“Everyone here has been nothing but kind to me.” I don’t know why my eyes water when I say it. I wish they didn’t. “Kinder than …” I don’t finish the thought. I don’t have to.
Vander’s hold tightens the slightest bit. “You don’t have to explain anything to me. I saw you chained to the stone.”
Gods, why does this feel so good? I don’t remember anyone holding me like this. Not even my mother. Perhaps when I was little or very ill, but never for the sake of simply holding me. It’s almost like a gift I didn’t know existed, one that’s as foreign as it is comforting. And it’s getting harder for me to remember Vander isn’t a man, not a mortal, not anything I’ve ever experienced before. I still don’t know what he plans to do with me, but that doesn’t leave me feeling as uneasy as it did before.
He doesn’t ask questions, doesn’t chide me. He simply sits with me, granting me his warmth while I try to gather my thoughts.
“Why did you take the Bargain?” I ask, all the worry from earlier with Brin draining away. Gods, he’s so warm. Why is he so warm? “It sort of seems like you didn’t want to.”
“The Arbiter chose me.”
“Who?”
“The Arbiter,” he says it like it’s obvious.
“What’s that?”
He stares down at me, his jawline in sharp relief. “The mortals don’t know about the Arbiter?”
I shake my head. “Huh?”
“Gods, it’s as if you’ve gone backwards in learning, in knowledge about our world. The sheer ignorance of some of the things you’ve told me, what your elders have taught you. It?—”
“Now who’s insulting who?” I shove at his chest.
He doesn’t move at all. It’s like pushing against rock. He looks up, and with a slight shake of his head, says, “The Arbiter presides over each Bargain, seeking to assure fairness for all parties. She chooses who from Oblivion will partake in the Bargain every 20 years. She’s also supposed to ensure fairness on the side bargains made by unscrupulous immortals with your people, but by all accounts, she’s been quite lax in the recent century or two.”
“So there’s a person who dictates all this?” Did the Eternal Chalice actually choose me or was it this Arbiter person? Or was it all a bunch of lies in the first place? My head is spinning, mytemper rising. I was controlled by Lord Rayid, by the Eternal Chalice—and that chafed. But to think that I had no say in anything, no chance of avoiding this fate, no free will—gods, it’s maddening.
“The Arbiter was chosen by mortals and immortals when the Bargain first began, and it has been her duty ever since.”
The thought of someone out there who sits back and watches as mortals are shredded or burned or kidnapped to some grisly fate—it’s galling. “That’s horseshit.”
His eyes widen.
“I mean it. No one should tell me what happens to me exceptme. No one should pick and choose who lives and who dies and who gets sacrificed to Oblivion. I make my own fate.” My mother would tell me to hush, would say my words were blasphemy and I had to be careful. But look what being careful got me.
“You speak your mind.” He seems taken aback.
“I always have. Maybe that’s one of the reasons the Eternal chalice justhappenedto pick me.” I chew on my bottom lip, my irritation eating away at me. “And if that bothers you, then you’ll have to take it up with the Arbiter, since it seems she’s the one who chose me as your sacrifice.”
“It doesn’t bother me. Dragons prize candor almost as highly as treasure.”
I stop chewing my lip. “Youdohave a lot of treasure. Enough for?—”
“Never enough, pet.” He gives me a devilish smile. “There’s not enough treasure in this world to satisfy a DragonKin.”
Gods, he’s beautiful in a way I’ve never seen in a man before. His features are rough-hewn, sharp and angular. His eyes seem to possess their own inner sparkle, all the more when he’s on the subject of treasure. Big, strong, and assuredly deadly, he’s also far more handsome than any male has a right to be—dragon or otherwise. How strange I should find myself in this creature’s arms, comforted by him in a way that defies comprehension.
He stands, lifting me easily, and grabs my crutch. “Come, it’s time for you to dine with everyone instead of alone in our room.”
I squirm. He always refers to the bedchamber as ‘ours’ though he doesn’t sleep there. I’ve been half wondering, half fearing he would change his mind and get into bed with me one of these evenings. He never has. The more time I’ve had to recover, the more I realized I jumped a lot of conclusions—all of them bad and most of them wrong.
He carries me into the dining room, the same one I ventured into before. It seems like that was ages ago, as if I’ve lived an entire lifetime between then and now. But it’s only been a few weeks. Each day spent with Lenka and the other Firefolk with frequent visits from Vander. I could hear his brothers, their loud voices carrying through the keep, but they never came to my room. I soon grew accustomed to hearing them if not seeing them. Laughter, jokes, and almost constant ribbing—sometimes they reminded me of the boys I knew in Raingreen, the young ones who lived and worked in the outer village right alongside me. But that was before my father left, before my mother and I were shunned, almost being sent outside the walls entirely.
Vander sits me down at the table, knocking me out of my thoughts. “Oh, this is nice.” The chair is different. Not the huge one made for DragonKin, but smaller. As if it were created with a mortal in mind.
“Did you craft this?” I ask and run my hands along the smooth wooden rails. The back has been cut into a scene of woods and wildflowers, all of it darkened around the edges as if the design was burned in.
