Damn, I’ll admit it. That’s impressive.
“Why are you here?” I ask. It’s hard to imagine James just drove an hour to the outskirts of civilization. Pastures stretch between the only two buildings in sight, my house and the barn. Nearby the ocean beats at pillars of black stone piled atop one another until they descend into angry surf. People don’t call this place the cliffs of isolation for nothing.
“They sent me to come get you.”
“They?”
He ignores my follow-up question. I guess I can surmise he means my parents and that he ventured here to check on Hort, review his progress, then report back to his strict father. With summer in full bloom, maybe this won’t be the last check-in. What an absolutely horrifying thought.
His eyes rove over my dirty frame. “That was a strange dismount. You okay, Savior?” Of course he saysyou okaylike he couldn’t really care less. And of course he’s still touting around that two-week-old nickname.
I brush off muck and grass from my riding pants, tightening the straps on my leather chest guard out of sheer irritation. “I’d believe your sincerity more if you had helped me up.”
James steps forward like he can suddenly remedy his rudeness. A crunch of glass rings out. We both look down to his shoe crushing my glasses beneath his foot. For a moment all lies still, my reaction delayed. His too apparently because his foot slowly lifts like that can fix it.
My eyes hook into his. “Did you seriously just…?”
“I—I didn’t see them.”
“Says the guy with perfect vision.”
“I didn’t purposely break your glasses, Walsh.” He leans down to gather their remains and I jolt, not wanting him touching them. He beats me to the mess of glass and now we’re both kneeling in the grass like two kids digging for mud pies.
He holds out the black frames I’ve had since year nine, the ones I painstakingly infused bits of copper into for emergencies like this. James notices the embedded copper at once, because of course a silver-crafter would notice simpler metalworking. “Is this copper? I can—” Without another word, his fingers stretch out to craft. The copper responds with ease, snaking over the broken bridge and fastening to another piece. Seamless. Perfect.
“There. Fixed.” The typical smug pride of James Murphy shines on full display. Absolutely awful.
“I could do that myself,” I bite out as I snatch my glasses from him. The frame repair job is perfect. I should break them in half to spite him.
“Yeah. But…”
But he thinks he could do a better job because he’s higher class than me. The metalwork isn’t the problem here though. Even James sees the main culprit, left lens thoroughly cracked. So notfixed. “I’ll buy you a new lens,” he supplies.
Because James Murphy can buy himself out of anything, even an apology. One he has yet to give, by the way.
“I don’t need your money.”
“Doesn’t that sound familiar,” James half sighs, half huffs.
Hort nudges James shoulder, upset he’s not the center of our attention. Or maybe he knows James’s last remark relates to him. How the Murphy family has been trying to buy our sanctuary for rescued dragons and transform it into a training and breeding facility. It’s simple economics. Stealing the metal covering a dragon’s scales, racing them into a state of absolute fear so they produce more metal—it all turns more profit than collecting their metal naturally. Hort’s recovery here is bankrolling us for the next six months.
Hort prods again, hard enough to throw James forward. I catch his shoulders, so he doesn’t fall into me. My left hand snags on the strap of his sling. I never signed James’s cast, but all the hearts and get-well-soons scrawled across the plaster scream of his popularity. I also haven’t been this close to him since I pulled him out of the water during his last race. And we’re close, his mouth right in front of mine.
James’s eyebrows arch. “You trying to kiss me again, Savior?”
The moment comes rushing back, a permanent stain on my memories. The fear. The compressions that didn’t seem to be working. His wet salty mouth when I felt like all was lost.
I refuse to count it as my first kiss. It wasn’t a kiss at all. I was saving his damn life. But it was lips touching lips…
I lurch away, both physically and mentally. I can’t let him provoke me. “Pretty sad if you thought that was a real kiss, Murphy.”
I stand, broken glasses pressed into my palm. “You used to be so quiet before I saved your life. Let’s go back to you not talking to me.”
James rises from the grass as well, more of that amusement etched around his mouth. “I don’t think that’s going to be possible after today.”
“What’s today?”
He looks at me—hard. “You don’t know yet,” he says, surprised. A slice of concern flashes across his face.
