Nellie was called to Silas’s office shortly after she and Morgan had spread out the dragon lore he’d been collecting. It was hard to hide her annoyance at this interruption as she stalked to his office; it had taken her almost an hour to politely ditch Ava who was eager to give swordpractice a try. Nellie had been begging her for weeks to partner up with her since they were both novices.
The office was crowded. Silas sat behind his polished desk. Lilac and Arch sat in the provided chairs before it. Fin and Arden stood behind them. Nellie squeezed herself between Fin and Arden, the three of them glancing at each other questioningly.
“I apologize for having you all here at once,” Silas said. “Busy day. Too busy for me to give each of you a separate fifteen.” He set his eyes on Arden and Fin first. “There’ll be a special guest at the stables for the next two nights. I’m having you both tend to her. Arden will take evenings. Serafin will take mornings. Here.” Silas stretched to hand them each a short list through Lilac and Arch. “Give those to Mrs. Adams, and she’ll set you up.”
“We have to study too,” Arden groaned.
“Britt did send you here to learn,” Silas teased. He nodded to the doors. “I’d get your reading material fast.”
She jostled side to side to give Arden and Fin each space to get to the door behind her. She moved closer so she was standing more between Arch and Lilac than up against the door.
“I’ll have Mrs. Adams announce it during morning lessons, but our guest is of the royal variety,” Silas said. “He’ll need–.”
“Ira,” Nellie interrupted hopefully, wiggling with excitement. “And the box stall is for Cecily, right?”
“Cecily,” Lilac questioned. “What a pretty name….”
“His highness did ask if you were still here,” Silas said with a smile. “As I started to say, his highness will need attendants. Archibald, I was hoping with you being one of the eldest here…?”
“Oh my goodness me, you want me to wait on the prince,” Arch asked, his eyes wide. “B-but, I’m just some mage!”
“The prince doesn’t have any grasp on magic outside of some training with the Order as a kid,” Silas said. “I think he’ll be interested to hear about it from someone that actually has it.”
Arch’s pale cheeks were tinted pink. He murmured inaudibly, nodding. He looked more like a small boy than a six-two teenager capable of creating golems.
“Right,” Silas said, gesturing to the door. “I’ll let you prepare. I need a word with the girls.”
Nellie took Arch’s chair as he left. She stole a glance at Lilac but found the older girl inspecting split-ends in her waistlength blonde hair, humming quietly.
“I would like to have you two tackle the medium greenhouse,” Silas said. He smirked. “Disappointed, Nellie?”
“Oh,” Nellie said, blushing. “N-no… Yes. A little.”
“I’m not great with conversation,” Lilas said.
“No, no, it’s got nothing to do with you,” Nellie panicked.
“We don’t have a huge focus on plants and what you can do with them, and I think Lilac here could fill in some of those gaps,” Silas said. He smiled warmly at Lilac. “She’s a skilled organic chemist. The Auctorita will benefit immensely once she’s old enough to build traveling arsenals fulltime.”
“But college first,” Lilac sighed.
“It’ll strengthen your natural talent,” Silas said. “You’re going in with a plan. No worries.”
She wanted to ask what a traveling arsenal was, but remembered how Penny had released smoke when facing the Cumberland dragon and how Lilac had let loose a smoke grenade when Fin and Morgan were fighting. Nellie hadn’t given either case much thought, but it made sense that someone had to make those.
Lilac stood, jolting Nellie from her thoughts, and left the office with a list in her hand.
“Anything you need to discuss,” Silas asked.
“Not really…,” Nellie trailed off, searching her brain. “Is Penny coming back? If Ira’s going to be here, is she?”
“Not to my knowledge,” Silas said. “She comes and goes without much notice.” He grabbed some papers. “It’s early, but I might as well tell you now that I’m setting up a field trip. I’m thinking you, Brody, Itzel, and perhaps Calix for this one.”
“What kind of field trip,” Nellie asked curiously.
“Patience, Nellie, patience,” Silas said, winking.
Morgan was less than thrilled when Nellie told him about Ira visiting. He grumbled and sulked as Nellie searched the table for an intriguing dragon story to take his mind off his self-imposed rival.
“If Ira’s here, and Penny was just here, then we should focus on a North American dragon story,” Nellie said. She looked hopelessly at the scatters of notes and printed out artist renditions. “Do you have these in any sort of order?”
“That’s what we’re supposed to be doing now,” Morgan said, “but you’re all on about his highness.”
“All I said was that he’s visiting,” Nellie said icily. “And really, that’s good for us. We can ask him which dragon stories he and Penny already investigated.”
