“Rest if you want,” Bale rumbles. “I’ll keep watch until dawn.”
He’s right in front of me, a familiar outline in the dark. I get an odd flash of him in a night-shadowed room I don’t recognize. He’s in his dragon form, his eyes ablaze. He looms over me, my arm throbs, and terror overwhelms me. I blink, and the vision is gone.
Alarmed, I stifle a gasp and cross my arms over my chest, wishing I could stifle my suddenly thrashing heartbeat too. Blinking rapidly chases the echo of fear from my mind, but I don’t think it was only Bale who frightened me. Someone else was there. I just don’t know who.
Bale’s eyes open, a frown narrowing the slight glow of his gaze on me. Great. He definitely heard my heart crack like thunder against my ribs.
I fake a breezy tone. “Thanks, but I’m fine. I rested at the inn.” There’s no way I can sleep with Bale Cinderheart so close his inner heat warms my feet, his legs stretched out next to mine.
Something fiery erupts in my chest, not helping my racing pulse. Did he sit this way on purpose? He knows I get cold, especially my feet and hands. He saw it at lunch and sent me outside to warm up in the sunshine.
“Why do you always say sunlight helps?” I ask in sudden confusion. “I don’t spend any more or less time in the sun than anyone else.”
He takes a long time to respond and, as usual, it’s with a question instead of an answer. “Why do you ask?”
“Because it does help. I always feel better, regain my appetite, stop shivering…But I don’t tan. I never have. Isn’t that strange?”
“I don’t tan much, either.”
“But you do tan.” I tug at the fang-decaying torque, momentarily lifting the silver band off my skin. “Do you know something I don’t? Something about me?”
He crosses his legs at the ankles, taking his heat a little farther from me. “Why would I?”
Frustrated with another question, I pull my second cloak more thoroughly over me and cross my ankles too. Where there’d been a hand’s width between our feet, now there are three. “The whole sunlight thing—like I just said.”
Bale shakes his head. “I’m just a keen observer. I’ve known you for a while—long enough to notice things.”
I barely noticed or put the two together. But maybe that’s what makes Bale a powerful, centuries-old starborn king and me a much younger…something.
“It might be dark,” he says softly, “but I can still see the look on your face.”
I flatten my expression. “What look?”
“The questions. Who am I? Where am I from? Is there anyone else like me?” There’s no humor in his voice. “Am I close?”
I shake my head. “Way off.”
He huffs. “You’re an open book. Except you don’t realize you can write your own pages.”
Scowling, I digest that as poorly as I digest most food. Does Bale think it’s that easy? “My quill ran out of ink.”
Bale huffs again. I can’t tell if there’s humor in it this time or not.
Already feeling the tips of my toes going numb, I move my feet closer to his again. “How can I write when I don’t know anything about myself? There’s nowhere to start the story.”
His eyes blaze, twin embers in the night. “You know exactly who you are. You’ve had more than two hundred years to figure it out. Just be that person. Write that story.”
“I know who I am.” My tone rises to match his. “It’s what I am that’s the problem.”
“Why is it a problem?” he snaps.
“Because there’s no one else like me,” I snap back. “I’m alone.”
He pitches forward. “How the fuck are you alone, Idallia?” The low thunder in his voice raises goose bumps on my arms and sets my hair on end. “Everyone circles you like you’re the starsdamned sun, and you don’t even notice because you’re so busy isolating yourself with your warbirds.”
My jaw drops. I snap it shut. Sybil’s voice slips like a river current through my head, telling me that I unify, that I’m their cause. “That’s not true. I eat meals with the team. We train together. I spend time with Sybil and Stuart.”
“Yes. You’ve lived two hundred and twenty-six years and have seven friends. Ten with your birds.”
