Hadrian laid in silence in his and Aster’s bed, staring at the ceiling. Adjusting to one eye would be hard. It would be very hard, and he wasn’t looking forward to it. He was already struggling to get up the ladder. His depth perception was all off, and all he could think was that Shyllian probably left Kaz in the forest to be found by his father. And Kaz, for whatever reason, had left and found them instead.

“I don’t want to give him up,” he said quietly, and Aster was quiet. “He’s our son. He’ll be in danger in such a high profile position with his magic locked like this.”

“Are you just saying that to justify it?” Aster asked quietly, and Hadrian rolled over and stared at the curtains over the windows. The storm was still raging outside, and his heart hurt. Kaz didn’t want to leave, and Hadrian didn’t want to give him up.

“It’s…” Hadrian trailed off, and curled up. Aster rolled over and cuddled up against his back, wrapping his hand around his stomach, and slipped his arm under Aster’s head.

“I know. It’s hard. He’s our boy,” Aster murmured, and Hadrian thought about how Richard hadn’t visited them, not even once. He never spoke to them, acted like they didn’t exist, like those five years of hunting down Shyllian meant nothing. There was a petty part of him that thought it was only right Richard repay them for his abandonment by giving them a son.

“We should tell him, but he… he needs an heir. He’ll take him,” Aster murmured, and Hadrian blew out slowly. Right. Richard had never married, for whatever insane reason. He never had any kids, and he never…

Had he loved Shyllian? How could you love the incarnation of death itself?

“I’m not ready to give him up,” Hadrian whispered, and a tear pricked at his good eye. He had no idea if he was weeping under his bandage. That demon may come back tonight, but Hadrian and Kaz had set up some pretty extensive alarms and wards. He wouldn’t be able to get in.

“Didn’t you say there was something wrong with his magic?” Aster asked, and Hadrian lifted a hand and casted a spell to read Kaz’s mana. He was fast asleep beneath them, and Hadrian studied the readout in silence.

“It’s in flux. He just got a surge of power, and his body isn’t regulating it well,” he said, and Aster stiffened up behind him.

“Is that going to be a problem?” he asked, and Hadrian dismissed the spell.

“I don’t know,” he murmured. “I don’t think it’ll kill him, but he has a much higher magic cap than I previously thought, and if my readings are right, it’s going to… not be stabilized until he manages to unlock all the seals.”

“All of the locks? How many were there?” Aster asked, and Hadrian sighed.

“Nine, before that greater dragon, I’m assuming Seiru, unlocked the first one,” he said, and curled up even more. “I assume there’s a lock for each dragon, and each one will raise his magic cap until it reaches the point it’s meant to be at.”

“So… All of his magic now…” Aster said in quiet awe, and Hadrian sighed.

“Doesn’t even scratch the surface of what he’s capable of. There’s a reason Shyllian and Ferrilin chose to not have children,” he said, and then he was quiet. Ferrilin… Kaz would have to wake him up in order to get him to unlock the seal, and that was… No small feat. Nothing woke up Ferrilin. He remained asleep for a reason.

Hadrian was a master of all magics. Archaic, modern, so ancient there wasn’t even a name for them anymore, offensive, defensive, healing, all of it. He knew his way around magic, but there were magics that were beyond him. Draconic magic, for example. No spell circles, no spoken components, just pure mana. He didn’t have nearly enough power to cast draconic magic. Only a few mages in the whole of history had managed it, and they were essentially walking weapons.

He would have more limitations now, he realized bitterly. He had lost a fourth of his magic from that siphoning, and he…

He was not happy about it.

It was as if something had been stolen from him, something taken away, and he was… hurting. He was mourning. He would never be able to reach the same heights as he used to. He was old, he was tired, and even the ladder was a struggle in the winter when his joints ached and back hurt. He made salves for it, that Aster put on him, when they were finally alone, but…

He was hurting.

He was hurting desperately, and he didn’t know how to confront it.

“Go to sleep,” Aster murmured and pressed a kiss to the back of his neck. “We can talk about it in the morning.”

