(Five years later)

The roof baths were always warm in the summer. The sea breeze moved the curtains aside and let the sun soak in the dark green tiles. Most of the Pride heaved ice up from the cold room to bathe in the day. But Eleos loved the baths by twilight.

The moonfish they kept in the gutter around the pool's rim came to life. Their blue glimmer threaded around the bath like a sunken necklace. And if the water was still, even the star-freckled sky leaned in for her reflection.

Of course, with Siel in the bath, the water never stilled long enough for the stars' vanity.

"Stop squirming, cub." Eleos reached over the child to scoop more hair cream from its jar. It was slick and sticky, like honey and oil.

Siel's toy dragon slipped from her fingers and she darted after it. The tips of her tight curls caught in her wake and trailed pearly white cream in the water.

Eleos ran the cream through her own hair with impatient fingers. "Careful. It needs to soak." Though it was useless with the cub, the girl's hair was already half-rinsed. "I guess it's been long enough."

Siel pushed her dragon aside and looked up with eyes that sparkled with play. "I can rinse?"

For that smile alone, Eleos would forfeit every star in the sky. A few months ago, the cub had moved with Romna and her new husband to the country. And Eleos in her city was worse off for it. "Rinse away, sweet."

Siel ducked under the water and tossed her head with distinctly lion ferocity.

Eleos laughed and put her hair in a high bun to soak. The cub popped out of the water, shaking her mane of curls with relish and rinsing her wooden dragon. The hinges on its wings had rusted and they squeaked with the girl's enthusiasm.

With Siel's hair unbound and dripping down her back, the two horns on her scalp were full view. They grew back from her hairline to curl toward her ears.

Eleos had once seen a portrait of the Black Hunger (Stalwar, the old overseer)'s mother. Her horns had been similar, curled from the top of her head to her jaw. Those portraits were of her dragon-skin, of course; only hybrids got their skins muddled when human like this.

If the cub's horns grew as prominent as that, the half-empty feeling of the city would be worth it. Dirty blood was much easier to hide in the country.

Siel's dragon paused in its skim of wings over the water. "What's wrong?"

Eleos smiled, lowering herself in the warm bath and snatching the kit's toy from her. "Nothing, sweet."

Siel gave Eleos a suspicious look. "Your heart hiccuped."

Perceptive little kit. The cacophony of heightened senses overwhelmed most lion cubs until mid-adolescence. So it must have been the other thing in her.

Eleos maintained her smile. "We've got a big night tonight is all. The sea district is a no easy place for a cub."

Siel retrieved her toy with offense. "I'm ready."

"Dangerous people go there."

Siel rolled to float on her back and set her dragon on her belly. "I like dangerous people."

"Of course you do." Eleos scooped an oil and sugar scrub from a jar at the pool's rim. She scrubbed her arms and back harder than usual; the thinner her skin, the more thorough the scent mufflers. The cub was subjected to the same treatment.

"Why's that crack in the sky bigger than the others?" Siel's curls floated about her in a black halo. She pointed to the sky that the bath's curtains framed like a window.

The sky plates were a dark blue and the cracks between them bled a twilight green. Meaning it was later than Eleos'd thought.

Celebrations for the first high tide of summer would start soon. Eleos had promised her mother she'd wear whatever the lioness thought best (a frightening, foolish promise in retrospect). But first, she had a meeting in the sea-district to attend and if they didn't leave soon, she'd be in danger of going in her mother's full regalia.

She rinsed her shoulders and glanced at the crack in the sky Siel referred to: a great chasm of colour cutting the night like an open wound. "It's called the Spine. The weight of the world was distributed evenly. And then..." Eleos splashed the cub. "Crack! Someone broke it."

Siel snorted and rubbed the water from her eyes. "Who's big enough to break the sky?" she said doubtfully.

"Dragons, silly." Eleos unwound her hair from its knot. The tips fell past her back to swoosh in the water. "They flew too high and unbalanced the world."

Siel raised her toy from the bath. The dim light of the moonfish caught in droplets on its wooden fangs. "Not every dragon has wings," she told Eleos superiorly, and turned to terrorise the moonfish with her wooden beast.

