He looked up. “Then it sounds like we both wanted to escape.”
That wasn’t the word I’d used for my dream. Freedom. Privilege. Honor. Those I’d used. But he was right. I’d wanted to escape the life I’d been born to. But why wouldhe?
“Your turn.” He lifted the small bottle toward me.
I waved him away. “I don’t need it. I’m not bleeding.”
He walked over to me. “It’ll help anyway. I can tell you’re in pain.”
I scrunched my face in disbelief, but he tapped my shoulder with the bottle. I took it. He walked back to the bathroom and brought me a fresh hand towel. The bottle’s contents smelled like licorice. I tipped the bottle onto the towel, accidentally dripping a little on the floor. Covington watched from a step away, propped against his desk as he wrapped a bandage around his cut.
Discreetly, I attempted to dab the towel across my back, but the movement brought more pain than I’d expected. By my third attempt, Covington caught my hand and slid the towel from my grip.
“Turn around.”
I obeyed.
His thumb grazed my skin first, perhaps testing to see where I’d successfully applied the medicine. Gooseflesh prickled down my back and arms. The towel tapped lightly against my back. A single drip escaped and ran down my shoulder blade. A warm finger stopped it and slowly traced the line up. I bit my lips to keep from making a sound, but I couldn’t hide the shudder that shook my shoulders. He held the towel with gentle pressure against the worst of the bruise.
“How’s that?” he asked, his voice close, warm.
A nod. A thousand heartbeats.
Then he removed the cloth, but he did not step away.
I was frozen to the spot, paralyzed by the strangeness of his touch, his presence, this room. If I turned around, I’d be standing too close to him. If I stepped forward, I’d fall into his bed. Somehow, I could feel his gaze against the bare skin of my back, as if his eyes blazed a trail on my skin.
“The pain…it’s already almost gone.” I whirled around, too surprised to care that I nearly knocked his injured arm. “Howis that even possible?” I backed up, bumping into the bedpost. “What is that stuff?”
Covington corked the bottle and set it on his desk. “Magic.”
“No, really.” I stepped around him and grabbed the bottle. There was no label on the dark glass. “Why doesn’t everyone know about this stuff?”
Covington’s jaw flexed. “I just told you. And this stuff isn’t available for the general public. It’s something my father has brewed by his…chemists.”
“But you said it was…”
He nodded.
“Magic isn’t real. It’s…” I held up the bottle. “Only in stories.”
His brows lifted, and he took the bottle from my hand. “That’s what they want you to think.”
“They?”
From his bathroom, he called, “The people who erased it from history.”
“No one has that much power.”
His head popped around the doorframe. “Want to bet on that?”
“I don’t bet.”
He leaned against the doorframe, and the corner of his mouth curled into a smirk. “You don’t bet, Arivelle, but you staked your future on no one finding out your wild dragon’s pedigree is a fake?” My pulse quickened. He pushed off the door and strode into the room, pausing at a small table to slide a single card off the top of an abandoned card deck. “You don’t bet, but you threw down blackmail to keep your secret.”
“That was your?—”
“You don’t bet, but you bet on trusting your enemy, the one person who could ruin it all with a word.” He stopped a step away, his blue eyes barely catching the dim light from the lamp. “You don’t bet, Arivelle, but you’re here with me, bettingeverything on the hope that we can train your dragon to use his flame only when you want him to and never when you don’t. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you are the biggest gambler I’ve ever met.” He pinned the card between two fingers and offered it to me.
