“What...” I stop and modulate my voice. “What was she like?”
“Bertine was—” He paused as though remembering. “She loved to sing.” His throat works as though on the verge of saying more, but no words come. “She played the lute.”
I hear what he is not saying and envision a younger Tage then, sitting by the beautiful Bertine’s fire, listening to her sing as she strums a lute with elegant fingers. Of course she is beautiful. I can see it so clearly, this woman I don’t know with her flowing hair gilded in firelight. This woman like a siren that he would return to again and again.
“How long ago was that?”
“Eight years ago.”
“And you...stopped visiting?” I ask. “Why?”
“There was nothing left after the skelm got finished with Tongrun.”
I suck in a swift breath. “Oh...no. I’m sorry.” There’s no mistaking what that means.
He doesn’t look away from me. “I wasn’t there.”
“And what could you have done if you were? By yourself, on your own, what could you have done?” I press.
He shakes his head slightly. “I don’t know...something.”
“Die,” I say succinctly, biting off the word between my teeth. “Alongside the rest of them. Alongside Bertine. That’s what would have happened.” I resist the impulse to close my hand over his resting between us. “You can so clearly see the danger waiting formeif I were to venture into the Crags alone. Can you not see the danger of youalonebattling multiple dragons?” I shiver, remembering them in all their terrible brutality etched against the night sky. “You couldn’t have done anything except get yourself killed, too. I’m sure she was glad you weren’t there.” I pause and swallow against the sudden thickness in my throat. “I, for one, am glad you weren’t.” I exhale, wondering if I should have said that last part, an admission thatIcare about him, but the words can’t be snatched back now.
He stares at me for a long moment, the soft myriad light from the gems flickering over his features, battling the shadows and revealing him in all his attractiveness. Of course Bertine was glad he lived. She must have loved him. She probably lived for his visits, for the times he would show up on her doorstep.
Finally, he sighs and nods roughly, as though reaching a difficult decision. “I wasn’t completely honest with you earlier.”
Wariness itches under my skin. “About...what?”
“Ihavewondered what you taste like.”
I recoil, my tender thoughts for him bursting like a bubble. Something sick twists inside me and dies a little at his declaration. I thoughthewas different with his story of mourning a woman from Penterra. He almost convinced me. Almost fooled me.
There’s no time to get away. He hauls me against him, trapping my knotted fists between us.
“Idothink about it,” he admits, his voice a rough growl.
One of his hands reaches for my face, fingers spearing through my hair. His palm cups my cheek. I flinch and then freeze whenhis thumb strokes down the center of my mouth, nudging my lips apart slightly.
I pant hard breaths against his thumb, bracing for what’s to come.
His eyes flash more purple than black, and, in that moment, I come to understand that his eyes burn purple when he’s emotional, angry...stirred...hungry.
Hungryformeapparently.
As similar as he might be to a human, there’s this other side of him, too. The side fueled by a hunger too strong for him to resist.
“I do want to taste you,” he confesses.
I shudder in equal parts fear and disgust, waiting for his teeth to find me, to sink deep, for pain to arrive. I don’t have long to wait.
I gasp at the firm press of his lips to mine, bracing for the rip of teeth. For pain.
It never comes.
His lips slant on mine, increasing in pressure, moving, gliding over first my top lip, then the bottom. When his tongue slides into my mouth, he groans.
I startle at the contact, at the hot stroke of his tongue against mine that doesn’t feel unsafe...precisely. No. At least not in a way that leaves me fearful.
