Coatl-ome glanced over at Sai from her spot at the table. He'd been staring out the door to the balcony the entire time she'd been roasting the bogling and hadn't even turned away when she'd set the table. Nichal too had noticed Sai's absence, and the red lizard had not started eating. Cuatete had already cleared her plate and licked it clean.

  "You know," Sai said finally, "I never thought I'd say this, but I miss the Void."

  "Your bogling is getting cold," Coatl-ome told him.

  He sighed and took his spot at the table. "The sky should be black," he said, poking at his food. "All these stars are unsettling."

  Coatl-ome almost choked on her bite of bogling. "Stars?" she asked. "Stars!" Her voice rose in both pitch and volume as she continued. "Your command of the Draconic tongue is perfect. Your enunciation of our language is better than some dragons." Even though she recognized this as an attempt to aggravate her, she couldn't help it. He still excelled at it. "The word is sitlali! Why do you insist on corrupting our words into guttural Trotzen drivel?"

  "Because it irritates you," Sai confirmed.

  She grabbed her horns, one of the only truly draconic features she had left. "We are trapped together in an unending nightmare and still you cling to ancient and petty disagreements?" she asked.

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  "Petty?" Sai replied. He scowled at her. "How many of my research assistants did you incinerate?" Nichal covered his eyes as Sai began to shout. "Because I lost count sometime around the time you killed all the ones that were left, destroyed my entire laboratory, and made off with all of my research."

  Coatl-ome pounded the table. "Your research was on me and my siblings," she shouted back. "You kept us caged and started experimenting on us before we had even hatched!"

  "Don't pretend like you cared about Itzli or Tlaloc," Sai retorted. "You killed them too!"

  "Better dead than stuck with you!" Coatl-ome roared.

  Cuatete backed away from the table. "Skree?" she asked.

  "Please don't yell at each other," Nichal whined, still covering his eyes.

  Sai took a deep breath. "My experiments left us both better off," he said in a tight but gentler tone. "That research gave you the insights you needed to create the wyrmkin for the dragons, and I was able to grant the psychic abilities of your kin to the orcs."

  Coatl-ome hissed at him, but she too lowered her voice. "I wouldn't call being reduced to Syn's playthings 'better off,'" she said.

  Sai opened his mouth but closed it again and glared at her. Soon, he looked away. "It's possible," he said, "that we both got ahead in life by not entirely thinking through the dark pacts we made with the god known as the Eternal Nightmare."

  "Indeed," agreed Coatl-ome.

  Everyone remained quiet for a time. Only Coatl-ome went back to eating. Sai just poked at his bogling, Nichal glanced back and forth between Sai and Coatl-ome between his fingers, and Cuatete had already finished. Sai pushed his stool away from the table. "I've lost my appetite," he said, storming out the front door. Cuatete snatched the bogling steak off his plate before following him. Nichal looked after them, shaking his head.

  "Don't hurry back," Coatl-ome muttered.