believe you this morning. I wanted to but your story is ridiculous."
Peter grabbed a cloth that lay near the extra plates that she had just set down and wiped the counter.
"You have to understand," she paused for a moment, trying to guess his reaction by his blank expression, "the story . . . it's a lot to take in. You're a man claiming to have been married to a god."
Aurelie lowered her gaze when he didn't respond and walked out of the room toward the dining table. Hurting his feelings was not her intention. Although, she was well aware that the truth would bruise him. Better bruised than made a fool! If he was anything like her, he would prefer bluntness over lies.
Pots and glass clanked, louder than necessary, in the kitchen. Aurelie placed the plates on the only empty corner of the table.
There was a small closet in the corner that was about a head shorter than she was. It was made from dark wood and engraved with runes that she did not recognize. Books were stacked on top of and next to each other on the shelves and on the very top. Aurelie had to pull a chair nearer and climb on top to reach the edge of the book mountain.
Peter's angry footsteps tapped loudly into the room. "I understand these little people that shy away from me. They've only known witches who hide behind the faces of human beings and pretend that they are one and the same. But you? What is it that is so ridiculous to you? Are you not a girl that breathes fire?" He stood at the door with the cloth still in hand. It was ragged and stained brown in patchesâthought still in better shape than her dress.
"I cannot breathe fire . . . technically." Aurelie turned toward him slowly.
Peter slapped the cloth against the table. "Damn it! You know what I mean."
"Yes, Peter," she shrugged, "I suppose I do but up to a point. For you to be married to her you'd have to be six hundred years old. She is a goddess, you are a man. There are plenty of things that don't make sense, maybe if you were to explain them..."
Peter smiled and nodded once. "Oh, I'll do better than explain. Come," he said and waved for her to follow. There was a spark in his eye that seemed more like a dare than excitement.
Aurelie jumped off the chair and followed him. Her curiosity was peaked, but so was her doubt. She hoped that whatever he was going to reveal wouldn't be a corpse of Alysia that he'd been storing.
A ghost, rather than a corpse at the dinner table would be preferred. Aurelie read a book like that once, and she had to sleep with Kaiden and Elizabeth for a week. Granted, she was only twelve, and they should have known better than to hand out literature where men kept bodies and treated them like living beings to a child.
The staircase wall was filled with family portraits. There was one of Kirin as a baby in which she could only guess was his mother's arms because his father stood behind them with a hand on her shoulder. Another was of Peter and a woman that was not Alysia. They were smiling and holding hands on a white garden swing.
The next was of Peter and a different woman. She held a child, and he was behind her just like the portrait of Kirin's parents. Only on this one, Peter did not look proud or the least bit happy. He had circles under his eyes and was as thin as a man who waited for death. Aurelie was surprised that a painter could capture such depth, and then surprised that he would not jolly up a family portrait, and instead make it look as if they were attending a funeral.
"Come on," Peter called from upstairs. "You've been here... Well, very long, have you not seen those enough?"
Not in detail, she'd seen the faces and got stuck on the painting of Kirin as a baby. That she knew every paint speck of. She had never really at the others. Peter seemed like quite the ladies' man and that's all she took him for but now . . . Her perception of him felt contrived and false and she was slowly convincing herself that he spoke the truth without having him show her whatever it was that he wanted to show her.
"I'm coming," she replied and tore herself away. With one quick glance, both of the women in the paintings were identical, but once you looked closer you could see that one had blue eyes and the other green, one's nose was sharper, and one's face rounder.
This was the first time Aurelie looked at them with an investigation in mind. The truth was, after all, in the details. Aurelie had been looking at the big picture of the man Peter was today. She excluded the bookshelf that seemed to be from the wrong century and did not pay attention to the clothes he wore in those paintings. It all seemed insignificant, and it still could be.
The bookshelf could have been an antique that was handed over through generations, and the fashions changed every five years. It was the difference in his eyes, however, that rose suspicion. The paintings were clearly painted in different centuries, but one thing remained the same and that was Peter. He looked to be decaying in one, but that was his health and not his appearance.
A light shone from his bedroom, and Aurelie heard a cupboard shift as she stepped closer. She stepped inside with an open mind. He mentioned breathing fire when he attempted to make his argument, but he forgot the scales. She couldn't breathe fire but she had grown scales. Was she even a person still? Did she have any right to that classification?
One of the wooden blocks that surrounded the lower half of his bedroom wall was removed, and placed on Peter's right. There was a hole in the wall into which Peter had stuck his head, and arms.
"Ah, here!" He moved backward and shook dust and wood chippings out of his hair with one hand while the other held onto documents.
Aurelie took them from him and sat on the bed examining. His birth was marked by King Leold Dranoir. She huffed and rubbed the paper between her fingertips. "It's so thick!"
"A lot changes in six hundred years." Peter folded his arms and lifted his chin. He was rightfully smug. She would be too if her birth was marked by one of the last wizard kings. It must have been about a hundred years after his reign that the line changed from wizards to dragons.
