Her lips pursed. “One of you is quite enough company.”
He huffed amusedly under his breath. “Now you know how I felt on the road to kill the Infi,” he bantered.
She shook her head at him and gripped the crutches tighter in her hands. “How long will we be gone?”
He started to back away from her. “Depends on if the Rhamocour still likes you.”
Her eyes widened, and she felt an excitement grow in her bones that she hadn’t felt since the first time she had ventured into the Forest with Zoria and met the Noirdiem.
Dunthorne was strapping her bow and sword to the horse when she made her way over to him. She felt a frown slip onto her face upon seeing it.
“My bow and sword? Should I be worried?” she asked him.
“Never know what you might find in the forest, especially as the dead moons draw to a close,” Dunthorne answered.
“Don’t worry,” Draven said as he joined them. “I’m sure your aim will be true this time.”
The baby Rhamocour curled itself beneath Aydra’s arm, begging her to pet it. The laughter that Aydra heard from her lips was near unrecognizable as she sat there in the dark, alone with Draven with only the light of the fire and the purrs of the Rhamocour dragons around them. She couldn’t remember the last she’d truly laughed at something without a nagging in the back of her mind.
Draven was staring at her from across the fire when she looked up, and she glimpsed the first genuine smile she’d ever seen on his face.
Not sarcastic. Not smoldering. No smirking.
A true smile that lit up his features and rose to his eyes.
“Look at that,” she mused as she stroked the dragon’s head in her lap.
“What?”
“You do know how to smile without being an arrogant ass.”
He laughed under his breath and shook his head. “I could say the same about you.”
For a moment, she didn’t break her gaze, feeling almost unable to even blink as she sat there. But Draven cleared his throat, and he laid back on to the ground, where he began to play the horn.
She recognized the song.
“It’s the Wyverdraki song,” she noted.
He nodded. “I knew as soon as you started singing the other night that it was the same.”
“Can I see the horn?” she asked him.
He stopped playing and stood from the ground, stepping over the fire to join her on the ground once more. He held the horn out to her, and she took it in her hands. Her fingers traced the Noctuan creature carvings on the hull of the ivory bone.
The huff of the mother Rhamocour’s breath rattled their fire. Her purr sounded, and she nudged Draven’s head with the tip of her great nose. Her teeth flashed, and Draven reached up to push back her top lip.
“It is made of a Rhamocour fang,” Draven said, revealing the great tooth on the beast.
The dragon huffed annoyingly and shook its head, making Draven chuckle. The words the beast spoke made Aydra smile.
“What did she say?” he asked.
“She said you risk death doing that,” she informed him.
He grinned and stood to face the beast. The dragon backed up, its wings flaring out, and she gave a great bellow as Draven puffed his arms out. He shouted a great cry in her face, and she bellowed louder back.
Draven ran at the beast.