At her movement, two ridges of bone were visible between the child's shoulder blades. They were out-of-place and foreign, parallel to her spine and still half-formed under her skin like snakes under a sheet.

Horns, one could hide. But wings?

Eleos' hair stuck to her arms like long, black leeches. She knelt in the bath to rinse.

Different skins didn't always meld well. If a hybrid lived long enough to show signs of their muddled human-skin, the deformities often killed them—or so it was said; nature's way of purging dirty blood. Eleos knew that wasn't always true. But nightmares of human skin tearing open for wings woke her with a strangle of inevitability now.

Eleos ran her fingers over her scalp and considered the green-cracked sky. She recovered the conversation before the cub could tune in to her worry. "Wingless dragons? You mean drakes. Have you ever seen the snakes? As big as mountains!"

When her hair felt mostly clean, Eleos rose from the water and spread her arms to loom over Siel and the moonfish until the girl giggled. "And if their fat scales don't break the sky, then the wyverns—some of them have two sets of wings! They'll do the job for them."

Siel wrinkled her nose at Eleos' bared teeth. "Wyrms and dragons can have double wings too."

"Those are rare." Eleos splashed her and gave her hair one last rinse. "You've been researching. Your mother doesn't like you looking into that stuff."

"Just listening." Siel drove her toy dragon into the water with a frown. "Not researching anything."

Eleos untangled the wiry curls from the girl's horns and kissed the top of her brow. "Don't tell your Momma Romna I said so, but listening is good. Research too, even. The more you know about the enemy, the better."

Siel bit her lip, preening with praise.

Eleos pinched the bottom of the child's ear and climbed the bath's step in a cascade of water. "As long as you remember the broken Spine of the world, hey?" She gestured for Siel to climb from the bath and grabbed a towel from the floor. "Wings or not, dragons shouldn't be underestimated."

"Don't listen to your aunt, Siel," came a voice from behind the curtains. "The sky broke of its own accord centuries ago. If anything, the dragon's Court and Coven are dedicated to healing it."

Eleos draped her towel around Siel's thin shoulders. The family knew about the horns, but the fledgling wings were best kept hidden for now.

The curtains blew aside to reveal Layce with her harsh-angled bones and yellow silk. Bowls of moonfish along the roof reflected in the mirror and caught in the ruby eyes of a lion pendant strung on the woman's neck.

"Some warning is appreciated, Mother." Eleos gathered her hair over her shoulder. It was as heavy as the sea when wet.

Siel's keen eyes must have seen her grandmother's disapproving scowl in the shadows. She tucked closer to Eleos and tightened the towel around her shoulders.

"I don't know what's more unbecoming. The tattoos or the scars," Layce said, long-sufferingly.

Eleos was so relieved her mother's disapproval was directed at her, she laughed and wrung out her hair on the tile. "The scars I would imagine. Siman designed the tattoos himself." She turned her hand to admire the cuff of tiger stripes on her forearm. "The scars, though; those weren't planned."

"Yes, well both make my job more difficult, hey? Come where I can see you."

Eleos grabbed a towel and guided Siel to the vanity by the terrace door. A propped up mirror caught the blue curtains and fish-rimmed bath behind her. Eleos adjusted its tilt to look her in the eye. Layce always got doubly critical when she had a suitor in mind.

Her mother's talon-like hand grabbed her shoulder and pushed her into the vanity's seat.

"Siel," Layce ordered sharply. The lurking child startled. "Hand me that brush."

Eleos took the wooden brush from the vanity and handed it to her mother herself. With her other hand, she steered Siel to the stool at her feet. "Sit, cub. Let me do your hair."

Siel sat, still as a corpse, as Eleos scrunched another layer of cream for braiding into her curls. The toy dragon remained hidden under her towel.

The toy had been a gift from Siman a year back. Shortly after, he, Romna and Eleos had squabbled about the child and no one had seen him since. The wooden dragon became a point of contention between mother and cub. So Eleos (who hated dragons but loved the cub more) hid it in her closet for their city visits.