Aurelie flipped through the pages and stopped at a marriage certificate. The bride's name was Alysia Grimstake, and Peter was named as the groom. A red dragon was painted on the thick paper.
It used to signify the power of the Dranoir bloodline too. Back then the cave within which the dragons lived was royal property, and so were the beasts. Their strength, thus, reflected the strength of the family. Aurelie inspected the paper and to her own disbelief decided that it was original. The type hadn't been used it centuries as far as she knew. Tracing her fingers over each line of the faded script, she looked up at Peter to find him smiling.
"Is that enough proof?" he asked and reached out his hand for the documents.
Aurelie handed them over and stood up from the bed. "This is ridiculous." A goddess married to a man, in what realm was that even a slight possibility? Then again, a man that's been alive for six hundred years housing a dragon seemed even more ridiculous. And there they were looking over documents and preparing for dinner.
"Most interesting things are."
Aurelie smirked. "So, you think you're interesting?"
"Mostly." Peter nodded and straightened his smile. "Do you not find it so?"
Next time Aurelie would think twice about making a joke with an ancient man. "Well, I suppose when you're not running away from me, you're not too much of a bore." She widened her smile to see if Peter would catch on, but his expression remained blank. "I'm teasing, Peter. Your story is one of the most fascinating ones that I've heard, and I'd like to know more."
"Ah, and you shall!" He slapped his hands together and walked past her to the door. "Come now, our guest must be on his way."
"Who is it?" She followed him down the stairs.
"Nick! I thought you'd be glad to be in his company again. You two have gotten quite close over the last few days."
It sounded as if he was trying to set them up as a match. Aurelie flinched at the thought and increased her speed to keep up with Peter. "I wouldn't call it close. We've spoken, but not much else."
Peter laughed and waved her answer off. "You youngsters don't know what you want. He's a nice boy." Peter turned his head and eyed her dress. "Though in that dress, you wouldn't be able to attract a peasant."
Aurelie looked down and curled her upper lip. "I'm not trying to catch anyone. I'm with Kirin."
They reached the kitchen, and Peter grabbed a bowl of potato salad and passed it to her. "A dragon and a shadow walker? Heavens, no! That can never work. Think of your children."
Aurelie wrapped her arms around the salad bowl and pressed it closer. "I wasn't thinkingâ
"That's exactly why Nick is coming."
They had one conversation and he acted as if he could plan her whole future. "Peter, I appreciate . . . I'm with Kirin. I don't care what you have to say, and our children will be fine if we ever have any." Having children was the last thing on her mind. If she was honest, it wasn't even a part of her thoughts o. Survival, that's what she was focused on.
"You'd have little, half-breed mongrels running around?"
Aurelie took a step back. He was gas and his words were a spark. Fire blazed from her eyes, and she had to control herself not to burn a hole right through him. "I beg your pardon, sir, say that again and you'll not see the next year, never mind a hundred."
Her children would be royalty, not half-breed mongrels. Aurelie wasn't sure why she was so insulted over children she did not have, but if she had her way, Peter would be running around trying to extinguish flames.
"Oh," he waved a rag her way, "calm down. Can never have a heated conversation with a dragon, you're all the same. Ha!" he turned to her laughing, "heated!"
Aurelie watched him through narrowed eyes for a moment, unsure of how to proceed, then grabbed the salad, and went to place it on the table. The bag that Nick brought her was still on top of it. She grabbed it, threw it toward the bookshelf, and moved the salad to the middle.
The statement was so crude, that it filled her with rage. Her magic felt raw again, just like the first few times that she managed to summon it.
Aurelie strutted back to the kitchen and folded her arms. "Who are you to Kirin?" If he was going to decide who he should not be with, she had the right to know who they were to each other.
"His grandfather."
Kirin had not mentioned his grandfather once, but that was not the focus of her questions. She wanted to fuel the fight, and feel her magic throbbing through every finger. "Alright, grandfather, I'm guessing you don't have any mongrels? The hundreds of wives that you've had have all been shadow walkers then? I heard Alysia was a witch before she became a goddess."
"She was," he answered, stirring something and not turning to her. "But I was a wizard back then so I don't see your point in the slightest. Wedding shadow walkers, ha! Is your best argument incest?"
Someone knocked on the door and they both ignored it. Company wasn't quite welcome, yet.
"Incest? What are you talking about?" Aurelie rolled her eyes. "Doesn't matter. You're lucky that I'm a prospect for Kirin. I'm a Dranoir, for crying out loud. Whatever the circumstance, my blood will always have value and you know that. Mongrels." She made a gesture of spitting.
Nick did not wait. The door swung open, and he stepped in with a green bottle in hand.
"Hi," he said and took off his cloak, stopping the conversation.
Aurelie wasn't about to discuss what a catch she was in front of the man Peter wanted to set her up with. No, that was the opposite of what she wanted Nick to think.