Chương 190: Chapter 188 [Cat's Out Of The Bag]

Mars had his chin propped on one fist, watching Victoria pass plates of food over the bar, when Nessa dropped onto the seat beside him. Apollo was curled up on a folded cloak on the table, one wing twitching every so often, still fast asleep despite the noise of the bar around him.

"Reckon today's the day," he said, not moving his eyes off Victoria.

"You said that yesterday."

"Yesterday I hadn't figured out the problem yet. Today I have."

"Which is?"

"I've been too subtle." He nodded toward the bar.

"Women love directness. I read that somewhere."

"Yeah, that's bullshit. You don't read," Nessa said, rolling her eyes.

"Yes, I do. I might not be as worldly as you, with all your painting, but I read from time to time. Anyway, point is, I know where I've been going wrong all this time." Growlie wandered over from wherever he'd been and flopped down across Nessa's boots instead of Mars's, and Nessa nudged him absently with one foot, still watching Mars, already knowing this wasn't going to work.

"Go on, then," she said.

"Be direct." Mars opened his mouth to speak, then thought better of it, and looked down at Apollo, still curled up dead to the world.

"Can't exactly abandon my post, though. Luka would kill me."

"That's convenient."

"Right?" he said with a smirk. Once again, she rolled her eyes. The door swung open before Nessa could push him any further, and the noise of the street rolled in with the group, Rika's voice already carrying over everyone else's.

"There is no way that's true. You're lying to me again, aren't you?"

"Nah, swear to god. Load of people go to watch it. He has this red cape thing and the bull just runs at him and then gets distracted, I think. There are a load of clips of the dude running away and nearly getting impaled by the bull." Lucas spotted Growlie before he'd even properly cleared the doorway, and Growlie noticed him a second later, launching off Nessa's boots and across the floor in a scrabble of claws before leaping straight up into Lucas's arms, nearly knocking the boy backward with the force of it.

"Hi, Growlie. Did you miss me? Have you gotten bigger?" Luka crossed over a moment behind him, glancing down at the cloak where Apollo hadn't so much as stirred through any of it.

"Thanks for looking after him, man. Would have taken longer making the journey if we took him and had to go at a slower pace. How has he been?"

"Slept the whole time," Mars said.

"Barely knew he was here, if I'm honest." Lucas was already crouched by the cloak, one finger hovering an inch above Apollo's head like he wasn't quite sure he was allowed to touch. Growlie had shifted to resting across his back like a strange cloak.

"Is this him? He's so small."

"He'll grow," Luka said.

"Go on, he won't mind. Just be gentle, he's still half asleep." Lucas rested two fingers lightly against the top of Apollo's head, and the dragon's eye cracked open—one slow blink, taking in the new face without much apparent alarm. He gave a small, sleepy chirp, stretched one wing out fully, and promptly closed his eye again.

"Does he like me? I can't tell," Lucas said, a worried expression on his face.

"He's tired," Luka said.

"Give him a minute, then he'll actually want to play." Lyra had drifted over behind her son, arms folded loosely, watching with the same soft expression Leo had noticed on her before—the one that showed up whenever Lucas got something he'd been waiting for.

"He's beautiful, Luka."

"Wait till he's properly awake," Luka said.

"He's a menace once he gets going. Chases his own tail for a solid ten minutes some mornings."

"Sounds familiar," Nessa said. She glanced over at Growlie, who was watching her from Lucas's shoulders, then turned his head away like he could hide from the accusation entirely.

"Reckon he gets it from you," she added, pointing. You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. Mars slid off his stool at last, stretching properly now that his shift as unofficial dragon-sitter had apparently ended, and headed for the bar. Nessa watched him go, wondering if this time really would be different. She doubted it. The group settled around the table, half of them still mid-conversation from the walk over.

Lucas dragged Apollo's cloak over to sit beside Growlie, and within a few minutes, the two dragons had struck up some sleepy, uncoordinated version of a wrestling match that mostly involved Apollo falling over. A couple of minutes later, the door opened again, familiar faces walking in. Ronan came in first, holding it for Marcus, Diane, and Carl behind him.

"Hey guys. How did it go?" asked Leo. Diane crossed to the table, a beaming smile revealing part of the truth before she spoke.

"It went well. Enchanting's a lot closer to coding than any of us expected. I had a go with Marcus's help and the UI gave me a new tab. It looks exactly like a coding environment. We gave it a go and it makes things a lot easier, but there are some problems we'll need to work through."

