I had so many questions, but I had a feeling the answers would only lead to even more questions, so I stopped myself from asking… for now.
Though one question I did ask was…
“Whose clothes are these?”
I was dressed in silk pajamas, a loose pale-pink top and matching long, billowy pants. They were hella comfortable, but definitely not mine. I didn’t have much in this world. Most of what I’d been wearing lately had come from mygrandmother’s closet. This set definitely hadn’t come from Olinara, far too conservative.
“The clothes you were wearing were dirty and shredded. Zora came and bathed you, then dressed you in these. I don’t know where she got them.”
I’d been bathed?
I certainly felt cleaner than I had after the fight with Saldrea, but I was surprised I’d been so out of it I hadn’t noticed a bath.
“How long was I out?” I glanced at the massive bank of windows overlooking the ocean. Colors painted the sky. Evening. But was it the same day or…
“Twelve hours.”
The same day. I still wasn’t used to the strange thirty-hour days in this world, but then, I hadn’t even been here two weeks. It felt more like two years with everything that had happened.
Wait…
“Have you slept?” I asked, concerned as I snuggled back down under the covers.
Koar gave a rumbling chuckle. “Dragons don’t sleep like others. I’ll sleep in a few hundred years for a century or two.”
I blinked. Sometimes I forgot about the stupidly long lifespans of people around here. Casually throwing around “century” as a viable timeframe foranythingbroke my brain.
“Oh… good. Yeah. Okay.”
“Rest,” Koar whispered, leaning in to kiss my forehead. It felt familiar. He’d done that before… I think? It didn’t matter. It felt good. What felt even better was his large hand smoothing down over my hair. I closed my eyes and let that soothing touch lull me back to sleep.
But sleep didn’t come. I wasn’t completely exhaustedanymore, just normally tired, and apparently that wasn’t enough to stop thoughts trampling through my head like an army marching in every direction at once.
I sighed and sorted through my thoughts; maybe that would help me sleep.
First and foremost…
I rolled over and looked up at Koar.
“Saldrea?” I asked.
“In prison, along with her cronies.”
I nodded against my pillow and rolled back over. Yet, knowing the false princess was out of the picture didn’t really still my thoughts. As much as a part of me hoped things might settle and go back to normal — not that I’d known anormalday in this world — I had a feeling that wasn’t going to happen. It might have been nice to be a student and go to classes for a while but given how many people had been there to witness Saldrea’s fall, it wouldn’t take long for word to reach her mother.
And what would the queen regent do?
I honestly had no clue. By all accounts, she was even more unstable than Saldrea, but I didn’t really know what that meant. Would she fly off the handle and come down here to get her daughter… or would she do the last thing I expected, which by virtue of being thelast thing I expected, I couldn’t even imagine what it might look like?
All I could be certain of was, there’d be consequences for defeating Saldrea.
And without any more information, I put that rampaging train of thought aside and focused on other things.
Like… the increasing number of men in my life.
Koar had changed his tune. He’d gone from “duty before booty” to attentive caretaker who kissed my forehead andsmoothed my hair. I had a feeling once I was back on my feet, he’d like to sweep me off them. And yet, despite him beingall in— as he’d said at the arena — it wasn’t like he was lying next to me in bed being my extra-large big spoon. He was still in guard position next to the bed.
Did that mean something?