“True,” Morgan said grudgingly.
He bent under the table to retrieve a plastic filing case with a cheap, black clasp. He dumped it out, spilling a small,thin marker and little colored slips of paper.
“I found this in one of those airport stores that’s all office supplies,” Morgan said. “There are seven colors. We can work out a system. Continents. Number of legs. Whatever makes sense.”
“You bought it on your way here,” Nellie asked, grinning. “You knew exactly what you wanted to do when you came back to the States.”
“It was the most memorable part of my last visit,” Morgan joked.
The first thing they had to do was match images with notes. Morgan had copied articles and folklore tidbits off the internet and out of books. He later printed pictures off at random after arriving at the compound. It was a puzzle to piece them together, and not all notes had images, and not all images had a caption for what dragon it was supposed to be.
A picture of a red-eyed creature with metallic feathers and scales, and a long, sharp beak caught her attention. Nellie saw Morgan had scrawled ‘snallygaster’ in the corner.
“Why d’you have a snallygaster in here?”
“Dragon adjacent,” Morgan said. He plucked the image from her, pairing it with notes. “We don’t know the exact definition for what is a dragon. I put that famous Scottish pond creature in here too.”
“Nessie? Wait, Nessie’s real?”
“How can you still be surprised by such things,” Morgan asked, rolling his hazel eyes.
“That needs to be our first division,” Nellie said. “Straight up, common-ish dragons versus dragon adjacent.”
They slowly began forming four piles. They marked the more traditional dragons with red slips, water based creatures like Nessie with blue, and creatures like the snallygaster–typically bird-esque–with yellow. Investigated stories they agreed to mark with white. The Cumberland dragon was the only one with Nellie debating on the snallygaster.
“It’s just weird thinking of it as a dragon,” Nellie said.
“Adjact.”
“Your dad heard about the trouble, interfered just on a whim to use me as bait–.”
“Was it a whim,” Morgan asked. “From my perspective, there was a creature the Order of Ferblanc couldn’t handle–weird enough–so he decided to dangle you out to see if it reacted.”
She marked the snallygaster with a white tab and set it on top of the Cumberland dragon notes. It was hard to think of the creature in the same way she thought of the Cumberland dragon, but Morgan’s assessment of the Regere’s thoughts could not be ignored either.
She had been told finding dragons was unusual, right up there with her having Ash in her life. She was two for two, still firmly the weird kid.
A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth as she remembered Ira was also the weird kid by those metrics.
---
Mrs. Adams had them dress in their formal wear that afternoon. It had spread among them that Prince Ira would be visiting, and they fidgeted and buzzed at each other while they waited in the sweltering heat outside the grand front doors.
A black luxury car crept up the drive, coming to a halt with the front turned back down the drive. The driver hurried to the door, paused to straighten himself, and then opened.
Nellie raised her hand enthusiastically, but her enthusiasm dipped with her hand just as Lilac’s and Ava’s joy went up a notch, captured by short squeals.
Ira’s golden hair was a shade darker with the amount of mousse in it to keep it perfectly in place. His shirt was pressed with the sleeves carefully rolled and stitched into three-quarters. His dress pants had a subtle checkered pattern that matched the lapels of the dark blazer he carried over his shoulder. He carried a leather case in his other hand, and Nellie couldn’t help noticing that it matched his absurdly polished shoes.
“Your highness,” Mrs Adams said solemnly, bending her knee with great effort. She motioned at Arch. “Mr. Archibald Willoughby will see to your needs while you’re with us.”
“Thank you,” Ira said crisply. “Has the stable been prepared?”
“Yes, highness,” Mrs. Adams said, gesturing for Arden and Fin to step from line. “These will be the attendants.”
“No need for that,” Ira said. “My room?”
Mrs. Adams shooed them to the side to usher Ira in out of the heat. They hovered, peering through into the foyer.
“I should…,” Arch trailed off. He slid through them, into the house, and disappeared up the staircase.
“Awesome,” Arden said, breaking the silence. “I was told not to do chores by royalty. Mrs. Adams can’t say anything.”
“Do you think it’s safe to change,” Brody asked, tugging his collared shirt. “I’m boiling.”
“I change clothes if you do,” Calix said, slipping from his suit jacket.
“Same,” Fin said.
The three of them headed off to change with Arden a step behind, still bragging that he was let out of chores.
“I’m not staying dressed up for him,” Morgan grumbled. He said something to Itzel, presumably asking if she wanted to change, and they both headed indoors.
Lilac swayed in her billowy peach and pink dress. She spread the long layers of skirt and did half a twirl.
