Frowning, he clasps his hands behind his back. “Yes, well, everything’s harder these days.”
My eyes narrow. He’d better not criticize Sybil, or I will get out of bed. “I’m fine now. I’ll probably be up for training tomorrow.”
The crease between his brows deepening, he shifts his gaze from me to Fyrestar at my feet. The babies have gone back to their roosts. “Fyrestar was badly injured. Let’s give him a few more days of rest.”
Worry rises like a swollen river inside me. Fyrestar seems fine now, but was he in even worse condition than I thought? Three days is a long time for him to recover.
“Okay. Maybe we’ll just gently stretch our wings tomorrow. Rim and Sol can fly with us.”
Bale’s lips lift in a slight smile when I say our wings. “That could work.”
He still hasn’t moved into the room. His broad shoulders fill most of the doorway, his tall body tapering to a narrow waist encircled by a worn leather belt that holds a set of double blades. His white shirt gapes wide below his neck, the laces loose, while supple black leather pants encase his long legs, leaving little to the imagination. There are muscles for days.
I pretend not to look. I mean, I don’t look. Not really.
“But what if there’s an emergency?” I ask. “More werebeast kidnappings? Or Bloodwold vampires?” They kidnap too. A dragon shifter will sell for hundreds of gold coins at their blood markets. Humans don’t last as long and sell for less.
“There won’t be.”
I laugh without humor. “Because you can control even that?”
He doesn’t answer. He cocks his head, his jaw stiff, and the cherry-dark tattoos racing down one side of his neck seem to bulge with tension. They’re a series of small stars, moons, and eclipses—a homage to Cealastra that I know continues straight down over the scarred skin across his heart and disappears into his waistband. On sweltering summer days, sometimes Bale’s shirt comes off on the training field. Those days are distracting, and if I didn’t have Fyrestar’s help, I’d probably have been decapitated.
“Are you going to loom in my doorway like a giant bat or come in?” I ask tartly.
Bemusement flits across his features. “You have an odd way of speaking to your king.”
I laugh for real this time. “Are you going to loom in my doorway, Your Big Shadowy Majesty, or come in so I don’t have to shout across the room?”
Bale’s mouth twitches. When the battle horn blows, he’s all business and fully in charge. In training, it’s mostly that way too. Otherwise, he always seems happiest when none of us treats him any differently from anyone else on the Elite Wing. The warbirds and the team are like family to me, and I’m pretty sure Bale feels the same way.
He moves inside and shuts the door on the chilly cross breeze from the open window, but instead of sitting in one of the chairs Sybil left next to me, he stops at the foot of my bed and puts a hand on Fyrestar.
Fyrestar’s feathers warm, and so does my heart. A soft, internal sigh echoes bleakly inside me. Bale really doesn’t make it easy to get over this infatuation.
I wiggle up a little more, sitting straighter against my pillows. His eyes flick up, then quickly away, and I glance down, seeing that the neckline of my nightgown has slipped dangerously low again. I tug it back up, my face flaming. I try to pull the sheet up, too, but Fyrestar’s weight pins it down.
I clear my throat. “Can I offer you…” Glancing around, I realize the only things I have in here are weapons, clothes in a free-standing dresser, a screen hiding a bathing and personal needs area, two chairs, and a bed and bedside table. Warmth crawls up my neck again. “A glass of water?” There’s one clean glass left.
“You keep very sparse quarters,” Bale remarks, scowling as he looks around my spacious but mostly empty bedroom. “The others have set up their lairs more…” He hesitates, his amber eyes swinging back to me. “Comfortably.”
That’s something he knows from checking on team members after injuries. Otherwise, he’s never on the Elite Wing level inside the mountain and hasn’t once in almost two hundred years tried to join us in our lounge in the evenings. I can count on one hand the number of times he’s joined us in the Drayke Mountain dining hall for dinner, most of them in the last few years. The only time Bale doesn’t choose isolation is when we’re out on missions and he’s truly part of the team, not something inherently separate.
It’s not that he and I don’t talk. But usually, he finds me on one of the open, south-facing sun porches or pulls me aside for extra training. And I need it. I’m sure he knows my room best since I’m always the one getting hurt.
I shrug. “I’m not a dragon shifter. I don’t need a lair.”
“You need a home.”
“This is a home.” I nod toward the roosting wall with the deep, built-in cavities for my phoenixes and their nests. “And I have my birds.”
Bale’s expression darkens. “This is basically what prisoners have in my dungeon, and even they ask for more. There’s not even a rug. Or a fire in the hearth. Is this what you were used to at Glarraden House?” His frown deepens. “Cealastra knows there was gold enough to provide.”
Taunting voices fill my head. Gildenfae-gold kid. I shove the remembered jeering aside.
“I’ve never been deprived in my life,” I answer honestly. Except of answers. Of attention. Of friendship. Anything material I ever wanted or needed, I had.
And of course, everyone knows about the gold arriving systematically on Dragon’s Night. My known history is an open book, just like Bale’s, Maia’s, Arran’s, Wade’s, Kellan’s, and Danica’s. We’re famous in Torridaig. And infamous everywhere else.