Aster dragged him flush against him, and Hadrian pulled the furs they slept under up higher, burrowing down under them with a quiet sigh.

Kaz was in a crisis right now. He couldn’t afford to get upset about this. He would just continue as normal, and shove down the feelings that he had lost a limb to process later.

In the meantime, sleep. As always, he would dream of poison green breath and a fog that killed all it touched, and he wasn’t looking forward to it, because now he would see Kaz’s face when he did so.

….

Kaz woke slowly, breathing slowly and evenly, and blinked open his eyes to stare at the loft over his head. It was early in the morning, as always, and when he looked under his shirt, his breasts were back. Annoying, but he could solve that easily. He pressed into that unfamiliar, wild, chaotic power that had taken up residence in his chest, and his chest flattened down in a movement, looking weird and uncomfortable. With a sigh, he sat up and stared at the crack in the curtains that made up a portion of his walls. The storm had died down sometime overnight, judging from the lack of a howl of a bit of wind, and he studied the snow that had piled up outside the kitchen window. It completely blocked the cabin in, and the snow was probably up to the roof by now. They would be snowed in for a while. He wasn’t looking forward to that.

With a grunt, he pulled himself out of bed and got dressed in silence, in just his sweater, shirt, and leggings, with thick woolen socks. They would be stuck inside all day today, and he was going to be missing outside, but this wasn’t his first rodeo with a winter like this. It was his first experience with a magical storm, though, and honestly, wasn’t that greater dragon he met a little dramatic? Were they all like that?

He made his way into the kitchen and started making the barley tea and breakfast. He moved in silence, getting everything ready quietly, and then he looked out the window and the snow piled up there. They had a stock of firewood and water in the cabin, but he would have to go and clear out a path to the well soon. He wasn’t looking forward to that. He had never seen a winter storm like this. They tended to get no more than a foot. This was insane, and it was all that dragon’s fault. He had really overdone it. They were going to be stuck inside for days.

Aster came down the ladder quietly, roused by the scent of mushrooms gathered from the woods frying in the pan, and he came over and wrapped his arm around Kaz sideways, pressing a kiss to the top of his head.

“Morning,” Kaz said, and Aster studied him in silence.

The conversation from last night was looming over them. It was painful, and Kaz didn’t know what decision his dads were going to make. Objectively, he could avoid the plot still, even if he went to the academy. He just had to not turn into a massive fuck-off dragon and try to kill everyone. Or be a white lotus. Which would be much easier, considering he was a man, and men couldn’t be white lotuses. He could also avoid falling in love with any of the male leads, which also seemed pretty easy. They were all assholes, anyway. Overprotective and menacing, too in Henrietta’s business, if you asked him.

Yeah. He could manage fine, now that he had slept and was in a better, more reasonable mood. But…

He loved Hadrian and Aster.

He loved them, and he didn’t want to walk away from them.

He scraped the wooden spoon around the pan listlessly, agitating the mushrooms, and Aster poured himself a cup of barley tea. He sipped it loudly, and then he studied Kaz in silence, like he was looking at him for the last time. Kaz could feel it looming over him. He could feel it looming, and then Aster spoke.

“Why don’t we tell Richard when you’re already eighteen?” he asked, and Kaz froze. “Your… mana is unstable, and Hadrian is the most qualified to walk you through that. If you go to Richard now, you’ll have to go to the academy, late, to boot, and you…”

He trailed off uncertainly, and Kaz slowly looked over at him as hope welled in his chest. Were they going to keep him? Were they really going to keep him?

“Kaz,” Aster said quietly and set down his mug. “I know you don’t want to go, and I don’t want to force you. But, Richard needs to be told at some point.”

“I know,” Kaz blurted, and colored. “I know he does, but… not right now. Not right now.”

“Okay,” Aster said, and nodded a few times. “Then, we’ll tell him when you’re eighteen. That should give you enough time to stabilize your mana. If you go to school in the state you’re in…”

It would be a disaster, Kaz thought grimly. It would be an unholy disaster, and that would just be asking for trouble. He knew that. He didn’t even have good control over his shapeshifting, and only dragons could shapeshift. No other known species could, and there was no spell for it. There were glamors and illusions, but there were no spells to actually change your physical body. He knew. He had checked. He would be found out immediately, and he had no idea what people would do to him if they discovered the truth. They could lock him up to study him, or they could just outright kill him.

