“Elowen.” His voice was gravel and smoke. Not quite right, but trying. “You…hurt?”
She blinked at him, and shook her head. “No. I’m not hurting.”
Midas tilted his head slightly. His gaze drifted toward her back, and she followed it instinctively, her breathcatching at the memory. The post. The whip. The silence of the crowd. Her father.
Tears burned behind her eyes, but she refused to let them fall.
“Hurt,” Midas repeated, though this time it was not poised as a question. It was a statement of fact. To him, her tears meant she was hurting, and she was, but not in the way he likely assumed.
Elowen shook her head again. She closed the distance between them, her knees resting on his thighs as she faced him. “No. I’m not hurting. I’m…sad.”
Midas made a sound then, somewhere between a growl and a sigh. It wasn’t of anger—it felt deeper than that. His tail curved around her again like it often did, never trapping, but shielding. Protecting.
He lifted his hand to her face, mindful of the claws at the ends of his fingers as he twisted a strand of her loose hair around them. He was careful not to yank it, but he wanted to compare it to his own that he mirrored after hers. His was thicker, darker, and lacked the elegant shine of hers.
“Midas,” Elowen whispered again after a long silence. “I do not want to go back.”
Her words made his breath catch, and he sat a little straighter as he met her gaze once more, golden eyes searching her lake-colored ones. “Stay,” he said. “Safe.”
She nodded. “Yes. I’d like to stay.”
Midas exhaled slowly and lowered his head until he could nuzzle his human-like nose against her throat. It was a dragon’s gesture, Elowen had learned. It meant trust.
She pressed her hands to his cheeks, holding his face in her palms. “You are safe with me, too.”
His tail wrapped around her just a bit tighter, like a treasure he would never lose again. Now, she was no longer a guest in his cave.
She was his. And she washome.
Twenty-One
When Elowen woke,there was a weight at her side. She cracked her eyes open, and Midas was there, curled around her with his wings outstretched like a canopy over her head.
He was already awake, watching her in his human form.
“Good morning,” she rasped with a stretch, still quietly wincing at the tight, healing skin on her back. The worst of the burn had faded, but the throb was still persistent.
The cave smelled faintly of smoke and meat. She looked to the cooking pot perched over the firewood, and she heard the bubbling of a simple broth Midas had heated himself.
“You take better care of me than I deserve,” she murmured, moving to the fire to smell the broth. She added a twig of rosemary and a pinch of coarse salt, stirring it gently as she brushed sleep from her eyes.
Midas tilted his head. “Deserve?” he asked from behind her.
Elowen smiled over her shoulder. “It means…that I’ve done nothing to earn your kindness. That you take care of me despite what I am.”
His brow furrowed. “Earn,” he repeated. Then, he repeated it again, as if the word offended him. “You are Elowen. You deserve.”
Something bloomed in her chest, but she said nothing back. He rose slowly, his limbs unfolding with that wild grace of the dragons. The scales peppering his human form shimmered slightly in the firelight, surrounding him in a halo of gold. He crouched next to her at the fire and inhaled the broth she was stirring.
He did this often, when she cooked, as if he was trying to discern exactly what she put into it to bring it to her liking. Midas was always learning. He dipped one of his claws into the broth and tasted it.
He made a strange face, and Elowen quietly giggled.
“Needs meat,” he told her.
Elowen nodded. “You’re right. I will add it soon, along with the carrots. Then it will be soup, not just broth.”
He nodded, and continued to watch her work. There was something beautifully soft in the way he fussed over her. As she watched him watching her, she noticed his hands kept touching his face to brush away his long hair. It was irritating him, how it fell into his eyes, caught on his teeth, and pulled when he touched it.
