“Good. I’ll take you to him. He’ll be in the library.”
* * *
It was hard to stay angry when I stepped inside the library. The beautiful domed room rose up in the center of the East Wing, its glistening glass roof providing a perfect view of the amber sky. The shelves were made of a polished oak. They lined the curving walls, every inch packed full of leather-bound books. I wanted to run my fingers along the spines and read every title aloud. I wanted to stick my nose between the pages and get lost in the stories for hours.
But there was a dragonlord lurking in the shadows.
His muscular form blended in with the darkness of the far corner where the lamp light did not reach. I wouldn’t have even seen him if Callista had not pointed him out to me. Squaring my shoulders, I strode right over to him and glared at his back. He was leaning against the wall, a book open in his right hand.
“I need to speak with you,” I said calmly but as firmly as I could. Yuto kept his back turned my way, but I could tell he was listening by the way the edges of his ears almostflickedto the side.
Was that even possible?
With a deep breath, I plunged forward. “Why did you get so angry back there?”
And why did I care?
“You made it clear you don’t want my help.” He reached up for another book, and his steel glove glinted beneath the candlelight. “Orion has offered to teach you. Instead of standing here hurtling questions at me when I’m clearly busy with something more important, you should seek out his assistance. You still have some time to train before nightfall.”
I huffed. Clearly, he wasn’t going to make this easy on me.
“Well, I’m not out there seeking him out, now am I? I’m here to talk to you.”
With a heavy sigh, Yuto finally let go of the book and turned. His expression was shockingly blank, as if an artist had carved him from clay. “You see me as your enemy. I understand why. I’ve brought you here against your will, and even though you have agreed to stay, you were still forced to come here. And I’m the one who did that to you. You’ll always hold that against me, and to be honest, Aradia, I cannot really blame you for that. But I also would not go back and do a single thing differently. I need your help. You might be my only hope. And so I will have to remain the monster.”
“You want me to hate you,” I whispered, shaking my head. “Why?”
Slowly, he stalked across the room, his eyes lit with rage. “Don’t you want to hate me, Aradia? After what I’ve done to you?”
I blinked, stepped back. Didn’t I want to hate him? Wasn’t he right? But as I gazed up at him, I couldn’t find that anger inside of myself, not anymore. At some point in the past few days, it had vanished, like a thief into the night. He wasn’t all bad, or at least not as bad as it seemed he wanted me to think. He had reasons for his actions. His past haunted him. I could understand that. My past haunted me, too.
“No, I don’t want to hate you.”
In fact, maybe we could even become…friends. We were fighting on the same side now. Might as well put aside our differences and try to make the next few months as bearable as possible.
“Why?” He growled, holding his arms out to his sides. “I’m a monster. Look at me.”
And so I looked at him. His dark hair curled around his ears, the bottom ends drifting across the skin at his neck. Tension clung to his body like lead weights, holding him down. There was so much pain and anguish in his eyes. He tried to hide it behind his fury, but it was there.
“I think, Yuto, that there is more good inside you than you want people to believe,” I whispered. “Especially me. Because then it’ll be easier for you when you have to drop me back into Eretia and into the hands of a prince who will have me tortured for decades.”
His jaw rippled. “Torture? Why didn’t you mention that before?”
“I didn’t think it would make much of a difference to you,” I said.
And I didn’t want you to see just how scared I really am.
“Torture.” Shaking his head, he shoved his gloved hands into his hair. Silver and black blended like paint. “But surely that is not the punishment for the theft of a necklace.”
“For those necklaces, it certainly is,” I whispered.
Yuto yanked his fingers from his hair, and then slammed his fist against the wall. The bookshelf next to it shook, and several tomes spilled onto the floor, thumping in waves.
“Dammit,” he growled. “For fuck’s sake, Aradia, why did you have to steal those damn necklaces?”
I swallowed hard, cheeks hot, heart racing. “There might be something else I should tell you.”
His chin jerked up, his eyes narrowing. “I don’t like the sound of this.”