"Nice. What's the problem, like?" asked Parmo.

"So when Marcus enchants, he scribes these runes onto the crystal. The UI interface lets me hold the scribing tool against the crystal after I've thought out what I want, and the magic overlays the rune onto the crystal. I can then kind of trace the symbol. Makes it easy. The issue is going to be finding more of the runes." She looked over at the two dragons play-fighting, with Lucas watching them excitedly.

"Marcus has a book with some in, but most of the more useful runes are in books he thinks the academies and noble families hoard. Without them, we are going to struggle to put everything we need onto a crystal. I tested writing what I wanted for a light source in the UI tab without using a rune, and it translated it into the three runes Marcus showed me. I tried it for something I hadn't seen and it wouldn't translate to runes.

I can try writing a full script, but there won't be room on a crystal for what we actually need them for."

"So we have everything we need other than most of the language that makes this easier. You got a plan for what to do if we can't get hold of one of these books?" asked Sam.

"I'm going to see if I can figure out a way to write our own. It takes English easily enough, so there must be a way to translate what I want into runes. Just gotta figure it out. If you guys are ever in the neighbourhood of one of these academies, do me a favour and see if you can break in and steal one of these manuals," said Diane, with a playful smirk. Phil raised his mug.

"To magic Wi-Fi, or whatever you two end up building."

"Yeah, that's going to take way longer than getting a magic car working," Diane said, though she said it smiling. The conversation continued with Sam and Carl talking about the possibilities of Magitech now they knew it could be done with modern coding—thoughts of looking for someone who did coding in their job back on Earth to help Diane set up this new department of Magitech. Nearby, Lucas sat with his parents, watching as Luka fed some fish to Apollo, who seemed to love the stuff.

Mars walked over, shoulders slumped slightly, with Nessa grinning at her friend's most recent failed attempt. The front door opened and Bram walked in, a shocked look on his features.

"Just walked by Sara and Davan's place," he said to the table, taking his time getting each word out.

"Davan smacked her right on the arse going in the door. She was laughing about it, too." When less of the table seemed as shocked as he expected, his eyebrows lowered slightly. Mars's mouth fell open. Then, slowly, a grin spread across his face, wide and delighted.

"No way."

"Well," Rika said, "that's that, then."

"Cat's out of the bag," Leo said, grinning. Shai gave him a look, one eyebrow raised, and it took him a full second to catch up to what he'd just said out loud. He laughed.

"Didn't even notice the pub. My bad."

"Sure," Shai said, smirking, though she was fighting a laugh of her own by the time she finished saying it. Sasha, who'd gone very still beside Phil, dropped her face into one hand.

"Finally," she said, muffled.

"I've been trying to hide this for days."

"You knew?" Mars said, spinning to face her properly.

"I walked in on them," Sasha said, lifting her head just enough to glare at nobody in particular.

"They weren't expecting me, so they came out of their room afterwards." She remembered Lucas was sitting with them and changed what she was going to say.

"They must have been a bit warm, as they were lacking their usual gear. It's a sight I'll never recover from." Her eyes cut sideways to Phil.

"And you. You knew the whole time and didn't say a word." Phil held both hands up.

"Not my secret to tell."

"I moved in with them completely blind." She pointed at him.

"I could've knocked first. I could've called out. I did none of those things because nobody warned me."

"How did the rest of you know?" Mars asked, looking between Sasha and Rika, clearly trying to work out how deep this actually went.

"We've known for ages," Rika said cheerfully.

"I saw them sneaking away back before we even came here, honestly. Something about the way they argued—it always seemed too much, like they were trying to use it to cover from what was really going on. We just never said anything, because watching everyone else figure it out eventually was going to be funnier." Mars stared at her for a long moment, then started laughing properly, one hand braced against the table to steady himself.

"Sneaky bastards. The whole lot of you." Lyra covered Lucas's ears. Mars noticed and apologized.

"Oh man, just wait until Aldric and the others hear about this. Actually, it might be funnier to keep it a secret for now. Watching them pretend to hate each other while knowing this is way funnier." Nessa looked at her idiotic friend.

"There's no way you can keep a secret like this. You're going to give the game away the first time they do it."

"Nah, it's going to be fine. I won't be the one who lets them know their secret romance is out in the open." Nessa sighed. She knew it was only a matter of time before the full guard knew now. She felt a little sorry for the pair, but at the same time, she agreed with Mars. This was going to be fun.