Luminous

40 - Revelations

Meya nodded over and over, soothing herself. Coris sprang up and strode to his study desk, fetching a journal from his secret drawer.

"On the other hand, your draconic characteristics are—here," He rifled through the pages as he traipsed back. Noticing what he'd written here, he breathed sharply, flipped it closed then handed it to Meya.

Goodly Freda! He's been taking notes on me?

Meya took the journal, hands trembling from both fear and fury. His prose was clipped and precise, but still took her several minutes to read. Every other word was long and difficult, each sentence labelled with a rose bullet, crammed around a rough pencil diagram of what appeared to be one half Meya's face, and one half dragon head, as if Coris had been adding more as he noticed new things.

Phosphorescent eyes. A branching line connected the statement to Meya and the dragon's eyes. Meya didn't need to know what that first word meant to know what the nosy donghead was referring to.

High body heat.

Immunity to substances otherwise harmful to man—i.e. dwale, aconite, etc.

Aversion and severe allergy to Lattis. Must have picked those up during the Heist.

Ability to transform into dragon and back upon contact with Lattis. Wait—He'd speculated that right after the Heist? How long had he been keeping this from her?

Grinding her teeth against the ball of fiery rage roiling inside her bowels, Meya fought the urge to let loose in a particular direction and forced herself to keep reading,

High affinity to metals and minerals.

To Meya's eternal embarrassment, an indented paragraph elaborated on the phenomena:

---i.e. Sexual desire and arousal upon physical contact with Rose Crystal.

Predictably, below that bombshell was:

High heat in birth canal (female) serves as natural deterrent for interracial reproduction, by hindering sexual intercourse and killing semen.
---Note: can be subdued by Lattis.

Meya made sense of perhaps the first five words, but that was enough. More than enough.

I'll give you truth, he'd said. And once again she'd given herself to him, but as she concentrated on making love to him with all the passion and tenderness in her, he made a mental note to scribble details of her most intimate parts in his blasted journal.

Lastly, in ink that hadn't yet lost its gleam and seeped deep into parchment:

Metallic bones and blood capable of melting Lattis
---Evidence: severed phalange and molten ring, preserved by Morelia Hild. Account of Gillian, Nostran mercenary, as recalled by Meya Hild.

And,

Ability to regenerate digits, limbs, and flesh
---Exception: injuries caused by Lattis.

Meya flipped the page. Nothing was there but splotches of seeped-through ink, and reflected outlines of the previous page's contents. Smirking, she closed the journal with a flump of expelled air.

"You could write a treatise." She handed it back to Coris. He took it numbly, his bulging eyes stared at her, unsure and afraid, "I feel like an impaled beetle in some sick collection."

Coris recoiled, sickened by the side of himself he struggled to repress.

"I'm so sorry. On hindsight, that was despicable."