As the days passed and Blake did nothing at all to hurt anyone, I felt worse and worse about my suspicions . . . but getting comfortable was a death sentence. Eilonwy had decided that we were safe. That the intervening decades had been long enough for the humans to be finished with their bloodlust, and we could coexist in peace.
The result of that complacency would never leave me.
Humans could not be trusted. Not even ones like Blake, who seemed as much like a dragon as any human I’d ever met.
He was just so damned pretty.
Sweet, even.
“You should return to your people,” I told him once we’d returned to my cave, and damn the adorable human, he almost looked hurt.
“I can’t. A dragon’s head, remember? My brother told me that without killing a dragon, I shouldn’t return.” He pursed his lips at me, crossing his arms defensively and leaning away, and damn him, but it lanced through my gut like an actual attack, that lean. “And I won’t kill any dragons. I don’t . . . I don’t want to kill anyone.”
It occurred to me then, what his other option was: killing his brother and taking his position. That was how humans worked. They could take power by murdering the person in power.
Such a thing was so far outside draconic culture that it was hard for us to fully comprehend. If I’d murdered my sister, my own people likely would have killed me, or at least shunned me. They certainly wouldn’t have followed me as leader in her stead.
But no. Blake hadn’t wanted to kill me when I’d been a giant beast bigger than one of his people’s huts, and threatening to light him on fire. He wasn’t the type to rush into killing anyone, let alone someone who might have once been important to him.
The way he spoke of his brother, there was always wistfulness in his tone. Perhaps not as though he missed him like I missed my sister, but perhaps like . . . like he wished for something he’d never been given.
Love.
I shook myself out of the maudlin nonsense. I did not need to be obsessing about whether Blake’s brother had ever loved him, and how much that mattered to the soft little human.
But if Blake couldn’t return to the seat of human power, why couldn’t he go back to the place where they were building a castle? Surely those humans would accept him. He’d gone to kill dragons in defense of his own, and survived, hadn’t he?
Except, we all knew the story of Tegan gan Carryl and her human lover. She’d been sent to kill Athelstan, and instead fallen in love with one of his closest advisors. Upon learning about the affair, Athelstan had viciously and cruelly murdered his own man by piling stones atop him until he died.
Humans were constantly willing to kill not only dragons, but each other, for the tiniest of perceived slights.
It was part of the reason I wanted them away from my people, wasn’t it?
Of course.
And yet, Blake wasn’t like that.
“I’m . . . I’m sorry,” Blake whispered, halfway across the cave and so quiet I almost didn’t hear him.
I stared at him a moment, confused about the direction of the conversation. What was he apologizing for—his brother’s bloodthirstiness? His inability to go home? Those weren’t things that he could or should apologize for. He’d been wronged as much as anyone but my sister.
“Sorry for what?”
At that, strangely, he braced himself. Because I didn’t understand? He took a deep breath, then another, as though he was preparing himself for something deeply unpleasant, then finally, spoke. “I’m terribly sorry for taking . . . that which wasn’t freely offered. It was awful of me, and I?—”
“Wait, what?” I stood and walked over to him, and as I did so, he seemed to deflate like a pierced air bladder. Like he’d had to screw up his courage to say the words, and he simply wasn’t up to doing it again. “I don’t understand. You’ve taken nothing that wasn’t given. You’ve asked for nothing at all. For a human,you have impeccable manners. Almost like a dragon. Is there something I don’t know about that you’ve taken?”
Almost against my own will, I glanced over to the fire, to assure myself that Eilonwy’s egg was still there.
It was.
For a long moment, Blake simply stared at me, wide-eyed, in clear confusion. “But I . . . you know what I did.”
He glanced down at the mess he’d left on my trousers, and I finally realized what he’d meant.
It was my turn to be ashamed.
In two steps, I was next to him, lifting my hand to cup his fiery hot cheek. “You did nothing. You . . . if I had been uncomfortable, I would have stopped. I would have spoken up, said that I was displeased. I’m not unobservant. I was—I knew what I was doing.”
