"Why did you call it your mother, Rudra?"
The question didn't just catch him off guard — it stole his breath. Rudra's draconic form shriveled and crumbled in on itself. The wings folded and entered into his shoulder bones, the scales dug into his flesh and dissolved. His face broke, the muzzle lost its shape, and so did everything else. In seconds he was back to his human form, breathless and sweating. The night air felt too cool on his skin.
He was shivering. He was lying at the bottom of the crater created by his draconic form, with Nayan sitting at the edge, huddled, knees close to her chest, eyes intense.
"You called it Ma!" She whispered.
"I haven't!" Spat Rudra, "How could I even say anything?" he demanded, hands thrown in the air, "Dragons cannot talk!"
"But you sure talk a lot," she said, rolling her eyes, "You said Wraaghhh! It sounded like you were calling for your Maa!"
"No!" The denial was immediate, Rudra's heart was beating fast, "I meant... I meant... yeahhh!" He made fists and danced them over his head. Nayan didn't look entertained..
"You almost let it kill you," she said flatly, "You almost let it kill me! I'm married, Rudra! I've a wife! A family! I cannot die here!"
The audacity...
"I took you in the sky to save you from shapeshifters," Rudra shook his head in disbelief, "and you're saying I'm the reason you almost died?" Rudra started climbing up the crater, one foot at a time. He was hungry. He was cold. And the stupid Pundāku he had tried his best to save was suddenly pretending she was an expert draconic translator.
Nayan paused for two seconds before she uttered, "But I saw the official records, Rudra!" she reasoned, "Your mother didn't go to the moon! That... That thing isn't your mother or whate-"
"I know, okay?" Rudra's voice came out smaller than he had intended, "I've... been at her funeral."
Nayan stopped. Which was somewhat worse. Because she wanted to make Rudra spill out more, knowing he would definitely regret it later.
He kept his eyes on the dirt and stones, on the broken branches as he made his way up the crater, "But I still can't look at the Moon, Nayan," he admitted, "I still don't like using the Dragon's Door."
"The one that's at the end of the corridor of your quarter?" Nayan asked eagerly, "With no balcony, no stairs-"
"Because Dragons don't need stairs!" Rudra grunted as he pulled himself up the edge. Nayan didn't budge to help him. She sat there interrogating him and absorbing information, "It's a shortcut. Now shut your mouth."
"Your room doesn't have a window," she spoke again, pressing and pressing. Rudra felt his head throbbing with exhaustion and something more dangerous.
"Yes, because I couldn't shift when I was young!" Rudra groaned, "Father didn't want me to... jump off like mother. Now shut up!" he said, "I mean it, Nayan. No more questions!"
Nayan, being Nayan, remained quiet for exactly twenty seconds before she burst out, "Last year, when you jumped off the tower to save the Saintess, everyone thought it was pretty stupid," she blabbered, "because both of you can heal. Some thought you did that to chase her, make sure she doesn't escape."
To him, Tish's escape hadn't been last year — it felt like it had been ages. Ages since she had escaped Partha. Ages since Benevia had killed Nayan and he had kidnapped Tish and flown to Alaka. Another lifetime.
But in this timeline, it had only been a year. Rudra felt old. Not in his body but in his soul.
"Did you do that because you were scared for her?" Nayan laughed in disbelief, "you thought something may happen to her after what happened to your-"
Rudra's fist connected with Nayan's jaw so fast he half expected her teeth to fly out of her mouth. Nayan fell sideways, blood spraying out of her mouth in a delicate arc, as if even her blood wanted to make a dramatic exit.
"I told you to shut your damn mouth-!"
But before Rudra could finish basking in his victory, Nayan was already back, latched onto him like a particularly vengeful backpack. She had her legs locked around his waist, "Why did you punch me! I was just asking!" Her tone was somewhat nasal, "You fucking psycho! That poor girl probably needed therapy after being engaged to you for a year and YOU punch ME?!"
Rudra shoved his head back. It connected with Nayan's nose with a satisfying crack that he would absolutely lie about enjoying later. Nayan made a noise like a dying kettle and doubled down, clamping him into a headlock with the tenacity of a woman who had clearly wrestled siblings for sport, "None of my business? I almost died just five minutes ago because of your unresolved mommy issues!"
"They're not issues, they're trauma, get it right!" Rudra wheezed, his voice muffled against her arm.
He could, at any point, turn into a dragon and reduce the stupid Pundāku to a pile of ash and regret. But honestly? That felt like cheating. And it wouldn't be nearly as satisfying as strangling her with his bare, unscaled, entirely human hands, the way God intended.
They rolled. Dirt went everywhere. At one point Rudra was fairly sure he'd bitten Nayan's elbow, and at another point Nayan definitely tried to pull his hair despite there being nowhere near enough of it to get a proper grip.
He had her. He got a leg between hers, hooked her ankle, and hauled forward, ready to pin her — a move he'd learned exclusively from watching palace guards fail to arrest drunk nobles.
He almost had her. He almost —
A cough.
Both of them froze mid-tangle, Rudra's elbow somewhere near Nayan's collarbone and she had him in a headlock.
Tish stood twenty feet away, arms crossed, watching them with the exact expression of a mother who'd walked in on toddlers fighting over the last damned cookie. Nobody moved. A cricket, somewhere, had the audacity to keep chirping.
Rudra felt the full, devastating weight of how this must look — two grown adults grappling naked (well, one naked) in a smoking crater at midnight — and how it must have looked from Benevia.
Rudra raised his hands in the universal gesture of surrender. "I can explain."
Tish's eye twitched. For one glorious second it looked like she might just blast him again out of principle. Then she exhaled through her nose, long and slow, like a woman recalibrating her entire understanding of the men in her life. "Just put on something first."
Rudra scrambled upright, "I— uh—" His hand shot down to cover himself with the reflexes of a man who had clearly done this before, "I tore off my clothes when I shifted," he said sheepishly.
Tish looked at the ground at her feet and at the sky like she was silently cursing about him to her beloved Deity Rāva.
Nayan, still lying in the dirt with a bloody lip and what was probably a hairline nose fracture, reached over without even sitting up and offered him a piece of wood, "Here. For your dignity. Such as it is."
"You dare!" Rudra growled, swatting away the wood piece, and immediately regretted it.
"Stop," Tish said. "Just stop, both of you. The entire Benevian army, led by the Prince himself, is marching right now, and you two are fighting like a yenot!"
"What's a yenot?" Nayan squeaked.
"Something you're about to get skinned like," Tish said. Rudra wished she was joking. But she didn't look like she was.
Her eyes flickered back to Rudra. "That thing. What was that?"
Rudra curled his upper lip. "None of your business!"
"It is! Your little battle in the sky almost wiped out the entire Perna forest!" Tish's voice rose.
So did Rudra's,"Neither I nor that thing attacked Benevia!"
"Then what—" she cut in, almost shouting now, "—was that?!"
Her voice was too loud in the quiet of the forest. Rudra didn't answer. His tongue felt heavy but his mind was racing.
"You said you wanted to take me back to Partha!" she insisted. "Then give me a reason to consider that!"
"Give me a reason to trust!"
"I can't."
Rudra's voice was steady, which surprised even him,"Because I do not trust you either."
"Give me a reason to trust you, Tish."