Layce's forceful hand dragged the brush through Eleos' mane of hair. Her eye drifted to the mass of fabric Layce had piled on the vanity. It glinted with diamonds and chains. Next to them was an arsenal of creams and kohls and rouge.

"Mother, we talked about this. I first have a meeting in Shark's Cage."

"Who calls a meeting for a Kana on high tide?"

"Fil told me it was urgent." (Informally, Fil was Eleos' informant. Formally, a bartender at the Cages).

"Urgent, urgent. Rat-skins find everything urgent. You know what's really pressing?"

"What?" Eleos gently parted the cub's hair down the middle.

"Your hope of a pride someday. Of a mate." Layce used the brush to pull Eleos' head back until she looked her daughter in the eye. "Do you hear me?"

Even upside down and with the too-thin look of age about her, Layce of Kana was a beautifully fierce woman. She kept her hair cut to the scalp to show off the dark, smooth angles of her face. The gold chains around her neck mirrored the gold paint she'd swept in her lashes.

"Mother, I can brush my own hair."

Layce clicked her tongue and returned Eleos' head to a natural angle. "Your bleeding cycle never aligned so perfectly with the festival. You get a man tonight, no one will blame you for the cub you ensnare him with down the line."

Eleos sighed. "Who is he?"

"A panther with the Claw. A good alliance for the Pride, mind." She wrung out the tips of Eleos' hair and wrapped the rest in a towel. "Your father was part of the Claw. Full circle, having you tie us to them again."

"My father is not a point in this panther's favour."

"He'll make you a good cub."

Eleos tilted Siel's head to plait the other side. "I think I make the cub. He just does the begetting."

Layce rapped her on the head with the butt of the brush. "The cub needs a playmate, hey, Siel?"

Layce seemed to expect an answer, so the cub cowered a smile in her hunch of damp towel. "I liked the cheetah from two months ago?"

Eleos clicked her tongue and tied off the ends of the cub's hair with strings that jingled with shells. "The kid was barely twenty."

Siel startled, fingers to the shells at her chin. "That's old!"

Eleos laughed and Layce straightened her shoulders to test the necklaces. Eleos' eye found her reflection again and her smile pinched at the corners. It would seem tonight's fashion required a full fitting. Never a good sign. "Well, he was too young for me anyway."

"How old are you?" Siel sounded disturbed.

"Two years older than your mother. Which makes me nearly thirty." She whispered the last word.

Siel's mouth dropped. "That's really old. No wonder everyone's worried about you."

Eleos tugged the girl's ear. "Easy, cub. I'm not wasting away quite yet."

Layce tsked her tongue doubtfully and, with renewed determination, began her elaborate art of silk draping to soften all the muscles, tattoos and scars into something more promising.

First, the necklaces were tied to the throat to make sure the neckline wouldn't interfere. They were gold chains with a heavy black diamond that rolled beneath Eleos' sternum.

Eleos didn't like wearing gold. Her skin was sallow like sand in comparison to the rich, earthy tones of the Kana, and gold highlighted that difference. As did her straight, long hair that Layce uncoiled from its towel to oil into submission.

At the least the sheer black silks she wrapped Eleos in had brown undertones that darkened her lips and deepened the tattoos on her arms. Made her look dangerous. Which she preferred to... promising.

Layce caught her eye in the mirror, a thick needle threaded with gold ribbon between her teeth. Apparently, there were eyelets at the back that needed stitching. "No complaints, hey?"

"As long as you cut me out of this before I head to the Cage."

"Stand so I can adjust the skirt, child."

Eleos obeyed, arms extended at her sides, and Siel swivelled on her stool to watch the transformation.

"How else are we gonna get you a good cat?" Layce said, in between threading the eyelets. "You've no second skin to speak of."

Eleos made sure Siel caught her grin. "But I'm pretty."

"You're peace-vowing."

"I believe in something."

"You're family in paper, not in blood."

"The coast knows the Kana title is mine regardless."

