“Of course you have a point, but what doyoudo with them? You use them as decor—”
“They sustain us.” His voice bites into me. “It is not greed or because we find them pretty baubles. No, it ishumanswho place such superficial value upon them. These gemstones feed our magic, our very essence. They are as air to us.”
“Oh.” Shame washes over me to have misjudged him so harshly. “I—I did not realize.”
“You thought me shallow?” His head angles to the side as he peers at me with his oceans-deep gaze. “One more flaw to add to the list you’ve assigned to me, I suspect.”
“I...”
He shrugs. “How could you know? You know nothing of us. Of me. Nothing of the dragons we once were, nor what led us to evolve into”—he gestures vaguely to himself—“this.” His lips twist into a grimace. “You didn’t know we even existed anymore.”
He’s not wrong. Like everyone else, I believed in the fiction perpetuated so we would stop hunting them. I swallow as full understanding sweeps over me.
However it happened, it is a brilliant evolutionary tactic. Dragons still live...but now they can camouflage into the very thing that is the greatest threat to them. Humans.Me.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur, apologizing for the wrongs of my kin...the sins of my forefathers.
“You’re not to blame. It’s merely the world you were born to. I can...relate to that.”
I think about the past he had shared with me, and I suppose hecouldrelate to that.
“Is this where you sleep?” I ask, bending to dive my fingers into the glossy, dark pelt on the bed, imagining all the nights he spent wrapped up here in this den, first as a boy, then a man. All these years. Presumably...alone. Lonely? I feel a pinch at the center of my chest.
“Yes.” He nods and reaches for the back of his neck, rubbing there as if his flesh suddenly prickles. It dawns on me then that I’m the first woman he’s ever had in this den. Certainly, he’s never had ahumanhere before. Was there anyone—anydragon—before me though? At times I think Danhy is interested in him in a waythat is not strictly platonic, but I’ve never detected that interest reciprocated.
As novel as this experience is for me, it must be for him, too.
Reaching that conclusion, I hear myself say, “This can’t be comfortable for you.”
He looks at me steadily for a long moment before approaching and stopping directly in front of me.
It’s such a strange sensation...not only to be seen, but to be the focus of anyone when, for years, I’ve been nonexistent. It loosens something inside me that had grown hard and dead.
Instead of a reply, he reaches for the hem of his tunic and pulls it up and over his head in one fluid move that does something funny to my belly, makes it flip and twist as though I’m shooting out of control down a hill on a sled.
“Oh,” I say dumbly, my mouth drying at the proximity of his daunting chest. Maybe he is comfortable.
I don’t know why I’m so affected by the sight. I shouldn’t be. I’ve seen him dressed in far less clothing than this countless times.
But it has never been just the two of us. Alone. In his den. An odd sort of truce budding between us. One foot away from a bed. The heady smell of his skin swirling in my nose.
His voice spills through me like mulled wine, simmering hot. “Are you so concerned with my comfort, Arden?”
I swallow, wondering why that question sounds so laden with...things.
I don’t answer him. Instead, I back away, feigning interest with a particularly bright amethyst the size of my palm embedded in his wall.
Inside, I am shaking, waiting for him to say how this is going to work...how it willbewith the two of us together in here for the night. For tomorrow night and all the future nights.
I hear a faint rustling behind me and I imagine he is disrobing further.
“Come to bed,” he invites.
Bracing myself with a fortifying breath, I turn. He’s beneath the furs, the lower half of him thankfully concealed. He pats the spot next to him.
My hands clench together in front of me, and I shake my head vigorously.
“I won’t bite. Come now.” I flinch at his choice of words. “Here.” He reaches for another nearby fur. “If it makes you feel better, you can sleep on top of this fur and cover yourself with this one.”
