There was something disarming about Blake Cavendish.
Yes, he had the same cursed red hair as his brethren. He had the magic they were known for, and however much he was unimpressed with his ability, it was impressive. He’d been dressed in armor when I stole him away from his people, and he’d worn it like a man who often did—like it was comfortable, rather than a burden.
Even as we walked back to the caves, his lithe body treading lightly through the rocks, I could see that he was a man well used to physical exertions. His shoulders were slumped, his footsteps heavy, as though he was tired beyond grace—and how could he not be? He’d taken more dick in the last day than I thought I’d done in my entire life, which stretched into hundreds of years.
Maybe that made me boring, but I thought it more likely that it made him utterly fucking exhausted.
Evander.
That was the name of the Cavendish king. The one who had ordered the death of any dragons found inside what they had claimed as their land—which insofar as I could tell, was all of it. The previous two, Brandon and Edgar, had taken a rather kinder tact, that as long as the dragons left humans alone, they should do the same.
I’d found it sensible, but then, it was how I had always thought. If the humans left me be, I saw no reason to interfere with them.
But this? This was different.
Blake was saying that he couldn’t return, because the murderous Cavendish king wanted him dead as much as he wanted all dragons dead.
“Where’d you take the human?” Harri whined as I marched Blake past them.
They were all curled up sleeping on the dirt near damned stone slab table, which they’d left disgusting. I glared at him. “I’m taking him to my cave, you oaf. You understand the lot ofyou are sleeping on the ground, and you fucked yesterday on the table? You’re cleaning that before we use it again.”
He just gave me a sleepy, confused look for a moment, before curling back up next to the others and going back to sleep. Like it was just fine and perfectly comfortable sleeping on rocks and dirt.
In dragon form, it was. Scales were protective and dragon bodies were made tough. Soft two-legged human forms? They were easier to feed up, but they required something softer, more careful, than the hard ground.
They were going to wake in pain, the lot of them, and they entirely deserved it.
Blake, I hustled back to my cave.
I didn’t know why. I could have shoved him into one of the others. Harri’s or Gareth’s. They wouldn’t have even minded; the only complaint likely that I hadn’t woken them and sent them back to their own beds, like they were children.
But they weren’t children, and their comfort wasn’t my responsibility.
The human was different. I’d stolen him. Every single thing that happened to him among my people—as well as everything he did to us—was my responsibility. I’d made the choice to take him, and then made another choice not to just drop him into the middle of the ocean or onto the highest mountain peak I could find to the north.
In front of me, he sucked in a sharp breath, and it made my attention refocus. I couldn’t let myself drift off thinking about what I was going to do, when he was there, needing supervision.
Still, I didn’t know what had shocked him.
“This is lovely,” he finally said, and I had no idea what the hells he was talking about.
I looked around.
It was a cave.
We’d started to settle into them, but not really. Not yet.
We’d been living closer to the valley, and moved here in a rush when the humans had killed my sister. The only things I’d truly brought had been my bed and my rocks, and while I thought they were beautiful, no one else had ever much cared about them.
The others all had useful hoards—Bran with his tools and Gareth with the small bones he gathered and carved into needles. He’d made all our clothing with them.
Blake, though, wandered up to a three-foot-tall geode I had cracked open to display the crystals inside, staring in wonder. He reached up as though to touch the pointy tips, then looked to me—for permission.
He had good manners, for a human.
I nodded, so he touched the rock, running his fingers lightly over the pale crystals. Then he looked back farther into the cave, his eyes lit with wonder. “I’ve never seen anything like this. Did you find these in the cave?”
Find . . .
