Dragon, 123

Boys, can I talk to you for a second? Gavin asked Grey Rain and Greg, sitting down at the table with them where they were drawing together.

Grey Rain nodded, putting down his charcoal. About what? Is it the mess we made in the bathroom? Because I was going to clean it up but then I forgot!

It’s not about that, Gavin promised.

Though you can clean it up after we’re done talking, Owen added, because just because they had servants didn’t mean that the kids needed to get spoiled.

Grey Rain made a face, but Owen made the same face back, and he looked at Gavin again.

Dragon, 122

It wasn’t a long walk from the castle to the cathedral, but Gerard’s funeral procession felt long.

It was normal for rich people to pay pallbearers instead of having their family do it like normal people did, but Gavin and Gabrielle had decided they didn’t want to do that for their dad’s funeral. So Gavin, Gabrielle, Owen and Franz were carrying the casket, along with the head of Gerard’s bodyguard, Sir Pascal, and some nobleman named Bartimaeus, who was Gerard’s cousin.

The casket was made out of oak and it was heavy on Owen’s shoulder, but he knew it was heavier on Gavin and Gabrielle. The funeral was obviously a public event, so the streets were packed with people and even though the knights and city guard were keeping order, they still couldn’t exactly race to the First Church. That wasn’t how a funeral worked.

Dragon, 121

“I don’t, uh, want to be an insensitive jerk,” Twig said, sounding a bit nervous. He was glancing at the privy door, where Gavin had just gone.

Owen nodded, patting his shoulder. “Okay. What is it?”

“Um.” Twig was blushing, and took a deep breath. “What’s going to, like, happen? Like, Sir Gabrielle is going to be the queen now, right?”

Dragon, 120

“It seems like he had an aneurysm,” said Georgina, after she’d come into the room. They’d all been sitting waiting for the doctor to talk to her. She’d clearly been crying, and she sat down on a couch. Gavin got up and went to go sit beside her, hugging her. “There was nothing anyone could have done.”

“That’s when a blood vessel gathers a lot of blood and breaks open,” Boey said quietly, for Greg’s benefit. Owen would have done it, but he didn’t know what an aneurysm was. “It’s pretty rare, but it is something that can happen to a healthy person.”

“He didn’t seem sick at all,” Gabrielle said. She was in a chair, but she’d pulled it closer to the couch Franz was on and was holding his hand.

“He wouldn’t have,” said Gloria. She was sitting by herself, rubbing her arms, looking distant. “He would have felt fine until maybe a few seconds before it happened.”

Grey Rain tugged Owen’s sleeve. Did it hurt a lot?

Dragon, 118

“You know what we should do?” Gavin asked.

“What?” asked Owen, mentally counting to sixty as he did another push-up. He pushed back down, letting his cock sink all the way back into Gavin’s ass.

“When we’re ready to leave Great Scar. We should go north first. Your orchard isn’t that far away, probably not even a week.” Gavin had a writing board in front of him and was answering mail while Owen worked out.

Dragon, 117

“How could this have happened?”

“I don’t know,” Owen said. He sighed, hands in his pockets. “Nobody saw anything.”

“Because magic happened?” Gavin asked, scowling at the dungeon door. “Or because nobody was watching?”

“I mean literally nobody was watching,” Twig said, crouched in a corner. He’d been poking all the stones to find a secret entrance and hadn’t located one even though he’d insisted that all dungeons had one. “We were all at the wedding, including most of the palace guard.”

“There was somebody guarding the dungeon, he claims he didn’t notice anything amiss,” Gavin said. He rubbed his arms now. “Fuck.”

Owen touched Gavin’s shoulder. “We’ll find him.” This was Drew’s cell they were standing in. It had been found empty the night of the wedding.

Dragon, 116

“I’m just going to go pee before we have to head back,” Owen said, patting Gavin’s knee.

Gavin gave him a look, but a short one. “Don’t take forever. And bring Grey Rain back with you, I think he got distracted.”

“I don’t think he got distracted,” said Owen, rolling his eyes. “I’m pretty sure he went to the privy hoping someone would have sex with him there. I’ll bring him back. And Greg too.” It was unlike Greg to have gone missing, but he was gone too and had been for a while now.

“There’s some time before we have to go see Gabrielle, but don’t dawdle,” Gavin ordered.

Owen kissed his hand. “I’m not going to be late and ruin the wedding, don’t worry.”

Dragon, 115

“You know what I liked best about our weddings?” Owen asked Gavin, in the carriage on the way back to the castle.

“The fact that we got to marry people we loved?” Gavin asked, looking down at some papers.

Owen smiled. He and Gavin had married Edwin the other day in a really nice ceremony that Erik had told them had been how people had used to get married before the Catechism. People were smarter back then, and so lots of them had been allowed to get married to the same person, and Erik had painstakingly gotten together everyone Edwin loved so they could all marry him at once. It had been really nice. “Yes, but you know what I liked second best?”

Dragon, 114

Owen woke up with two tongues on his cock, so it was already a pretty good birthday before he’d even opened his eyes.

He did open his eyes though, just to make extra-sure that the tongues belonged to the people he thought they did, and there were Gavin and Edwin, licking him up and down, working together on Owen’s cock.

He had no idea how long they’d been at it, but it didn’t matter when the sight alone was what it was. Owen came, and Gavin moved fast, getting his lips over Owen’s head just in time to catch it all, swallowing every drop of Owen, looking up at him and meeting Owen’s eye.

Once Gavin was done swallowing, he kissed Edwin. “Take over,” he said, and he slid up to meet Owen as Edwin put his mouth on Owen’s cock. “Happy birthday,” he said, kissing Owen deeply.