Andreas sighed, tracing his fingertips up and down the backs of my arms idly.
I couldn’t stand it. I had to know.
“Your mage?” I whispered, glancing up for surety.
“Ours,” Andreas rumbled. He combed his fingers through my hair and kissed my forehead and I decided, then and there, that I liked this cave better than any palace or fortress I’d ever been in.
11
ANDREAS
After one of the longest winters I’d ever lived through, spring was finally in the air. I was picking up the barrels with the ice melt to take back to the caves as drinking water, and then replacing the ones we’d just finished drinking from so we could catch more water as well, and the barrels were so full I had to change shape to lift them.
I had a feeling it was going to be a lush spring and summer.
This year, we would be sure to gather and save up all the firewood we could possibly need, so that Blake wouldn’t have to use his power so much when winter returned.
Not that he’d seemed especially taxed by it. For myself, I was grateful he was such a good person, because the longer he stayed with us, the more I realized he was at least as powerful as his horrendous ancestor, Athelstan.
He simply wasn’t interested in using his power to hurt anyone.
Never once in all my years had I imagined adding a human, let alone a Cavendish, to our clan, and being entirely comfortable with that. With him.
But I’d left him alone with Eilonwy’s egg, which had started wiggling on its own over the last week, and not had a single second thought about it. Blake would defend our clan with his life, and that egg was a part of our clan.
Soon, hopefully, it would make its way into the light and become a full member of our clan. A baby.
I didn’t know the first thing about raising babies, but I’d been one myself once, so I thought with all five of us, we could probably manage.
Blake, even more than the rest of us, was excited about adding to the clan. He’d been watching over the egg with something nearing glee, every time it rolled and tapped against the edge of the fireplace. Every time it showed once again that it was alive.
“Carry this back to your cave,” I ordered Harri, pointing to the last barrel we needed to take back.
He scowled at me. “Why? We all stay in your cave now. It’ll just sit there and disappear in mine.”
I scowled at him, narrowing my eyes, then rolling them when he didn’t back down. “Because yours is the closest to mine, and we can’t have five barrels sitting there in my cave taking up space. And since you’re so determined to waste away in my bed forever, trade out one of the mattresses. They’re starting to need cleaning.”
He cocked his head, then slowly, nodded. “We’ll take them out and wash them once it’s warm enough. They are getting a little . . . well, it’s a lot of fucking.” Then he gave me a cheeky grin and turned, grabbing the barrel and heading off to his own cave.
He was so much happier than he’d been in the fall, when we’d had to come here to the coast. He seemed almost . . . settled.
The humans hadn’t come back over the winter, but I supposed we would see if they stayed away now that the spring melt had come.
Though . . . I had realized a few days earlier that the area we’d settled was almost an island. With the packed snow piled everywhere, it had been easy to cross, but now, there was a wet, rocky field between us and the shore. I’d been thinking that perhaps, given the bulk of our dragon forms and Blake’s magical help, we could dig it out a bit, and make it a proper island.
Somehow, I thought, that would feel safer than we already were. Removed from anything the humans might claim as their own.
We were about to be parents, after all. We had to do whatever necessary to make the hatchling safe.
“Andreas!” came a shout as I was headed back into the cave, and I dropped the water barrel, thankfully not breaking it or losing all the water, when I panicked and turned to dash toward Blake.
What could be wrong?
Naturally, I felt silly when I reached him, sitting right where he had been before, at the fire.
With the egg.
The egg, the top of which had cracked all the way off, a tiny dragon head sticking out of it.
