The crutch helped her rise to the bed once more. With a huff, she surrendered onto the middle of it, cursing that she had let herself get hurt.
Draven’s room was cool. The breeze of the tree canopy continuously swept through it. She wondered how the Venari ever heard anything on the wind if it was constantly blowing as she felt.
Or perhaps it was that Duarb knew she was there, and he didn’t approve.
Her boredom quickly set in. The only thing interesting in the whole of the room was his great desk that he had by the door, stacks of papers and maps piled atop it. There was shelving behind the chair, rolled parchment in the boxes stacked as tall as the ceiling. She wanted to snoop, allow her curiosity to get the best of her.
But when her feet gave out from under her upon her making herself rise, she cursed the day and simply surrendered to the bed once more.
The howls of the Ulfram echoed off the trees. And then she heard something she’d not heard before in all her years. The great song of the Wyverdraki dragon family.
A smile rose on her lips as she allowed it to fill her ears.
She’d just sank back onto the bedspread to listen when she heard footsteps coming up the staircase.
Draven appeared on the deck, and he paused in the great opening, a tray of what she assumed was food, in his hand. “Good. You’re awake,” he mused, stepping inside. “Are you hungry?” he asked as he sat the tray of food on the small eating table to the right of the door.
Her stomach growled, and he raised his brows at her in response. “I suppose,” she managed.
He nodded and then crossed the room to a dresser where he immediately took his shirt off.
She wished she could say that she looked away as he changed clothes. But she didn’t.
The muscles of his back rippled as he moved his arms to take the shirt off and then search for a new one. She hated her body’s response to seeing the dimples at his hips, the chisel of his shoulders. It was her favorite thing on a man, and Draven’s exceeded expectations. She squinted at the crude black marks on his shoulder blade, like lightning streaks on his skin that stretched from the back of his forearms from the phoenix mark on his hands and up to the top of his collarbone.
“Would you like me to turn around or is this how you usually seduce your women?” she asked in a low voice.
“I should think we’re both old enough to have more tricks up our sleeves for wooing prey into bed than just the lure of body parts,” he replied as he turned towards her. His sage eyes danced in her direction as he pushed his arms through the snug long sleeve tunic and then stuck his head through the top.
“Why? Were you seduced?” he mocked.
Her nostrils flared. “You’re insufferable.”
He chuckled under his breath. “Do you think you can make it over to the table or shall I have to carry you over?”
“Can you not bring it to me?” she grunted.
“Food is not served in my bed,” he told her. “That is reserved for a different splay.” He paused a moment, slowly taking a step towards her as he said, “So my question, Sun Queen, is can you walk to the table.”
She looked down at the swell of her ankles and cursed herself for the words she knew were about to come from her mouth. “No,” she said in such a voice she barely heard herself.
“What was that?”
“I said no, okay?” she nearly yelled. “I can’t walk.”
She dared to look up at his face, but what she saw was not amusement or mockery in his gaze, but rather a softened expression she didn’t understand. He finished crossing the space between them and bent beside her. He tucked his arm around her waist and brought her arms around his neck. Her breath stilled as he lifted her off the floor, waist in his hand, her toes never even touching the ground as he walked across the room to the table as though she were simply a bag on his shoulder.
Her pride fell as he sat her in the chair and then poured her a cup of wine.
She hugged her arms across her chest and sank herself as far back as she could into the seat. “Why are you doing this?” she asked.
“What?”
“Being nice,” she replied. “Helping me.”
He paused a moment and then placed the cup in front of her. He didn’t speak, instead simply taking the seat across from her and taking a long sip of his wine.
“You hear them,” he said as more of a statement than a question.
