This gets a reaction. “What?”
“I won’t taste good,” I repeat.
“Why are you...saying such a thing?” he asks in halting speech, his brow creasing.
“Cyphus may have mentioned that your ancestors ate my kind.” I offer this up hesitantly, like I’m afraid I might plant the idea into his mind if it doesn’t already exist there. “He...uh...wonders what I would taste like. He says you all do,” I accuse.
“That...” He stops himself as though too astonished to speak. He slides his hand out from under his face and knots it between usin a white-knuckled fist. “That isn’t true. We’re not the skelm. We don’t eat humans.”
The vehemence in his voice offers some reassurance.
He continues. “For whatever we are, a part of us is like you, and we’re not cannibals.” His lips twist in distaste at the notion.
I’d only ever thought of our differences...that the blood in his veins does not run red. I never looked at him and considered our similarities. “Cyphus clearly doesn’t feel that way.”
“He’s just trying to intimidate you. He doesn’t mean it.”
“He’s not like you. He’s an animal.”
Only once the words leave me do I realize I revealed a certain amount of partiality for Tage. Heat blooms in my face.
A lazy smile curls his lips. “Well, fortunately, he doesn’t lead the pride. I do.”
“Yes.” Fortunate for me.
“I’ve spent some time among your kind. He has not.”
“You have?” Intrigued, I roll onto my side.
“Years ago.” He nods. “I thought it wise to understand humans. I mean...I spent the beginning of my life looking fully human, and even now we spend most of our time grounded and walking around on two legs. Humankind nearly wiped us out. I wanted to know everything I could about your kind.”
“And what did you learn?”
“We’re not so different. We feel the same things. Hope, fear, anger...love.”
His gaze roams over my face and settles on my eyes...and I try not to shrink beneath the scrutiny, knowing that in all his travels he did not run across eyes like mine...or if he did, he probably only ever heard others denouncing them as an affliction, the mark of something broken within me.
Given the unlucky trajectory of my life so far, maybe they would be right.
He continues. “There was a village. West of the Borg. Tongrun. I would visit there.” I do not miss his use of past tense. “I grew to know many of the villagers.”
I listen raptly, fascinated with the idea of him in Penterra, walking the streets of a village like Isstad, passing for human, interacting with people.
I considered him as they must have—a young man in the prime of his life. Strong...handsome. He would have caused quite the stir in Isstad. I imagine he did in Tongrun.
“There was a widow there. She would put me up and feed me in exchange for work around her farm.” His look turned intent, probing. “A young widow.”
A young widow.Oh.
I breathe in just as a flash of something hot and bitter scores me.
Of course.
It’s plain that he provided more than farm work to the young widow.
Staring at him, I realize he wants me to know this.Why?So I will fear him less? So I will see him as an ally? As a dragon with no desire to feed on humans?
So I will know that human women like me find him desirable?
