Chapter 166: A Stranger in His Own Skin
Not that he couldn’t recognize himself. After all, he could see the familiar black hair, just more tousled than usual.
Honestly, it was embarrassing, considering he had just been arguing with the mightiest dragon alive—who also happened to be his boss—while his hair was sticking up in places it shouldn’t have been.
As for the rest, it was still his body.
The same relatively lanky one that just so happened to look more refined now because of the black silk pajamas that he was wearing. It hung loosely at the collar, brushing against pale skin that clearly needed sunlight and maybe a week’s worth of vitamin D.
So what was he uncertain about?
His eyes... something was definitely wrong with them.
While one remained its usual soft green, the other gleamed like polished emerald glass.
It was vivid, almost unnaturally so, catching the light with an eerie brilliance. The pupil wasn’t round anymore—it was a narrow slit, sharp and vertical, sitting right in the middle of his glinting iris.
It looked predatory.
Mesmerizing.
And holy shit, undeniably incompatible with the fact that Riley Hale, age 25, was supposed to be a human.
The same human sucked in a breath before looking at Kael and back at his reflection, only to be bewildered by the fact that it was back to normal again.
"Uhhh...?"
He blinked once, twice, leaning closer to the mirror. Both eyes looked perfectly fine now.
Was that just a trick of the light? A figment of his imagination? Magic? Or—
Oh no.
Did he actually have a massive concussion and was about to die because he ate and drank without getting checked by a doctor first?!
A thousand disastrous possibilities raced through his mind. Maybe it was delayed internal bleeding. Maybe he was hallucinating because of oxygen loss. Maybe—
"So," Kael’s low voice broke through his panic, calm but edged with something unreadable, "now that you’ve seen it, do you really have time to wonder about elves?"
"!!!"
Riley whipped around, eyes wide. "What?! Sir, a-are you saying there’s really something wrong with my eye?!"
Kael opened his mouth, clearly about to reply, but Riley suddenly held up a hand, covering half his face like he was bracing for the worst.
"Wait—don’t tell me I lost an eye and needed an emergency transplant!" he blurted out, horrified. "Did you, by any chance, have to use snake eyes because there weren’t any available or compatible human donors?!"
Kael just stood there holding his breath.
The dragon lord’s expression said it all—he was probably doubting the decision to save him from certain death!
Meanwhile, Riley’s imagination was running wild. Maybe those bastards with the spikes had actually hit him in the eye, and the others, in their desperation, had found the first replacement they could.
No wonder Kael had been so angry.
If it were him having to deal with an emergency transplant, wouldn’t he also sulk like crazy?
Hmm. Yeah. If he were to describe this... it was as if the dragon lord was really sulking.
But apparently, that was earlier, because right now, Kael looked more annoyed than anything else.
"Stop it," he said sharply. "No, you didn’t have an emergency eye transplant, so stop imagining the weirdest things."
"Huh? T-then what?" Riley blinked rapidly, lowering his hand from his face.
"That’s what I wanted to know," Kael muttered. "Because just to get you to wake up, you needed an extensive blood transfusion."
Riley’s eyes widened. "Did I actually get injured? Like... severe blood loss?"
Kael looked unimpressed. "No."
"Then why the transfusion?"
"Because waking you up required blood from a dragon."
"HA???"
Riley’s voice cracked so loudly that even Kael winced.
What kind of ridiculous nonsense was that? How could anyone survive a blood transfusion from a dragon?!
Oh. But apparently, he could.
Not only did he survive it, but his body had actually asked for it.
If Kael hadn’t caught him before he hit the floor, Riley was sure he would have face-planted after hearing that particular detail.
It was really Kael who arrived just as he passed out, and sure enough, he had been badly wounded and spent. But those were things the dragon lord had managed to fix with the finest elixirs humans could tolerate.
So, naturally, they assumed he would recover just fine.
