"Aye, falling into a woman who needs you when your people need you more."
I stiffened at that. Ned had always been polite to my mother, although he'd also always pushed my father to be more attentive to the Hills. But was there more to it than that? More resentment than I'd been able to glean as a child?
"Brigid's…independent. She might need me to avoid Barr, but she doesn't needme," I said, frowning.Doesn't want me is more like.
Ned stared at me for a long time, long enough to have me squirming like a boy again. "Ah, I see. You're a fool then."
I huffed, crossing my arms over my chest. "Ned, I thought you didn't want to give me advice?—"
"Well, if you can't see the obvious?—"
"Ned!"
He rolled his eyes dramatically and took a long helping of whisky before I grew too impatient and stole it away from him. He hid his grin, but poorly.
"A woman who's been so thoroughly scorned by the man who shares her bed will take a special touch, a little extra assurance, before she trusts the next man," Ned said slowly.
"Scorned?" I asked, sitting up straighter, trying to ignore the irritated heat in my chest at the mention of Brigid and Barr together. It was distant past, according to her.
Ned met my eyes, his own rheumy wet blue ones astonishingly keen and sharp. "Barr was a fine dragon, well into his prime and already having dismissed two omegas from his house, when he set his eye on that girl. And girl she was. He had his scent on her by the time she was sixteen. Her father was onlytoo pleased to arrange the match, and she looked at that man like he hung the moon just for her each night."
I swallowed the fire in my throat and focused my stare out at the streak of white water rushing down between the hills.
"But Barr's never been satisfied. I don't know how long it took him, or if he never was faithful to that girl, but I could see the moment sheknew, and it wasn't even a year since she'd been claimed."
I startled at that, blinking. "He had other women?"
"Doxies, widows, other men's omegas, servants, you name it. He bedded any willing woman he could find. All while she kept his house, and hosted his guests, and looked like her heart had been kicked from here to Skybern."
My fists clenched on the stone, little pieces crumbling under my grip. I could imagine my words in the bath to Brigid now, why she heard dismissal rather than concern. I'd been assuming she didn't reallywantto bed me. Replaying our words in my mind, the conversation sounded more complicated now.
"They reconciled for a time. Barr wants an heir, of course, and she was still young and ripe. But he wouldn't have kept true for long, just through a rut cycle, and this next time, she left him for good."
She'd been betrayed twice by the same man. "She's not going to trust me easily," I said.
"Surely not. Likely doesn't trust herself, either."
I thought of the kiss, how careful I'd tried to be, how gentle, how she'd melted for a moment and the wild victory that had made me tight and eager, just before she'd torn herself away. I turned to Ned, and I didn't even care that the old man looked smug.
"What do you suggest, Ned?"
He took in a deep breath and set his hands on his old knees, frowning and pretending to think, when I knew full well he'd already decided exactly what I needed to do.
"Be patient, of course. Listen when she has a mind to speak. But don't be afraid to show that woman you want her. Barr was a small man that wanted to feel big, and I think he did so by crushing that girl—her heart, her spirit. You ought to see what happens when you do the opposite."
I sipped at the whisky flask, enjoying the heat burning its way from my tongue down my throat and into my belly, like dragon fire. Like desire for a woman.
"I'll see what I can do," I said.
I startledat the sound of the knock, wincing as water splashed from the tub onto the floor.Get it together, Torion.
"Come in." I cleared my throat and rolled my shoulders and wings, settling back into the hot, shallow water. I'd taken Ned's advice, mulled it over for a night and a day, and come to one slightly self-serving conclusion. A plan, to be exact. I would rewrite the night I'd erred with Brigid.
The door creaked open, and a sharp silence that rang in my ears. Her voice broke it softly. "You asked for me?"
I turned my head just enough to get a glimpse of her out of the corner of my eye, resisting the urge to drink her in fully. I'd have plenty of time for that later if this went well.
"I did." I only watched her enough to know that she closed the door and approached me in the tub, giving myself a last moment to catch my breath and prepare for my plan to go terribly awry or…not. When she reached the side of the tub and remained standing, I looked up, catching her eyes fixed on thewater, on what it distorted and revealed. "You've been avoiding me, Brigid."
