“Oh really?”
That made me laugh.
“Come on, let’s go. We can finish on a warmer day. I’ll have the groundskeepers haul the bins.”
Just then, a cold wind blew over us. We ran past the pool, already covered for winter, and into the house.
Elias, perfect as ever, was waiting to take our coats.
“A hot beverage, sir?” he asked.
“Yes. Coffee for me.”
“Coffee sounds good,” Kirion said.
“Let’s go into the den.”
Once in the room, I turned on the fire and gathered two blankets off a shelf, one for each of us. We sat side by side on the comfy couch.
It was easier for both of us to talk more openly lately. We spent most of our days together when I wasn’t working in my office. He was good company. The fact that he enjoyed gardening with me was an added plus.
Elias brought a tray with mugs, cream, sugar and a carafe of fresh coffee. We sipped our drinks in a new kind of silence, one that was less awkward and more natural.
Kirion spoke up. “I’ve been meaning to ask.”
“What?”
“Have you sent a report to my father yet?”
I’d forgotten. “I haven’t. I suppose it’s due.”
“I just wondered what you might say in it.”
“I would say that you are in good health and seem content. Would that be true?”
He nodded. “To tell the truth, I like it better here.”
“You do?” That surprised me. “You don’t miss home?”
“No. That part of my life is over. Gone. They don’t want me. Why should I want them? The only reason it was hard was because it was a known and this country was an unknown.”
“You’ve been confined here. It’s still an unknown.”
He tilted his head. “I guess. But I feel safe here so it isn’t about confinement. Not exactly. It’s about making it over with what my new life offers.”
“And is that working?”
His smile was a bit mysterious. “I think so.”
“I’m glad.” Everything inside me was waking up. Tanekan stretched in my mind. A couple weeks after Malin left he’d finally started talking to me again.
He is already ours.
The words did and did not shock me. My dragon was only echoing what I thought when my mind became unguarded in the happier moments of my day or right before sleep.
“What would you write about your thoughts of me?”
“Where?”
