At the rate you guys have me motivated to write, I'm gonna have a chapter every other day. Now, if only I can channel that into my publishable stuff…
Lucy decided the following morning that for as long as she was allowed, she was never leaving the Pradesh home and Mr. Elan's cooking.
"This is amazing," she said, resisting the urge to moan. Breakfast was strawberry and chocolate scones with the best brewed cup of coffee she'd ever had. "I'm never leaving."
"I'm okay with that. Especially if it includes grandbabies," Arman said. "You with any of my children would make such lovely babies."
Her face was so red that she wondered if smoke was coming out her ears. "Do you give Ever this much trouble?"
Arman sighed with a little sulk. "No. I can appreciate her reasoning for not wanting to date one of her teammate's brothers. You, however, do not seem to have a similar issue."
"I just- There's too much on my plate as it stands. There's the keys and after that- I don't know."
"Take some advice from an old man, there's always a new quest. There's always a new reason to use to talk yourself out of dating. Don't let it flit away because of hang ups. People have spent their entire lives searching for those keys. Be like Ganier, not her mentor who died alone with his notes."
"Hi, Mr. Pradesh. Mr. Elan let me in," Freed greeted, entering the informal dining room. "Hi, Lucy."
"Call me Arman," he grumbled for what Lucy imagined was the hundredth time.
"Hey, Freed. Thanks for coming."
"I'm looking forward to some good research."
"You have strange things that you look forward to," Lucy said with a lightly teasing tone.
"Hey, Dad," Bickslow said, dropping into a chair and helping himself to a scone. "Lucy."
"Bixy."
He watched as Lucy left, his eyes glowing as he studied her soul.
"How is she?" Arman asked.
"There's some darkness. I can't tell from what though. There's also some strength that was not there before."
"Will she heal?"
"With that beautiful heart of hers? I have no doubt."
"Hey, Dad," Emzadi greeted when her father called her.
"Hello, Em. Will you be home for dinner? I'm rather enjoying having everyone here."
"Yeah. We should be landing around six. So, what's this I hear about Bixy's guildmate and the bachelorette?"
"Is that how your brothers are describing it?" Arman asked, chuckling.
"You're really trying to set them up with her?"
"Is that jealousy? She is your type when you favor girls, but that doesn't happen often."
"I'm not jealous. I suppose I'm gonna need to get popcorn with Xally and Ever."
"How's the research coming?" Cristoff asked, setting down some cookies and tea from Mr. Elan.
"Ugh," Lucy said, dramatically flopping onto the table.
"Where are you getting stuck?" he asked, settling into a chair.
Lucy stared at him. She hated the suspiciousness that welled up in her. Freed was predictable. He liked research and knowledge. It wasn't kind to assume that Cristoff wouldn't be interested in something like celestial keys just because nobody else ever seemed to be. She refused to meet Freed's confused gaze.
"We know Anna, my ancestor, hid the keys," Lucy said finally. "She disappeared a few years afterwards. In four hundred years, nobody's gotten close."
"What about journals and such?"
"We have a lot of the contemporaneous journals from when the school was founded. It looks like the early professors want to ensure their knowledge was passed down. However, the point of the punishment was to make it difficult for anyone to find the keys so there's no sign of Anna telling anyone where they were," Freed answered.
"If Anna had no children, who carried on the Heartfilia name?"
"Her niece, Tamia."
"Anything from her here?"
Lucy shook her head. "I know she died in Fiore."
"There's a few mentions of a Tamia H. and a Valenca K.," Freed said, digging through one of the stacks of books. Once he found the pertinent page, he flipped it to show Lucy.
"It sounds like they were best friends." She continued to flip through the book. It wasn't one of the journals but instead was published around a decade after the Acadame had opened. "It looks like Valenca K. was a spellcraft professor."
"They definitely would have kept her journals since there's probably spells in them," Cristoff said.
Lucy turned and smiled at him. "Thank you."
"Glad to help. Though, why don't we take a break before dinner. Emzadi should be here soon. Xally too."
"So Lucy. Have you been to the bathhouses yet? I'm sure an attendant would help with some of those kinks. I mean, I could too if I'm more your speed," Vander teased. His finger ran along the bottom of her chin.