“I’m going to the garden,” she announced. “The larkspur is still in bloom.”
“We should change too,” Ava said. “It’s still at least four hours until supper, and you know that’ll be formal.” She sighed dreamily. “He’s much more handsome than you said. Straight out of a fairytale!”
Nellie didn’t comment beyond a forced smile as she strode across the entryway towards the stairs. The perfect, polished prince was not the Ira she knew. He was much colder, more detached. He had not so much as glanced at her when he arrived.
She was slipping her feet into her sneakers when a firm knock sounded on her door. She grabbed her other shoe. “It’s unlocked,” she called out.
“You stopped texting.” Ira laughed awkwardly. “Well, didn’t give you much reason to keep it up, did I?”
He still wore the dress pants, but had changed his buttoned shirt for a loose fitting, plain t-shirt. His hair was still terribly stiff and unnatural.
“Are you supposed to be talking to me,” Nellie asked.
“Are you cross because I ignored you outside,” Ira asked, smirking. She reddened but he was looking at his nails, or pretending to. “Truth be told, I’m not sure how all right it is for us to be chummy. It very well could ruin the social life you’re building here.”
Nellie scoffed, “How?”
Ira gestured down himself incredulously. “I don’t know if you’ve caught on, Nellie, but I’m a prince.”
It had been a shock learning the guy who crashed on her couch a few times was royalty. She could clearly see Ira with his disheveled hair and old AC/DC shirt, politely trying to drink old, soggy, bagged tea.
She shrugged. “So?”
“Cheers,” Ira said, smiling weakly. “But, others may not feel that way about my status.”
“I’m already the odd one with Morgan being my cousin,” Nellie pointed out.
Ira conceded with a nod. He crossed his arms and braced himself against the wall next to the door.
“I was going to head over to the stables shortly to wait for Cecily. Would you care to follow?”
Nellie was about to answer when her door was thrown open, causing her to fall off the edge of her bed.
“Morgan,” Nellie hissed, massaging her back as she stood. “What if I was changing?”
“Then, I'd hope you’d have your door locked,” Morgan said. He glared at Ira out of the corner of his eye. “You should lock it to stop people wandering in.”
“Good to see you again, Master Morgan,” Ira said in monotone.
“Highness,” Morgan said, nodding. He sauntered over to Nellie and plopped the plastic filing case on her bed. “We need but a moment, sir, then you’re free to go wander off and ignore us little folk.”
“Not now, Morgan,” Nellie said. “Ira just got here. He’s probably jetlegged.”
“All the more reason to knock this out quickly,” Morgan said stubbornly.
There was a twitch in Ira’s jaw that was either from annoyance or trying not to laugh. He kept his face neutral and eyes trained on Morgan’s small, skinny frame.
“What’ve you got,” Ira said after a long pause.
Morgan’s face lit up, but he covered it with a sneer so quickly that Nellie wasn’t sure Ira caught it. He unclasped the case and held it open to Ira with a superior air.
Ira peered in curiously.
“I started gathering notes on all the dragon lore I could find,” Morgan said. “As Nellie’s blood, I’m honorbound to help her find her mother.”
“Is that a fact,” Ira said, slightly bored, glancing from the case to Morgan. “May I?”
They crowded around Nellie’s bed. Nellie explained the labeling system as Ira picked through the pictures and notes. Morgan explained his dragon adjunct picks with his chest puffed out.
Ira froze with a picture of the Welsh flag in his hand. His clear, blue eyes were fixed on the image with intensity to burn through it.
“Ira?” Nellie touched his arm, causing him to jump.
“So sorry,” he said. He pinched his eyes. “I suppose I am more jetlagged than I thought.” He backed away from the bed. “Shall we try again tomorrow? I planned on taking a day for Cecily and me to rest before setting back out.”
“You can’t just tell us which dragons you’ve already faced and leave us alone,” Morgan asked.
“Morgan,” Nellie hissed, elbowing him.
Ira smiled wryly. He excused himself again, and left the room. Nellie assumed he was heading for the stables.
They were repacking the filing case when a knock sounded on her door.
“See,” she said to Morgan, “it’s normal to knock first. It’s open!”
Arch stood there looking bewildered. “Umm… I think I’ve lost his highness… Any chance you heard him walk by?”
----------------------------
Getting some setup. I named Arden's mom Brittany, because I thought it would be funny to have a very sterotypical 80s/90s name floating around.
I was going to have Morgan answer Arch with a 'no didn't see him, omg you disappointment' and Nellie directing him to the stables, but it wasn't really needed.
