“Mrs. Aeolan and I were having tea when she heard you talking outside,” Mavlyn said as she ushered us into the seats. There was a fire roaring cheerfully in the hearth, and I heard Einar sigh in pleasure as he sat down in the chair nearest to the flames. He probably wasn’t used to the cold—I’d never been to Hearthfyre, but I imagined it didn’t get very cold with all the volcanoes and deserts and magma lakes out there. “She’s very good at catching conversations on the wind, especially the ones you don’t want her to overhear.”
“Yes, very interesting conversation, that was.” Mrs. Aeolan’s gaze cut to Leap and Einar, her silver-blue eyes sharpening. “The two of you seemed to be discussing the merits of squatting in my house.”
Einar had the sense to blush, but Leap merely shrugged. “We would have taken good care of it, Mrs. Aeolan,” he said, unrepentant. “Done the dishes, swept the floors, dusted the counters. Maybe even shined that mirror over there for you,” he said, pointing to the gilt-framed silver rectangle hanging on the wall behind her. “Looks like it could use a good polish.”
Mrs. Aeolan huffed. “I doubt cleaning was what you were planning on doing with the mirror,” she said, but her lips twitched a little. She turned her attention to me, and her gaze softened. “But I do understand your desire to lie low. General Slaugh is relentless, and a formidable foe. It will not be easy for you to evade him.”
“Clearly not, since it was so easy for you to track us here,” Einar said with a glower. “How did you know we would be in Wynth?”
“We didn’t,” Mrs. Aeolan said with a delicate shrug. “But since you fled into the Gaoth Aire mountains, it only stands to reason you would have to pass through Wynth to get to Kaipei, where Adara’s mother is being held.” She gave Einar an assessing look, and Einar stared back, his expression revealing nothing. “I’d like to know what interest you and this youngling have in helping Adara with her quest,” she said after a moment.
“I’m madly in love with her,” Einar said without missing a beat, and I nearly choked. “Who could possibly resist a maiden in distress?”
“Hmm.” Mrs. Aeolan didn’t seem convinced. “Remove your cloak and tunic.”
Einar stiffened, and this time I reallydidchoke. “Oh boy,” Leap chortled. “Looks like professor wants a show.”
“Mrs. Aeolan?” Mavlyn asked, her voice thick with confusion. “What are you doing?”
“Confirming my suspicions.” Mrs. Aeolan’s gaze didn’t waver from Einar’s face, and my heart dropped a little as I remembered that the eye-color changing potion I’d given him had finally worn off. No fae had golden eyes like that, and Mrs. Aeolan was definitely old enough to have been alive during the war. “Take them off. Now.”
“And if I don’t?” Einar asked, not moving a single muscle. His voice was soft, but the deadly intent behind each word sent shivers up my spine. Power hummed in the air between the dragon and the air fae, an invisible current that made gooseflesh ripple across my arms, and I sensed that one wrong word or move would ignite it.
“Then you and I are going to have a problem,” Mrs. Aeolan said, just as softly.
The two of them stared at each other in silence for a long, fraught moment. Then, slowly, Einar got to his feet. He unclasped his cloak and draped it gently over the back of his chair, then grasped the edge of his tunic and dragged it upward with painstaking slowness.
The room suddenly seemed too hot, too small, my pulse beating faster in my throat as Einar removed his tunic. Inch by torturous inch, the fabric crept up his abdomen, revealing smooth tanned skin and rippling muscles that glowed like honey in the firelight. I’d seen him without his shirt before, but after everything that had passed between us, after feeling that hard body against mine and tasting that wicked, sensuous mouth, this somehow felt intimate, forbidden.
I was beyond grateful that everyone else in the room was also staring at Einar—I could feel my cheeks flaming hot, nearly as hot as the fire spreading through my loins. Gritting my teeth, I clenched my legs together, but regretted it immediately when my core throbbed in response.
What was wrong with me? Why was I having such an intense reaction to a little bit of skin? It wasn’t as if I’d never seen a shirtless male before—on the contrary I’d seen plenty back in Fenwood, out working in the fields or sparring during training sessions. Even Dune had never inspired such an intense wave of lust.
“Ahh, and there it is,” Mrs. Aeolan as Einar’s tattoos were slowly revealed. “The Umnar. A dragon warrior’s holy tattoos, etched into them with their own blood when he or she reaches adolescence.”
Einar’s gaze sharpened on her as he finished pulling his tunic over his head. He stood tall and proud, the swirling flames covering the left side of his chest and arm on full display. I’d never appreciated how beautiful the intricate tattoos were, and they seemed to move in the flickering firelight, almost as if the flames were real.
“Not many fae know of the Umnar,” he said. “They think these are mere ink tattoos.”
Mrs. Aeolan smiled. “I’m a scholar, dragon,” she said. “And as my people have faced yours in the air many times over the millennia, I have always found dragons fascinating. Your kind lay eggs, but you hatch out of them in your bipedal forms rather than your reptilian ones. The tattoos awaken your dragon forms, and you etch them into your skin yourselves, guided purely by instinct. No two dragon warriors have the same design, and they aren’t always in the same place, either.”
I stared at the tattoos, even more fascinated now. “You had to ink those yourself?” I whispered, not quite realizing I was speaking aloud. “How long did that take?”
“Three days,” Einar said, his gaze clouded with memory as he stared off into the middle distance. Absently, he traced over the whorls of flame with his fingertip, and my own fingers twitched with the urge to do the same. Thankfully there were others in the room, or I might have followed through on that impulse. “I was given a special herb to smoke that put me in a trance of sorts, and sent to the top of Mount Furian to meditate. The design came to me in a vision, and I worked on it feverishly. The pain was a spiritual experience that defies description. With each puncture of the needle, I could feel the beast inside me unfurling, awakening, until…”
He trailed off, and then cleared his throat, as if realizing he’d said too much. “Are you satisfied, then?” he asked Mrs. Aeolan brusquely.
“Not evenclose,” Mavlyn said, the words exploding from her mouth and shattering the tension in her room. She leapt to her feet, mouth gaping, finger pointing straight at Einar’s chest as she rounded on me. “Giant’s teeth, Adara, when were you going to tell me your new friend was adragon?”
I winced as Mavlyn’s voice rose to a fever pitch. “There wasn’t exactly time, the last time we met,” I pointed out. “We only had a few minutes to talk before Dune and his father tried to capture me.”
“True, but it didn’t look like you were planning to tell us this time around,” Mavlyn pointed out. She swung around to stare at Einar again. “By the Radiants,” she swore under her breath. “How did you find him, and why hasn’t he eaten you yet?”
Einar screwed up his face in distaste. “I would never defile my body by consuming a fae.”
Mavlyn waggled her eyebrows. “I can think of much better ways to defile your body,” she purred.
Einar’s eyebrows winged up, and I had to lock down every single muscle in my body as a fresh wave of jealousy hit me. The urge to grab Mavlyn by the hair and drag her as far away from Einar as possible seized me, and I shook my headhard, trying to clear the vicious thought away. Mavlyn was myfriend—I’d never do that, and besides, there was no reason for me to be jealous at all. I didn’t want Einar. He was a dragon, for Radiant’s sake.
