“You came to Moscow to study dragons?” Grigori suddenly asked.
She nodded slowly, wondering if now he would reveal what he meant when he’d said he was a dragon and she really, really needed him to explain that fire trick with the candles.
He took a spoonful of borscht then spoke again. “Why are you studying dragons?”
She didn’t immediately reply, but considered for a long moment how to answer. Depending on how her apparent interrogation went, she might be allowed to go free.
“My specialty is mythology and as a professor, we have the pressure to publish or perish. I wanted to write an article on dragons.”
“Publish or perish?” He looked taken aback and she realized he misunderstood.
“It’s a saying,” she said between spoonfuls of borscht. “Professors have to write papers and articles in
