We were now in the part of the city where some of the oldest and most prestigious homes had been built before dragons had become a normal part of life in Cavaria. These buildings had been altered to accommodate for the rising city streets. Their original front doors were now bottomside, boarded up or padlocked, and above, the second story windows had been altered to become front doors. The grand entrances, the ones built long ago, had been forgotten, buried like the past. We approached one house that had once boasted an inviting red front door, but now someone had carved an unpleasant word into the wood with a knife.
Covington dug into his pocket and withdrew a large key. He shoved it into the door and pushed the handle down. The door creaked as it opened. “We don’t usually use this entrance,” he said, as if apologizing.
“Why don't you fix this?” I said, staring at the rude word as I strode into the darkened house.
“I’m the only one who ever comes down here,” he said, shutting and relocking the door behind me.
“I can't see anything.”
“I know my way around,” he said. “Here.” In the dark, he reached for me, his hand brushing my arm, sliding down until it found my fingers. He tugged me forward, my entire body tingling from the contact in the dark. I stumbled and gripped his arm with my other hand, following behind him like a scared puppy.
“I feel like following you into the dark was a bad idea,” I said, attempting to go back to the way we’d always spoken before. But it wasn’t like before anymore, not now that he’d saved my life, and my dragon’s. He’d proven he wasn’t just some rich boy with a fancy name to hide behind. I gripped his arm for dear life as we stumbled through the pitch-black space. If he let go, I feared what would reach for me from the dark.
“There are stairs here,” he said, kicking one with his shoe so I could visualize where they were. “Here’s the railing.” He placed my hand on a smooth wooden banister, holding his hand on top of mine until I took the first step up.
He let go, and I flexed my fingers, resisting the urge to reach out and grab his jacket. I followed the sounds of him rising in the darkness ahead of me.
A door at the top of the steps clicked open, and with it, thin light shone down into the darkness, revealing an ornate wooden staircase covered in dust.
I walked in a daze behind him through an empty emerald-green foyer, high ceilings dark with shadows. He grabbed a handheld lamp from a table in the entryway and crossed into a drawing room paneled with warm wood. Ghostlike furniture, draped in sheets, gave the space an eerie, cryptlike feel. He led me toward a back door that opened to a bricked courtyard.
“Myth is already out there.” I pointed at the window in surprise. “How did he know where we were going?”
Covington only gave me a half-smile and reached for the knob. A tall lair took up the back portion of the property, builtto accommodate no more than two dragons but still a large structure.
“Shouldn’t you treat that first?” I asked, looking down at his arm. My back was aching fiercely, but I maintained an impassive expression. “You’re dripping blood.”
“Saints,” he spat, cradling his arm. “I don’t have much feeling left in these two fingers. I couldn’t feel it dripping.” He wiggled the last two fingers on his left hand. He spun back around and squatted down, squinting at the hardwood floor.
“There,” I said, pointing at a red dot with my foot.
He swiped up the blood with his thumb. “Anywhere else?”
My eyes traveled to the plush red rug we’d crossed. “If it’s on that, I doubt anyone will ever notice.”
Covington stood quickly, brushing past me as he scanned the floor. He swiped up one more drip from the foyer before appearing satisfied. “I have something in my room that will stop the bleeding. Come on. I need you to tell me if I leave any more drips behind.” He started up the stairs, carrying the lamp in his uninjured hand and pressing his other to his stomach. “We’re not supposed to be here.”
Eyes on the floor, I followed, looking for blood. I barely registered when I stepped into a bedroom, crossed the room, and paused beside a lavish four-poster. Only when Covington passed into a washroom too small to enter did I realize I was in the room he’d calledhis.
There were no sheets covering the furniture in here. On the wall hung a painted wooden ship, and on the writing desk sat a bottle containing a miniature, immaculate replica of a merchant vessel. In the flickering light coming from his washroom, I bent to examine the tiny ship.
“Found it,” he said, coming back into the room.
I straightened. “Did you used to want to be a sailor or something?”
He stopped short. Then he set the lamp down on the desk along with a small bottle that made a quietthunk.He pulled his jacket off, flinching slightly as the movement stretched his wound, and set the jacket over the back of the desk chair. He grabbed the bottle and uncorked it with his teeth. In his hand he held a white towel, which he pressed to the bottle before flipping it upside down. Dabbing the towel on his bleeding cut, he said, “Captain, actually. But I’d settle for pirate.”
My lips quirked. “Covington the pirate. You’d have to come up with a pirate name.” I almost hated knowing his childhood dream. It felt too personal, too raw, but I couldn’t help but smile to think that the boy who’d been raised with every comfort in the world still had dreams of another life. Dreams, it seemed, didn’t care where a person was born. His gaze flicked up to mine then back down to his arm. “Oh, saints. You already have a pirate name.” I covered a laugh.
“I can think of a few names for you, shovel girl,” he snapped.
“But you already have that most eloquent title.”
He smirked but didn’t look up. “And what did a bottomdweller like yourself dream of as a child?”
The term bottomdweller was the less kind term for bottomsider. I’d heard it my whole life, but the jab still hurt. He was clearly annoyed I’d found out about his sailor dream, but I couldn’t understand why he was so embarrassed. Dreams were the one thing we all had in common.
“I dreamed of flying,” I admitted, crossing my arms.
