His sculpted body on full display would nevernotfeel awkward. Would nevernotmake my mouth dry.
Ifelthim enter the kitchen. I didn’t need to look up.
I knew it was him.
His wintry scent swirled around me. I wore a covering over my head as I worked, my hair completely hidden. It only made my face feel more exposed. My burning cheeks, the strangeness of my mismatched eyes...all were much too visible.
I resisted fidgeting beneath the weight of his stare. Moments passed. Unable to resist, I risked a glance and hastily looked back down to the venison I was salting for future meals as though it required my full concentration. His otherworldly gaze unnerved me.
I told myself it was because of the way his pupils shuddered every so often, vertical one moment and round the next. It was this—their innate otherworldliness—and the inescapable awareness that he wasnota mere man.
And yet even with my head bowed I could still feel his eyes on me.
I could stillseethe flickering iridescent purple.
I chanced another glance, then tried to look away, but I failed.
He stood in the threshold, his features as calm as a windless lake, his eyes flickering, the only thing showing any emotion, flowing over me like a stream.
I wet my suddenly dry lips, and he caught that, too, his gaze missing nothing.
“What are you looking at?” The question escaped me with undeniable challenge.
I held his stare, detecting the barest movement on his lips, almost like he wanted to smile. “You.”
A single word. A simple response.
But it dropped through me like a stone, settling heavily in my belly.
Nothing was simple about my full-body cringe, about the way it felt to be so wholly examined when no one had looked at me in forever.
I hated that I should feel so ill at ease, but I could not forget Arvos’s comment about my mismatched eyes.Weird, he’d said. And there was the aura thing. If the witch’s curse manifested itself in a glow around me, I offered plenty for examination.
A long beat passed before Tage finally finished his inspection of me and turned away, vanishing down the tunnel, presumably to his chamber.
My shoulders sagged in relief even as a part of him remained with me, lingering like a tangible presence as I went about my task.
You.
The echo of that word reverberates through me as I imagine him alone in his den, thinking about theweirdhuman. Or not thinking about me at all because I do not matter. Because I’m nothing, without worth among them. I’m not sure which would be worse.
They call the smaller chambers dens, and they each have one to themselves. Not that I’ve been given a glimpse inside any of them. I don’t get a tour. They leave me to sleep near the fire each night. I’mconsigned to the central space with the great firepit or the kitchen and laundry. That is the extent of my world here. I am an exile among them.
The nights are the easiest part of my day, when everyone has gone to bed or is out scouting or hunting and a pervasive quiet descends over the cavernous space. I drift to sleep staring at the brilliant gemstones encircling the fire, the flames setting the rainbow of colors ablaze, the howl of the Crags a soothing lullaby in my ears.
Other than when Viggo assigns me a task or the encounter in the kitchen with Tage, no one talks to me in any real or substantial way. I’m a ghost (again). A reviled human in their midst.
If they got their way, this would be for the rest of my life.
I would be kept here, a servant to these dragons for all my days. They never speak to me of the future, but they give no indication that their attitudes toward me have changed—that they might one day be willing to set me free. In many ways, I’m still invisible.
Of course,Iknow this will not be for the rest of my life. It will not be my forever.Iwon’t allow it. Once winter passes, I will be gone. I’ll pilfer supplies and gear and escape into the Crags.
I mark the days in my head. They fall into a pattern, the chores rote. I require less instruction from Viggo. I simply see the things that need doing and I do them.
I’m preparing bone marrow jelly the evening things change...when the monotony finally breaks.
Marrow extraction is a painstaking process. I’m sweating by the time I’ve finished splitting the elk bones with a hammerstone, the tendrils along my hairline moist with perspiration.
