He was lost in dark thoughts and halfway to home when Cassia finally spoke.
“Awfully pretty out here,” she murmured, her face turned away from him and studying the landscape.
Straightening, Aevrin glanced around and grunted his agreement. The valley was a couple miles wide and a few times as long, all undeveloped pastures full of cattle and some of the best dragon hatcheries known to humankind. They were surrounded on all sides by rugged mountains, tree-lined at the base with iron pines that only burned from dragonfire, and jagged, barren stone at the tops. The air smelled like nettles and mud and burning. Far away, a thunder of wild dragons tumbled through the air.
He couldn’t imagine ever trading the wild, smokey beauty of the Canyon for anywhere else in the Thronden Empire; not the glittering, rainy cities at its heart or the windswept ice-desert of the north; not the eastern steppe or the hot southern reaches.Thiswas home.
“You from around here, Cassia?” he wanted to know, watching her stare at the dragons.
“Kind of.” Her voice was soft and distant. He caught a frown at the corner of her lips and turned away before she could catch him staring. If he wanted to know about her, he was going to have to ask in a roundabout way, like trying to catch a shy calf. She was sitting as far away on the bench as she could get from him. He shifted a few inches away in case the two feet already between them wasn't enough for her.
“I don’t think I told you my name,” she added quietly.
“Evelya did,” he said.
“Folk talk a lot around here?”
Aevrin snorted despite himself and threw her a glance. But her head was still turned away from him.
“You aren’t from around here if you have to ask that,” he informed her, and added it to the slowly-growing list of things he knew about Cassia Clarek.
“Are you taking me much further?”
“No. You can see the house up ahead already.” He settled the reins in one hand to point dead straight with two fingers. The sprawling three-story ranch house was built of stone, with a slanted tile roof. It had been his family’s home for generations before Aevrin’s own birth. The stones covering the upper stories, newer additions, were a paler shade of gray than the original first floor, but they were all smoke-stained and worn.
“...That’s a big house,” Cassia said. Out of the corner of his vision, he could see her eyes widening. He kept his gaze fixed ahead, not wanting her to think he was staring.
“Not when we’re all in it, it’s not. Feels damn small then.”
They’d been talking about putting in new cabins for ages, now that Aevrin’s generation were all full grown and rubbing too tight at the elbows. Finding the time for home building when the ranch needed constant work was a headache and a half. Still, Aevrin and his siblings each had a small plot carved out of the family land. He’d get around to building on his. Someday.
“There’s a lot of you?”
“Me, three brothers, a sister, my dad, and Gramma Prisca. Well, Ash is off at school and Dariek’s gone east to exhibit, so it’s a little emptier just now.”
Aevrin wondered if she’d notice the lack of ‘mother’ on his list, and braced himself for the empty apologetic cooing most people did. But Cassia didn’t comment on it. She’d lapsed back into silence. One of her hands gripped the edge of the cart like she was ready to fling herself off it at a moment's notice.
To the left of the house, in the cockatrice pen, he could see one of the giant snake-tailed hens scratching the dirt for three-toothed birworms. A red dragon, likely his father’s by the size, circled over the pastures in the distance, inspecting their borders.
He at last hauled Tiny, the bull pulling the cart, to a halt in front of the house. Cassia stared up at the stone building with an apprehensive look on her face. A light wind rattled through the chimes hanging on the porch. One of the cockatrices clucked at the others. In the far distance, the cows lowed, and burned.
He jumped off the cart, came around to where she sat, and offered her a hand getting down. She stared a moment too long before slowly reaching out to take it, as if she was afraid he’d bite. Her fingertips were calloused, indicating she did some kind of labor to earn her keep.
“Hey,” Aevrin told her solemnly, looking up at where she still perched on the bench. He couldn’t imagine what she must have been through. “Listen, I know you don’t know me from false gold, but I’ve got you, Miss Cassia. Alright? You’re safe here. On my word.”
As he talked, she turned the full force of her wide amber eyes on him. Aevrin’s heart skipped a beat and his tongue quit working. She seemed to be sizing him up, and he didn’t dare interrupt.
He’d spent desperate years as a youth daydreaming about a girl looking at him with the kind of intensity Cassia was just now. Though the daydreams had been a lot more peaceful. The woman in them hadn’t been bruised.
She nodded, breaking him free of her gaze. Then she jumped off the cart with a wince at the impact, her palm delicately resting in his. Aevrin had to stop himself from putting his arm protectively around her when she landed. He didn’t know dung about the girl, when it came down to it, and the last thing she probably wanted was a man putting his hands on her, even in a friendly way. Reluctantly, he let go of her and unhitched Tiny, leading the bull to the stone holding-pen beside the house. Itwas a storytale to think he could still feel her touch, but he was acutely aware of which hand she’d held and which she had not.
As he returned from the pen, his own Kazeic and his brother Sorven’s juvenile dragon, Cobrid, came barreling around the side of the house without warning. Cassia yelped and jumped back. Aevrin stood his ground, used to their antics and their need to inspect any who strayed on their land.
Cobrid was far smaller and leaner than Kazeic, her back only coming up to Aevrin’s shoulder. Her wings weren’t big enough for her body yet, but she was growing rapidly and had quickly wormed her way to the center of the family's thunder. With a confident, happy chortle the small red duck charged them. She wriggled low to the ground and skimmed her jaw to the earth as she circled Cassia excitedly. The woman stood stiffly, her eyes tracking the dragon’s movements and her lips pressed tight.
“They won't hurt you,” Aevrin said quickly. “She just wants to see what you're about.”
“I know.” She gave him a small, tight smile, but kept her eyes on Cobrid. He fought against the urge to step in and shoo the young duck away. The dragons would think it terribly rude if he did so, even if Cobridwasa child who sometimes deserved shooing.
