“She’s tough, unapologetic, and free.”
“Perfect for you. The chaos to your calm. A chance for you to explore your more… uninhibited side.”
He eyed me. “I see what you’re doing.”
“Good,” I returned evenly. “I want you to. And you need to.” I perched on the edge of my bed. “And, you know, remember the fact that you’ve already gone through the whole nightmare regarding her father. You handled that really well.”
That nightmare being that Fanor’s father was Luzan “Flame” Seffalyn, drill sergeant who trained the Dracoryn Army. They called himFlamebecause his dragon fire burned hotter than any other fire dragon throughout history.
Torvek had trained with him when he was a boy, and then he’d worked alongside him training other dragons, becauseTorvek had supreme control and command of his dragon fire that rivaled even Luzan’s.
That was when he’d met Fanor, because she was like her father, and a true badass warrior. When Luzan had noticed the spark—pun intended—between them, there’d been… some issues. But they’d worked through it.
A couple of years ago, Torvek had lessened his time conducting the training because my dad had guided him toward a more political sort of purpose. He now worked with the Dracoryn Core, which was the diplomatic center of the Dracoryn Realm that housed diplomats and council members across all four dragon Quadrants. Torvek worked under Dyna Bivan who held the House Titanus Diplomat role. She’d been the first to reach out to my grandmother to help overthrow House Titanus back in the day. After he obtained more experience, my dad wanted Torvek to take on the role fully.
“Idowant her. Of course I do. I just… was it like this for you before? I mean, with your draconic nature, obviously not the Celestial aspect? When you were with Winter?”
I started at his sudden mention of Winter Nox out of the blue.
Well, I guess, it wasn’t exactly out of the blue.
I sucked in a breath, making sure I quelled my emotions when it came to the Winter of it all, and especially didn’t allow myself to recall the actual night in question in too much detail where we’d… been together.
“Similar, yeah. I was nervous about more than just it being my first time, nervous because of my powers and my nature, bringing that in such a physically intense way with somebody who wasn’t the exact same as me, without the same makeup. Even though I knew I couldn’t gravely harm him, there was still the fear that I’d hurt him.”
“Did you?”
“A little. With my frost, some light icicle stabbing.”
“Light stabbing?” he asked, incredulous.
“He liked it. Well… more than liked it.”
“Wow.”
“My point is, we dealt with it. And since that night, I’m no longer so terrified at the prospect of being with non-ice dragons. It’s… freeing. A major relief.”
It was just a shame that Winter had paid for that, that he’d hurt because of me.
Stop!
I blinked and focused back on Torvek. “You see?”
“I do, yeah. I also almost feel bad for considering going after him after I found out about the two of you.”
Yeah, another sign that he was deeply stressed about all of this? The fact we were finally actually talking about that night. It had been two years ago, and we hadn’t spoken about it once—except where the secret-keeping part of it had been needed. No one knew about it in the Dracoryn Realm, not even my dad, and I told him a hell of a lot.
“Yes, thank fuck for that. It would have screwed up so much, because it wouldn’t exactly have gone unnoticed.”
He winced. “Well, fortunately, through my rage back then, I realized he wasn’t a carbon-copy of Sylas Morgrave in his days before he settled down—a nymphomaniac screwing anything that moved without a care for the aftermath, breaking hearts all over the place.”
“I don’t think that’s exactly as it happened.”
“Maybe not,” he admitted. “I’m embellishing for dramatic effect. You know how I slip into that every now and then.”
I did, yeah. “And you also didn’t want to have to go after your brother’s boyfriend’s best friend’s son.” I chuckled. “That was a mouthful.”
“No wonder, it’s as complicated as it sounds.” He folded his arms across his chest. “Just so you know, I may not have gone after him, but I did track him for a bit.”
