“Argus, what are you talking about?” She bent low, finally settling her fingers in his hair so that his shallow breaths brushed her cheek.

“I chose to fall,” he said, hand sliding up to grip her wrist. He turned his face, pressing bloodless lips to the frantic flutter of her pulse. “To meet my mother, without any promise of returning home.”

At this, Hlee reared back a little, glancing over at Niam Tais. Niam Tais was staring up at the lunar rainbow, face bathed in silver. She chanted softly under her breath. When Hlee followed her gaze, the lunar rainbow had transformed into a massive sinuous thing, its slick body glimmering.

“But after meeting you, I thought it’d be okay to stay.” His voice faded into a hoarse whisper.

She swallowed thickly, her breaths coming fast and thin. She understood with sudden clarity that this was his only chance. If Argus didn’t leave now, then he would die well before the next lunar rainbow.

“You can’t stay,” she said, the words breaking inside her.

Beside her, Niam Tais fell silent just as a violent gust of wind howled through the woods. The trees trembled, leaves ripped from their branches, as an enormous serpentine dragon descended into the clearing. Hlee yelped, clutching at Argus as the creature curled its long body into the small space, its scales shivering between silver and every hue of the rainbow.

Niam Tais rushed to Argus’s other side, jolting Hlee back to her senses. Together, they hauled him onto the creature’s back. She didn’t let go right away, though, instead burying her face in his shoulder.

“Hlee,” he whispered against her hair. “Come with me.”

She drew back, eyes wide, thoughts tumbling through the infinite space of a possibility she never could have imagined. When she looked to Niam Tais, the woman only nodded, hands clasped over her heart.

She couldn’t possibly. Could she? Moonlight began to pierce through the dragon’s form. She was out of time.

She leaped onto its back and wrapped her arms around Argus’s waist. His hands found hers, pulling her even tighter against him. To Niam Tais, she said, “My parents—”

“Kuv mam saib xyuas nkawv,” Niam Tais assured her. “Tell the emperor I want to see you both again.”

Hlee grinned, a wild energy roaring through her as the dragon rose into the night sky. As Niam Tais and Little Nova and all the earth fell away, she thought perhaps this was how Niam Tais’s story had been meant to end.

And how her own began.

Five Times Shiva Met Harry

Five Times Shiva Met Harry

Sangu Mandanna

The first time Shiva met Harry, they reached for the same book about the Russian Revolution on the library shelf. They did the awkward laugh thing people do, and Shiva had time to notice that he had very, very nice green eyes, and then he said, “You go ahead; there’s another one down here,” and that should have been the end of it.