Draknart allowed himself a smile. When the fire bell fell from its tower in the dark of the night, he had lifted it back in its place. When snow had buried the village in the middle of this past winter, he melted the ice off the roofs at night with a couple of well-aimed puffs of fire. He was right proud of himself for not setting a single thatched roof aflame. He’d even brought two of the deer he killed toward dawn and left them at the village square, knowing the men would not be able to go into the woods to hunt. He helped where he could. It gave his night flights purpose.
As dawn reached the horizon, he walked down the wide staircase created for his dragon size. He pushed open the heavy oak double doors to his bedchamber and stopped to take in the lovely view of his lady wife in bed.
“Enjoyed your flight?” she murmured, woken by the scraping of the door.
Some nights she went with him. On others, when she was tired from supervising the herb harvest or the bottling of elderberry wine or helping a woman in the village through labor, she stayed home for a full night’s sleep.
The first light of dawn came through the window just then, and Draknart’s dragon body changed to the body of a man. For the past century, he’d been dragon from midnight to dawn, and man for the rest of the day. There’d been a time he would have considered having to spend even more time in man’s skin the worst possible curse. But in truth, his new circumstances allowed him a better life with Einin.
She was happy, so he was happy.
He slid naked under the furs and pulled her into his arms.
“You’re wet,” she murmured against his chest.
“Swam in the lake.” He pulled back a little. “Do I make you cold?”
She pressed herself against him. “Nay. Never.”
He reached a hand under her chin and raised her head to kiss her lips. She was sweeter than honeycomb, his Einin.
“More people are coming up the southern road. Camped for the night. An old woman and her daughter, and the daughter’s children.”
“Accused of witchery?”
“They’ll tell us when they get here.”
After Draknart had flown his hoard to Castle Blackstone on a moonless night and then had the castle rebuilt in the following years, he had offered free land to the tradesmen in addition to their pay. For a while, there were many more men than women. Then two sisters accused of witchcraft escaped a mob who’d chased them in the night with torches.
Einin had offered them safety in the castle. Somehow, word spread, and the following year, another woman arrived, two more the year after, then more the year after that. People said the lord and lady of the castle would not turn any unfortunates away.
Draknart kissed his Einin again and again.
“The baker and his wife think we’re fey,” he said a long time later, pulling Einin against him, her head on his shoulder as he lay on his back.
He looked at their shield carved into the stone above the doorway as it was carved above every threshold in the castle. A shield with a dragon in the middle, on a background of two crossed swords, and the family motto on a pennant above: Wild and Free.
Einin sighed, her breast pressing into his side in a most distracting way. “I should be an old crone by now, for certain. Do you think I am unnatural? The priest in my village used to say—”
He growled. “Never unnatural.”
“What is it, then? The love of a dragon?” Her tone said she meant it as a joke.
“Aye. The love of a dragon, for certain. You should love your dragon with all your heart.”
“Are you my dragon, then?”
“Yours and no other’s.” He rolled her under him and grinned at the catch in her soft breath. “And you are mine, now and forever, my Lady Einin.”
“I am yours with all my heart, my lord dragon.”
He made love to her gently.
And then…
And then his sweet Einin raked her nails down his back and demanded, “Now take me like you did in the cave at Fern Lake.”
’Twas another yearbefore Belisama visited Einin, on a clear summer night.
