Still, she was kind, and immediately set to making him a cup of tea to try to help.
“Sometimes you find what you’re meant to,” she said, conviction in her voice. “Maybe it’s not magic proper, but it feels like it. Maybe... maybe the whole world has just a bit of magic. Two of my sons fought at Windy Pass, you know. One of them was wounded grievously, and couldn’t make it out. Shattered leg, trampled by a horse. The other found him on his way away from the battle, and carried him. If not for both of them being there, he’d have died that day.”
As I did too often, I thought back to that day in the pass. It had been loud and chaotic and terrifying, and I wasn’t sure I’d have been able to find a specific person if I’d been searching for them, let alone accidentally run across them. There had been thousands of men, women, and monsters in the pass.
“That’s incredible,” I told her. “The only reason I even recognized Roland that day was because he shines like the sun. Everyone else was so covered in mud, it was a wonder they recognized who was on which side, let alone singular people.”
Roland gave a tiny chuckle, shaking his head without lifting it from my shoulder. “Well, that, and you and I were the only children on the battlefield.”
The woman huffed and sighed, setting his tea in front of him. “Awful, them bringing you to a battle as children. Bad enough adults choose war, bringing children into it is unforgivable.”
Technically, Roland hadn’t been brought into the fight. He’d chosen to go. He’d gone looking for me because he had promised to free me, and that day on the battlefield, he had found me. He had killed the monster who had raised me and held me prisoner, and taken me away, into a life I couldn’t have imagined growing up inside a cage.
Anyone who wondered why Roland was everything to me, well... they couldn’t know that. Knowhim.
By the time Roland finished drinking his tea, he was about to fall asleep, and the woman had to help me lug him into an extra bedroom and tuck him into the bed there.
“Plenty of room for both of you in this one, I figured,” she told me as I spread the blanket over him. “Unless you want the other, but that’s up to you.”
She expected us to share, and she . . .
“You don’t think he should marry a woman and have children?”
She scoffed and waved a hand. “Boy’s been through enough, even for a king. Given up his whole childhood for us. Eventually he should have something he actually wants in life, don’t you think?”
I did, but I hadn’t expected her to agree with that. “He’s got them cousins,” she added as we left Roland to sleep. “And even if he didn’t, I only birthed half my own children. Family is about more than that. Maybe you can’t see it the same, but love matters more than blood.”
And that was that.
I helped her set a stew cooking over the fire for the next day, and then we cleaned the kitchen together. “I’ll go into town in the morning and see if I can’t get some flour, so we can make bread,” she told me as she headed into her own room for the night. “You sleep well, king’s dragon.”
And I did, because for the first time in my life, being called dragon hadn’t been the least bit derogatory or ugly. It had simply been, because it was who I was. I was Roland Cavendish’s dragon, forever.
27
ROLAND
The first time I woke, it was to a horrible clenching in my gut. I was certain I would be sick, but when I pushed up on an elbow and my stomach heaved, nothing came up. All I’d had in a day was that tea, and thank the gods, only a little of it sneaked up the back of my throat, acidic enough to burn.
The bed shifted, someone moving behind me, snuggling in closer.
“It’s all right,” Aderyn whispered against my shoulder. His fingertips traced down the inside of my arm, then slowly back up. His other arm slipped under my head, so when I lowered myself back onto the mattress, I was tucked into the curl of his body.
He kissed the edge of my ear and continued that slow, gentle brush across my arm. With my lips parted, sucking in cool air, I tried to lose myself in the steady swipe of his hand.
I must’ve managed it, because when next I woke, I was alone.
Sunlight streamed through a nearby window. My body ached, and it was a strain to convince myself to sit upright.
Worse, to stand.
Our host must’ve been rather generous and well-appointed. She had left clothes for me to put on, and it was a relief to put on something fresh, even if it was rougher than I was used to.
Once I had, I stood there staring at the finely embroidered clothes slung over a nearby wicker chair. They’d been cleaned and only looked a little worse for wear.
What if I never returned to Atheldinas?
Well, for one, I’d miss my family. For another, I’d simply be foisting off my own responsibility on someone I loved.
