I had enjoyed the look on his face when he’d stared at my hoard. The joy and awe at their beauty, because that was why I kept them. Why I always kept new rocks; because that was how I felt when I found each one.
Against my will and all common sense, I thought perhaps I could like this Blake Cavendish.
And that? That was perhaps the most frightening thought I’d ever had in my life.
6
BLAKE
Andreas kept looking at me, his eyes narrowed and shifty. Most of the time, he didn’t even turn his head my way, like he was trying to catch me misbehaving. It reminded me a little of upsetting my tutors when I’d been a boy, like they were just dreaming of any excuse to sit me in the corner.
With Andreas, I’d rather he didn’t get any more ideas on how to impede my mischief.
Already, my hands were tied behind my back, and while it wasn’t the least comfortable position I’d ever been in, after a couple hours, my shoulders ached.
I didn’t complain. The last thing I wanted to do was give Andreas cause to think I wanted my hands free for some duplicitous reason. The way I figured it, if I could tolerate this for a little while, it might build trust in the future.
Still, the sun rose beyond the cave’s mouth and Andreas sat with his back to the wall so he could always see me. I didn’t move, but sometimes the others came in to talk to him, and they’d send me a sympathetic twist of the lips or scowl at me in a way that wasn’t angry so much as confused.
That evening, Andreas had untied my hands so I could eat supper with them all. There was still fish from the night before, and plenty of it, and someone had put on a stew to keep for longer.
Despite Andreas’s poor opinion of me, the others still met my eye. Harri grinned at me. Bran’s smile was softer. Gareth didn’t seem quite sure what to do, and kept looking at Andreas for guidance, but Andreas was stiff, and the whole meal was awkward.
Everyone was deferring to Andreas, and until he decided it was safe to give me free roam, I wasn’t going to have it.
Afterward, it’d been a bit of a relief to go back to Andreas’s cave, if only because I didn’t have to figure out what to do with myself.
Once he tied my hands again, I’d expected to share his bed, but Andreas had shrugged out of his clothes and transformed. The cave made more sense with a dragon in it—they needed the space to move around freely.
Most human dwellings wouldn’t be large enough, and the Spires had been built specifically to keep dragons out. It was covered in points, with nowhere to land, and most of the earthen castle was like a rabbit’s warren, with tight hallways that—well, I’d never realized they’d been intentional until now. There were only a few places a transformed dragon would fit in the Spires, and they’d have to make their way deep inside before they found any of them.
Andreas curled up around the fire with his sister’s egg, so that I wouldn’t be able to get close without climbing over him.
That’s how we spent the next few days—in awkward silence with my hands tied while I tried not to glance at the egg in too obvious a fashion, which was rather hard, given that I’d never seen anything like it.
The outside of the egg was ridged, covered in what seemed to be scales, and dense. Sometimes the firelight caught it in a way that made the egg seem more of a shimmering aquamarine than a deep blue.
It was hard to imagine an egg doing anything but baking over a fire for so long, but not once did Andreas let the flame go out.
I didn’t dare look too long at it, no matter how curious I was. It was obviously a sore point for Andreas, and I had no right—not when I was so certain his sister and the poor egg’s mother would still be there if not for my family.
Each day, Andreas took me up to the springs and let me bathe. Even in his silence, he wasn’t cruel.
But on the fourth day, when I got out of the spring, I caught him scowling at me.
“You’re still limping,” he accused.
It was strange, hearing his voice directed at me. He’d spoken to the others with less obvious skepticism, but now, his voice was gravelly with it.
I laughed. “Just a little sore is all. I’m fine.”
Truth told, I thought it was sitting still for so long that’d kept me sore, or the strange way I had to clench the small of my back to find some comfortable position with my arms bound, but I still didn’t want him to think I was complaining, so I simply wasn’t going to complain.
“Let me see,” he commanded.
I blinked at him for a moment. See what?
He beckoned me with an impatient wave and I shuffled over to where he was sitting on a rock, waiting for me to finish.
