Dain
Why the hell would I draw some plaster sculpture, when Fern was right here?
I hadn’t intended to draw anything. Just sit by an easel, my head down. I’d snarl at the foppish tutor if he questioned what I was doing, that was my plan. It meant I could keep an eye on Fern and stop my brothers from making things worse with their high-handed bullshit. Instead, my hand moved of its own accord, plucking a pencil from the drawer under the easel. Testing the pencil on the paper, the grey smear let me know this was a soft one, and I knew exactly what it was good for.
Drawing the line of her cheek. I thought I knew it by heart, having drawn it over and over, and yet as I looked up to stare at Fern’s face, I saw all the things I’d missed. The angle I usually drew wasn’t quite right, the curve slightly flatter than I’d visualised and then there was that little divot that formed in one cheek as she focussed. It felt like my mind captured every tiny detail greedily, before my pencil moved to record that on the page. My eyes, my hand, they worked in tandem, sketching as I stared at Fern, moving faster and faster until…
Her eyes met mine across the ring of easels.
My hand faltered, the pencil sliding without purpose across my drawing, and I didn’t have to look at to know I was ruining it. No more than she was destroying me. That wide-eyed stare, I caught the moment when the pleasure of creating something faded. The slight frown that formed between her brows, I wanted to grab my eraser and rub it away, but she wasn’t an artwork I’d drawn. Too perfect for my meagre skill, I’d never be able to record that wariness that rose in her eyes.
“Dain, no…”
Her voice, my dream, they came back to me then, and that had me jerking my focus back to my drawing just in time to see my hand drag a ragged line through it. With a sucked in breath, I regarded the mess I’d made. Couldn’t have been worse if I pulled out my belt knife and cut her face in reality. The pencil was dropped into the drawer, the eraser found by feel.
Erase all of it, that’s what my heart pulsed, angry that I’d even tried to draw Fern in class. Every other time it was something I did in the quiet of night, after my idiot brothers had gone to sleep, or early in the morning. Never out in the open. Yet when I put the eraser to the page, it moved carefully, just taking out that errant line, not the whole composition. Remove all trace of Fern from the paper? The thought of it had my guts roiling. My pencil found itself back in my hand and then was moving across the page, correcting my error, then adding more and more details.
My mind was a strange place, but never more than when I was drawing. Time, space, sound, it all dropped away, creating an endless present moment that stretched on and on as I drew. That happened now. The sounds of the classroom dulled to a faint muffle, the movements of the students next to me nothing more than the branches of a tree moving in the breeze, leaves skipping across the cobblestones outside. No one and nothing mattered, except for her.
There was a rush that came from forcing my hand to render what I saw. It wasn’t just the fact my pencil recorded the shadowson the sides of Fern’s face. Instead, she seemed to emerge from the page, the morning sunlight stroking her cheek like a lover’s touch. That sparkle in her eyes, I’d never drawn that before, but I strove to capture it perfectly now, that sense of elation growing as my memory and my hand moved in perfect synchronicity. My pencil moved swiftly, as if I was racing against my own skill, sure it was about to falter.
But it wasn’t my ability that forced me to stop.
“Now, step back and look at each other’s drawings.”
My lips curled back in a snarl at this Lucien as he jerked me out of my reverie, shoving me right back into the studio and that’s when I remembered why I didn’t allow myself to draw around other people. With a blink, I saw my fellow students rising from their stools, obediently moving about the classroom. The cadet closest to me dared a look at my easel, but whatever they saw in my face had them turning away abruptly.
But not her.
Fern was walking around the circle with that blonde woman, growing closer and closer. I watched them confer with each other about the drawings, even as I stood up. Not to peer at other’s artworks, but to protect mine from the confusion then revulsion Fern was sure to express.
“Oh…!”
The blonde woman looked past my shoulder and what she saw had her glancing back at Fern. My hand moved, not to create this time, but to destroy. The woman of my dreams, she saw her portrait for just a second, right before I yanked the piece of paper from where it was pinned to the easel.
Scrunch it up into a ball, then toss it into the nearby bin, or better, set it in the sink then use a flint to burn it to embers, the paper turned black. My hand clamped down on the paper, but the first crumple had Fern lunging forward.
“Dain, no!”
That phrase, heard over and over last night, was all it took to stop me. Her hand felt like it seared a brand on my wrist, even as she touched me gently, then plucked the drawing from my grip. Iwas struck dumb, left to stare down at her as she smoothed the paper back out.
Did she see it? Did she see the emotion that throbbed inside me the moment I set pencil to paper? I couldn’t understand how she wouldn’t because I couldn’t have felt more naked if I’d stripped off every inch of clothing and stood posed along with those sculptures in the centre of the easel.
Steady, brother.
Argent’s voice was like a hand on my shoulder, trying to calm me, and usually it was enough. When she looked up at me…? With a shake of my head, I was off. Striding out of the room, down the hall, moving blindly, anything to get away from Fern. Because staring into her eyes in reality? It hurt in ways my dreams hadn’t prepared me for and I couldn’t bear it for one more second. My dragon landed on the cobblestones the moment I emerged from the keep.
She liked the drawing.There was a cautious wonder to my dragon’s voice.She likes art and you are talented for a human.
Let’s go, Argent,I said, hauling myself up and onto his back. He was going to argue, I could see that in the way he paused.Please, brother.
That was enough. When he threw himself into the air, when we rose above the keep, that was the moment when I could take a full breath. With every sweep of Argent’s wings more and more oxygen was sucked into my lungs, leaving me light headed and feeling like I was about to float out of the saddle.
Anywhere but in that room, staring at the woman who made my heart stutter in my chest, slowing, then stopping, only to begin beating again, just for her.
Next time,Argent assured me.You are always drawing. You will make an artwork that truly communicates how you feel about this woman and then she will know.
He meant that to be encouraging, but instead I went stock still, the icy cold of the wind cutting through the leather of my armour in ways I didn’t normally feel.