Drakons were rare. Greater dragons didn’t often copulate with humans, maybe once every few hundred years or so, and the last drakon that had graced this earth had become a warlord that was impossible to defeat. Drakons could live up to 500 years, and it was…

Well. That warlord had eventually been killed, but not before he nearly succeeded in burning the empire to the ground. He had been treated terribly as a child, ostracized and isolated, and he had lashed out, convinced humans and his human side were the worst thing to happen to the mortal plane. Kaz didn’t want the bad ending. He wanted to live out his life in peace, in the woods, living quietly and honestly. He didn’t want to be some great savant, some murderer, or something else. He didn’t want to be immortalized.

Gods. He would have never thought his life would take this turn. Or, rather, his death. He did not think his death would take this turn.

All because of some insulin, he thought bitterly.

The mushrooms were done, and he pulled them off the heat and scraped them onto the platter next to the eggs and toast.

“Let’s save the tough conversations for after breakfast, huh?” Aster asked when Kaz didn’t respond, and Kaz nodded and turned back to the table, taking a seat and pouring himself a cup of barley tea. The steam rose up, and he took a sip before he turned back to the food, piling mushrooms and scrambled eggs onto the toast, and Aster started quietly eating.

Hadrian came down midway through breakfast, and the three of them ate in silence, still reeling from last night and all of the chaos that came from it. The food was barely touched, but they managed to force their way through it, and Kaz found himself staring out the window at the snow piled up against the glass. The only light in here was from the fireplace, and it was dark. They needed to light the oil lamps.

“So, are we going to come to a decision?” Hadrian asked after they finished their meal, and Kaz stared down at his hands.

He had known from the start that Richard was his father, and said absolutely nothing. He had never really considered the consequences of that. It was purely reflexive, defending himself, and he had thought it was the right decision. Now, he was grappling with the fact that Richard was a real person, deprived of his own son for years on end, all because Kaz wanted to avoid the plot. He had done that, and he didn’t have regrets, specifically, but it didn’t… sit right with him.

But… wait.

He couldn’t shift into a dragon, so he assumed that particular ability was locked behind the seals.

How did Kazerine manage it? There was no way she found all nine greater dragons while she was…

“We think we should tell Richard when Kaz is eighteen,” Aster said, and Kaz dialed back into the conversation.

“Eighteen?”

“That gives us three years to get his mana in check, and avoids putting him in danger of the academy,” Aster said, and Hadrian slowly nodded.

“Kaz? What do you think?” he asked, and Kaz was quiet for a moment.

“I don’t want to tell him,” he said lowly. “I would have to go be a noble, and I don’t… want that. For me.”

Both of his fathers were silent, and Aster rubbed his hand over his face and sighed.

“Kaz… You’re our son, but you’re his, too,” he said softly, and Kaz stared at the rough table of his childhood. Aster regularly stuck his knife in it, and it was scarred and ugly.

“I don’t want anything to do with him,” Kaz said quietly, and Hadrian pursed his lips. “He abandoned both of you.”

That was the crux of the matter. Plot aside, story aside, bad ending aside, Richard had abandoned Hadrian and Aster. He just took his title and left, never speaking to them again, and Kaz couldn’t quantify that lack of loyalty. He just acted as though they never existed at all, and took all of the prestige and accolades and left them in the dust.

It was wrong.

He didn’t know what sort of man Richard was. It was never explained in the otome game. But, he knew him in his absence. His lack of a place in Kaz’s life had saved him in many ways, because he would have recognized Kaz on sight, but…

But.

Kaz didn’t forgive him. He couldn’t forgive him. What he had done to Aster and Hadrian was not okay.

“We have three years to come to terms with it,” Hadrian said softly. “Just think about it in that time, okay?”

Kaz would not be thinking about it, but…

“I will,” he lied.

He was lying a lot. But, it was what it was.