"Knock it off, Van. She's too-" Bickslow started to say.
"Too what? Not a virgin."
"What?" Bickslow coughed on the Boscan whiskey that went down the wrong pipe. Laxus slapped him on the back with a disgruntled expression. "Who?"
"Who else, idiot," Evergreen said, smacking him with her fan.
"Natsu? He knew where to stick it?"
"I don't want to think about that," Laxus muttered.
Lucy giggled and turned her best sultry expression to Vander. "So, you see, I don't know if you could satisfy me. After all, my last lover was a dragon slayer."
"Nice," Evergreen said, both women laughing at the mutual shock on Vander and Bickslow's face.
Cristoff was watching Lucy. No one noticed the flicker of pain on her face. Correction, he thought when he heard a low growl from Laxus. Catching the other slayer's eye, he nodded his head towards the door.
"Bix has mentioned she's hiding a lot of pain behind those smiles. Do you think whatever obviously happened with Natsu was part of it?"
"Probably," Laxus acknowledged. "There was a running bet on whether they'd get together. By the time I rejoined the guild, they had started sleeping together so I claimed her as kin. It never even occurred to me that he might not have claimed her as his mate."
"Does she know that dragons mate for life?"
"I don't know. And honestly, he's such an idiot that I wouldn't put it past him to forget that he actually has to mate and not just have sex."
"Hello, Cris," Emzadi greeted, kissing his cheek. "And hello, Laxus," she said with a flirty smile and a not so chaste kiss on the lips. "So let's meet Lucy."
"Hey, Lucy," Laxus said.
Emzadi froze when her eyes met Lucy's.
"Oh fuck," Lucy muttered.
Before she could react, Lucy jumped up. "Celestial meteor," she said then used its speed to run past the slayers in the doorway and into the front drive. "Open, gate of the dragon."
Draco's mark manifested as a large, blue tattoo on Lucy's arm and shoulder. She felt her canines changing and heard the sound of the car carrying Xally and Kaleb driving up the road.
Emzadi roared and trailed after her. For a moment, the two women stared at each other. The rest of the mages had followed, expecting to have to save Lucy. Instead, they froze when Lucy released an echoing roar.
Emzadi's first roar had been anger at the intrusion of another female dragon slayer in her territory. Despite the fact that her celestial dragon slaying was obscured by her own magic, women always sensed each other. Especially two potential queens. Lucy's roar was an acknowledgment. The rolling growl afterwards told Emzadi that Lucy wouldn't back down.
Deciding that protecting Lucy took precedence to understanding what was happening, Laxus grabbed ahold of Emzadi and held her tight to his chest. Laxus couldn't resist the urge to echo Lucy's second growl. In it, Emzadi felt the magic of the other two dragon slayers that had also claimed Lucy as kin and stopped struggling.
"Um…what's going on?" Xally said.
In the midst of trying to understand what was happening between Lucy and Emzadi, no one had noticed Kaleb and Xally arrive.
"No kidding," Vander said, still looking between the two women. "Though, that growl was kinda hot."
"I should probably reintroduce myself. Hi. I'm Lucy Heartfilia, the celestial dragon slayer," Lucy said with a slight wave and a half-sheepish, half-shit eating grin.
The mind palace is a memory technique. (Yup, it's a real thing.) The best-known pop culture reference is Sherlock. I just expanded on it.
When I first started this, NaLu was endgame. And then I found Desna's Pradesh family. I have absolutely no real plans for who the ultimate OTP for this will be. I'm leaning towards an ultimately sibling relationship between Lucy and Cristoff but keep in mind that in this version, Draco had no part in Cristoff's upbringing besides being Nurem's mate. At best, they're step-siblings. It's feeling very Drive Me Crazy.
So yeah, I changed the rating. Mostly because I got really tired of worrying that someone would report me for saying penis or cursing. 'Cause I curse a lot. Also, it's probably going to get gory. Though I promise you, there will be no lemons because I'm gonna be frank, nobody wants to read my sex scenes cause they're really bad. Like my writing partner had to write them all in our novel. Generally, I'm a New A or YA author so it's not really an issue.