The possessive thing in him snapped its jaws. Feeling his muscles tense, one by one, Taevas informed her, “Any wards can be broken with enough force. You aren’t safe here, Alashiya. You said this yourself. And what of that man who harasses you—Monty?You expect me to leave you here on your own when he could escalate his behavior at any time? You don’t even have aphone,Shiya. You’re completely isolated and easy pickings for anyone who might get the wrong thought in their head.”
He recognized the familiar rebellious glint in her eye when she protested, “I’ve done just fine on my own.”
Not wanting to rehash the argument from that morning, he shook his head. “I won’t fight with you on this again. This is non-negotiable.”
“You expect me to leave my home?” Her expression grew even more incredulous. “For how long?”
Trying not to sound evasive, Taevas danced around her secondquestion. “I wouldn’t ask this of you if it weren’t absolutely necessary, but Shiya, you aren’t safe here, and I am Isand. We are tied together now. I know you feel this. Iknowyou do. And that means we can’t stay.”
“I can’t leave,” she insisted, sounding truly alarmed now. “I’veneverleft.”
“What?”
Alashiya stood up from the table. His tail slid reluctantly away from her leg as she began to pace. Her right hand bounced and twitched by her thigh —dip, pull, flick.
“I’ve never left Birchdale,” she explained in a rush. “My grove bought this land just before I was born. I went to school here. I’ve only ever been to town and back. I can’t just— You expect me to go out there? I’m a nymph, Taevas. We aren’t built for that world.I’mnot.”
To someone like Taevas — indeed, to any dragon — the concept of being confined to a few acres of flat land, to a tiny rural town, was wholly inconceivable. It was the stuff horror movies were made of.
A dragon could glide fairly early in childhood. They began leaping from carefully placed platforms around the roost at around four, sometimes as early as two. By the time they were ten, they were expected to take short flights with their parents and to leap fearlessly from many story-high launching platforms or roofs. By their teens, average dragons could fly hundreds of miles without needing to touch down for food or water, guided unerringly by the magnetic field of the Earth.
Adults could fly for much longer, much farther, making all the world seem quite small. Their limitations were contained to the bands of the atmosphere that clung so delicately to the face of the planet and, in the modern world, by the political landscape, which could make finding a safe spot to land tricky.
Borders and laws didn’t exist when soaring through the clouds, but they had an annoying way of popping up when one touched down.
To roam was an innate part of them, culturally and biologically. So much so that they could get what they called the roaming sickness, an insidious, often random disease that messed with a dragon’s internal compass. It made it so they couldn’t land, driven by the impulse to justkeep goinguntil they found the perfect place to roost,and tended to result in unchecked aggression, confusion, and death as exhaustion simply dropped them from the sky.
Taevas’s own cousin had fallen prey to the sickness a few years prior, but it had all worked out for Artem, since it led him to his Chosen, Dr. Paloma Contreras, who dwelled at the top of a mountain in the Sierra Nevada range.
To fly, to chase, toroam —it was in their blood. Taevas couldn’t imagine a life where he stayed in one place every day. To hear that Alashiya had done exactly that for the gods knew how long was horrifying.
Afraid that he was getting some of the answers he’d craved in the worst possible way, he pressed, “You must have left atsomepoint. There is a whole world out there, Shiya. I understand not having the money to travel, but to never leave Birchdale—Why?”
“What’s out there for me? I have no one and nothing except this house,” she answered, heartbreakingly matter-of-fact. “I don’t know how to live out there. I was never taught. And nearly every person I’ve met from the outside, everything I’ve ever read or heard, has only made me more certain that I wouldn’t survive ten minutes on my own in a city. I can’t risk that.”
Good gods. If this hadn’t happened, I never would’ve found her.
The idea that the only way he might’ve met her was if he’d finally broken those final, ethical rules he’d laid down for himself so long ago made his stomach drop. What if he hadn’t? Alashiya would’ve lived out her days in complete solitude, never appreciated for her kindness, her gifts, her strength, until the day Grim came for her with death’s sickle and veil.
A cold trickle of unease slid into his veins. He’d been so certain that he was doing the right thing by clinging to his control.He’d convinced himself again and again that abiding by his made up rules was the best choice.
For me. I only ever thought of what I wanted. What I fear. If I continued on that path, we never would’ve met.
Putting that disturbing thought aside for later, he tried to quickly reorganize his argument. Taevas truly hadn’t considered that it might be difficult to convince her to go with him. It was a foregone conclusion in his mind. They were together. Since he had to return to the Draakonriik as soon as possible, of course she would come with him.
Only now, staring into her ashen face, did he realize he had another fight on his hands.
“You’re scared,” he realized, stomach twisting.
Alashiya’s right hand bobbed against her thigh as she began to pace the length of the kitchen. “Of course I am! I can’t leave. It’s impossible.”
“Why is it so impossible,metsalill?Explain it to me.”
“What’s there to explain? I just can’t.”
Taevas rose slowly from his chair. He had to support himself against the table as pain lanced through his fractured ribs and wrapped around the base of his wings like hot barbed wire.
Fighting to keep his voice even, he asked, “Is it because you have some connection to the land? I once heard a rumor that nymphs will die if they’re separated from their land for too long.”