Free of all external wounds and breathing normally, physicians simply kept on saying that he was just sleeping.
Kael looked serious as he explained it, but mostly, Riley felt as though the dragon before him looked unusually tired.
Then again, who wouldn’t be tired after that?
Especially when, out of nowhere, Riley’s body started arching and convulsing violently. He was rushed to see the guardians of the archives because even Lord Karion and Lady Cirila couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him.
But in Riley’s mind, he was momentarily hung up on the fact that Kael actually called over his parents to help.
Then, if that were the case, Riley was certain he was already an inch from hell. Because someone like Kael—who hadn’t even bothered to ask for help when someone tried to crash all the leylines of Eryndra—would only do so if both of them were about to die.
Not that they were sure it’d happen, but what if, right?
"What?" Kael asked, noticing Riley’s horrified stare.
"Nothing! Please continue," Riley blurted quickly, trying to school his expression into something less panicked.
Then Kael got to the part where the guardians told him to use his blood, and Riley had to say, "Sir, hold up! You did tell them that I’m human, right?"
Kael rolled his eyes but said, "Of course." Apparently, he nearly argued with the idea and even said that a measly amount got them an extremely high fever and other side effects, so how would more dragon blood help?
"And?"
But the guardians were apparently firm on it, saying that it was only because the blood hadn’t been enough.
"Enough for what?!" Riley couldn’t help but ask, but realized that if Kael knew, then they wouldn’t be having this conversation.
"I was going to hold it off, but you started thrashing and twisting like you couldn’t breathe, and I had no choice but to follow the only beings who had any sort of suggestion. So you received blood. And continued to receive blood because I was told I would know when it was enough."
Riley swallowed hard. "Did you?"
"No," Kael replied curtly. "But you suddenly coughed up black blood after convulsing and then woke up for a brief moment."
It was a brief moment. But if not for that very short moment of the twig opening his eyes, Kael was sure that he wouldn’t have been able to keep his shit together.
"But it was that moment I first saw the change in your eyes."
"What?! So you mean that whole snake-eye thing I saw earlier, it also happened back then?" Riley asked incredulously.
"Then, just like earlier, it returned to normal right before you passed out again."
Riley tried to absorb everything, but his brain felt like a static mess.
Apparently, during the second time he passed out, Kael figured the guardians were right.
That even though he spewed out black blood, which Riley honestly thought sounded extremely ominous, Kael kept at it because it was the only thing that worked.
Moreover, his body would apparently start reacting when there was a long gap between transfusions.
Riley’s face was a giant grimace, because why did he seriously sound like some sort of vampire?
Just what on Eryndra was happening to him?!
And worse, did his parents know about this? Did they know their son now basically had a blood-feeding schedule?!
"S-sir! My parents—do they know about this?"
There was actually a moment of silence. And Riley wasn’t sure what was wrong, but Kael seemed unusually annoyed again.
Naturally, he would be. After all, it wasn’t in him to accept silence when something was clearly wrong. The only difference was that he understood all too well that "wouldn’t" and "couldn’t" were different for a reason—one was a choice, while the other was a limitation.
So he continued to answer.
"Yes. I went to them because, while I’m not sure what happened to you, surely a human fainting for that long would need sustenance. While the guardian heartstone was working again, they figured it would still be best to give you an intravenous drip."
Riley gawked. "So you asked my parents for help... with an IV?"
The befuddled aide tried not to gape, especially when Kael’s brows furrowed because of the stupid-sounding rhetorical question, but Riley just couldn’t believe he approached several people, even humans, for help.
"But you should know, I didn’t just ask for their help," Kael said evenly. "I also asked about you."
"Huh?"
"You couldn’t possibly think," Kael said slowly, "that it would be normal for a human to survive dragon blood like that. Much less require it."
"!"
Riley froze.
It wasn’t like he hadn’t thought about that before... but hearing Kael say it out loud was another thing entirely.
But how could he possibly be anything else?