I offer him a slow, knowing smile, and he watches my mouth like it’s a precious flower blooming under the rarest of circumstances. I almost hate to ruin it, but I know I have to.
“Are you done with your mantrum now?” I ask, forcing my hands to my sides and refusing to acknowledge the itch charging through them to explore more of him.
Like ice water to red-hot coals, my question douses the building pyre between us. The growing need in Aeson’s eyes sputters, and consternation quickly billows in.
“I thought theRoyal Wingwere the elite of the elite. A few scars shouldn’t send the best and brightest The Horde has to offer into a full blown frenzy. You should be careful with that chink in your armor, or someone will use it against you.”
Aeson’s gaze is a full-blown glower by the time I stop running my mouth, and his hands fall away from my body as he takes a reluctant step back. My words work exactly as intended, which shouldn’t bother me, and yet the regret that effervesces through me is unmistakable. Hastily I drop-kick the part of me that wants to reach for the commander’s hands and put them right back where they were as he creates even more distance between us.
“Someone like you?” he queries cautiously, like he’s being extra careful not to get caught on the sharp tips of my barbed words.
“No,” I deadpan, not liking the accusation that flickers across his face. He’s looking at me now as thoughI’mthe one who invadedhisspace and got all handsy, not the other way around. “But not everyone is as stalwart as me,” I add, my offended glare now mirroring his.
A derisive snort slips out of him, and his eyes once again dip down to my lips. “That mouth of yours is going to get you into trouble one day,” he warns, but something in his eyes, in his tone, makes it feel more like an invitation than an admonition.
“One could argue it already has,” I mutter more to myself than him.
The low hum of agreement he makes slips through my cracks and settles low in my belly. I swallow down the annoying butterflies that try to flutter from my stomach up into my chest, and stop myself from running my hand over the scars on my forearm to help anchor me.
Someone purposefully clears their throat. The sound yanks me from the tunnel vision I’ve had on Aeson and shoves me back into the room with everyone I all but forgot about until now. Chastain, Blay, and Farrow are noticeably missing, but everyone else watches on with a mixture of emotion. I rifle through the upset and pity I see, make note of the fact that Razeer and Urser won’t even look in my direction, and zero in on the way Tahir watches Aeson as he retreats until he’s once again standing next to Lorn.
“Hey, Oric,” I call out, for no other reason than I would like her to get on with the scanning and poking she’s here to do so she can fuck off. If there’s a little extra growl in my tone, it has everything to do with how tired I am and nothing to do with the way she’s drooling over the commander like a fucking gor hound cutting a new set of teeth.
Tahir’s head snaps in my direction.
“I’m ready if you are,” I tell her, gesturing to the centrifuge and sequencer she’s still holding.
“Excellent.” She nods, the movement snapping her out of the lascivious thoughts she was obviously just thinking. “Are you in possession of anything else that could interfere with your scan?” Her honeycomb-yellow eyes drop to the anklet sitting on the lush white carpet next to my bare foot.
“Nope. The healers only gave me the one.”
The Oric’s gaze sweeps over me once, seeing for herself if I’m telling the truth. Her eyes pause on the other boot I’m still wearing. With a scoff, I remove it. Straightening, I cross my arms over my chest and arch an eyebrow in challenge. She swallows audibly before daring to step closer. She’s noticeably more hesitant than she was before, but I have no idea if it’s because she’s worried she might spook me or if she’s afraid to get too close, like my scars might be catching.
I hold my arms up when she lifts the wand-like sequencer. I don’t know if I need to stand like I’m about to be frisked, but she doesn’t correct me as she runs the tech stick around my frame. When she’s done, she tucks it away into the mass of ruffles encasing her lower half and holds up the centrifuge.
“I suppose it must be some consolation that they didn’t destroy your face,” Tahir offers amiably as I press a digit to the box resting in her palm. It nips my finger and then sucks a small sample of blood from the pinprick of a wound, just like the Oric said it would. Thankfully, neither sensation triggers any kind of response in me.
For a second, I almost brush off the Oric’s presumptive and rude as fuck comment, but curiosity gets the better of me.
“Oh, they fucked up my face plenty,” I tell her casually, my gaze fixed on her vapid face while my attention is keyed into Jori. “Turns out that my tears have healing properties and stopped me from scarring there. I tried rubbing them into other wounds, but the blood brokers caught on and stopped me from healing myself that way. Couldn’t do much to stop the tears from touching my face though. Lucky me.”
Ignoring Tahir’s response, I glance over at Jori’s pensive face.
Interesting.
Judging by the Render’s expression, I gather that the magic tears thing isn’t a typical dragon trait. But it can’t be a Syphon thing either because all of my dragon perks are on lockdown, at least I thought they were.
I open my mouth to ask the Healer about it, but a high-pitched beep rings out from Tahir’s ruffles where she stashed the centrifuge. She starts tapping at the rose gold cuff on her wrist, and a screen pops up. Data that must mean something to the Oric starts ticking across the translucent display, and she studies it intently. After a beat, her brow furrows and her head tilts.
“That can’t be right,” she mumbles to herself before typing a few things onto the screen and staring at the new streams of data that start to roll across. Tahir’s cheeks pinken to a hue that matches her over-the-top dress, and her frustration starts to spill over when she recalibrates the data a third and then a fourth time. Angry yellow eyes narrow in my direction, and an ugly vein perks up in her forehead as she whirls on me. “What did you do to mess with the sequencer?” she demands.
“I thought you said it could tell if I was tricking it?” I point out as the Oric’s face grows even redder.
“It can, but—”
“Is it saying I tricked the sequencer?” I interrupt, waving at the screen still floating above her wrist.
“No, but you did. You had to, there’s no other way—”
