“Graciously?” He sneers, and a lock of his ashy brown waves falls onto his forehead.
“Yes.”
He may not agree with me on that point, but I’ve got him. He won’t hurt me.
“You don’t know me, the things I’m capable of. You wouldn’t be the first creature I’ve cut up with this blade.” The words come out like a smooth, calm river, sending a chill down my spine.
“I don’t. But I stand by my words. You won’t kill me.”
He cranes his neck, glancing toward his friend. I can’t see either of their expressions, but I know some sort of communication is passing between them.
“Fuck,” he curses. And then, finally, he lifts his blade. But he nicks me as he does so. I feel a slight sting and a small trickle of blood as I reach my hand to my throat.
I take my first deep breath in what feels like an eternity, narrowing my eyes at him. “You did that on purpose.”
He shrugs, his eyes unreadable. He doesn’t even bother to give me a proper response.
He turns his head away as my chest rises, running his hand through his hair. He lets the first bit of emotions show, only for a flash. I think he’s stressed. Worried.
“Can you get off me now, dragon?”
His gaze flicks back to mine, and the corner of his plump lips turns up ever so slightly. There’s no mirth in his eyes, though. I find my gaze wandering to that black stud again.
What purpose would it have there?
Finally, after a painfully long pause, he rises, his black boots planting on either side of my body as he towers over me, taking his time. The asshole looks down at me with amusement one last time from his full, towering height, and I realize I’m still frozen on the ground, staring up at this male in a power stance over me. I scramble away at last, only realizing after that I should have given him a swift punch right to the dick for what he did to me.
“There. Now that I don’t have a knife to your throat, would that make you feel more comfortable telling me what you heard?”
“For the last time. I heard nothing. I was merely on my way out to the gardens for an evening stroll when you grabbed me from the shadows. Ihadn’t even seen you prior to that, and even if I had, I would not have been deterred from my journey by the likes of you.” I suck in a breath. I hadn’t even fully recovered before I just rambled, so now I’m really struggling to catch my breath.
“I did not grab you from the shadows. We weren’t hiding.”
“Okay. I didn’t say you were.”
He narrows his eyes. “Well, we won’t keep you from your late night… stroll?” He pauses and gives me a cold, dead look. Though his eyes seem to be lit from within, they appear cold and emotionless at the same time. “Is that what you call it around here?”
“I call it what it is.”
He breathes deeply, his chest puffing out as he crosses his arms and looks down on me with heavy lids, his jaw sealed tight. “I’m going to have to keep an eye on you, little elf. I don’t trust you.”
“Good luck with that.”
He gives the most subtle nod, and I raise my eyebrows as he looks at me expectantly.
“You can go now.” He says it as if I’m an insect who got in his way, one he’s swatted at a few times and he’s now growing impatient with.
“Gladly.” I turn from the small room and head back into the obsidian stone hallway with my head held high.
“She definitely heard something,” I hear him comment to his friend, disdain dripping from his voice. Something in his tone makes me shiver as I pick up my pace, leaving their echoing voices in the distance.
I feel jittery now. Anxious. I don’t know a lot about the dragons, besides the limited amount of information we’ve been told in our histories and texts, but I know they have tempers, and I know that historically, they don’t like my people. At all.
Fear and unease start creeping up inside of me. Maybe I had it all wrong. Perhaps he will hurt me. Maybe he doesn’t care about pretending to play nice at all.
And he shouldn’t
I heard everything.