"And you're a tigress." In a sudden movement, Layce yanked the ribbons at the back of the dress in a cinch of silk.

Eleos put a hand to her diaphragm. "Yes, by far the worst of my sins," she managed.

"And you're old," Siel said, knowingly.

"Oh hush, cub." Eleos smoothed the silk and braved the mirror.

The fabric around her midriff was so tight, she could see the hollow of her belly button and the ridge of a scar on her hip from chasing Siman when they were children.

But the rest of the dress was as loose and flowy as the sea. The neckline dripped so low, a strong wind could blow it right off her shoulder. ("It shows off the jewels, Eleos. Don't fuss.") The skirt panels were open and swayed like willow branches around her thighs.

"Hm," she said politically. "Pretty. But not for the Cages."

Layce was rearranging the tentacles of silk at her knees. "Like a sea-nymph herself," she crooned.

"That was inked and shredded by a squid."

"Eleos. That temper..."

Her mother looked so pained, Eleos relented. She unstuck a damp strand of her hair from her face and smiled for the cub. "Right. Do I look like the slut I'm meant to?"

Layce tugged the gold lacing at the back. "Don't use that language in front of the cub."

"I know what that word means," Siel offered.

Eleos laughed. At the least the silk had no boning and moved with her breath. The last dress Layce had wrapped her in had strangled her laugh like a hawk with a songbird. "I'll take that as a yes. Now, Mother, fetch a corkscrew or something. Extract me so I can get to the Cages."

"But its so pretty." Layce admired her handiwork like a butcher admires a well-cleaved slab of steak.

"And I don't need it for another..." Eleos looked up at the sky. The cracks were a grey-blue now, the sky-plates a deep sapphire. Indeed. She was late. "Four hours?"

Layce straightened the necklace, the diamond was cold on her skin.

"Come, Mother. You promised. Think of all the damage I can do to this in four hours."

With a twist of her lips, Layce conceded. "But you're keeping your hair down," she held a bony finger between them. "If you braid it, it'll be too kinked to work with later."

Anything to get out of silk that clung like starfish.

In short order, Eleos was free. She donned a much more comfortable sweater that cropped at her waist and satin trousers that tied off at the ankles. They were embroidered to look like peacock feathers. Colourful. Breathable. Much better.

The cub was dressed too, her horns hidden away in a carefully wrapped headscarf.

"Back by when, Eleos?" Layce demanded.

Eleos had a bottle of scent suppressor and a needle balanced in one hand. "Black-sky," she promised. She pricked the needle on her wrist, sterilised it and did the same to the cub. Both wrists for her. Just to be safe.

"An hour before black-sky," Layce was lining up the jewellery, silks and makeups like she was preparing for a medical operation. "Do you hear me, Eleos? The paints and hair must be perfect."

"Snakes and serpents, mother. Yes." Eleos corked the scent-suppressor, grabbed the child's hand and headed to the roof's door. "We'll be back."

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Wyverns and wyrms and drakes, oh my!
Will there be pictures of all my dragon inspiration? But of course. :) Patience, my loves.

I literally am so excited for this story to hit the FAN! A little nervous, because it is dif-fer-eeeeeent than CTW. But, heh, welcome anyway.

Feel free to point out any typos or narrative hiccups. If they're not fixed by the time you are reading it and others have already pointed it out—please, just tell me again. I probably just told myself I'd fix it later and even I don't believe that spiel anymore. At this point, I have had too many bad typos to be embarrassed by them. So if you're one of those magic hawk-eyed readers (though 'left her a tangle of veins and cows' last week, that was an elephant in a shooting range.  Don't know how I missed it) drop a comment. It will remind me to fix it. ;)

So another international move looms in August. Spain—take me home! Hopefully I can post even three times a week then. Siesta, man. It's better than coffee for productivity. Strike that. Nothing is better than coffee. But siestas are a close second.
For now—two updates a week. Tuesdays and Fridays.

So, you guessed it.
Next Update: Next Tuesday!

Vote and comment if you liked it! <3 xx

dedicated to the_war_veteran for being with me since (what feels like) the beginning. Thank you!!!