“Why don’t you rest,” he said. “I’ll go get you some soup from the Mess Hall.”
“Would you go and visit L’eesha first?” I begged softly. “I feel terrible that I can’t get to her but I’m not sure how to go anywhere while I’m, you know, bleeding so much.”
Ryse got a determined look on his face.
“Don’t worry, little one—we’ll figure that out. And of course I’ll go visit her.”
“Thank you.” My eyelids were closing as I relaxed into the pillows. Who could have believed that finally telling my secret would work out so well? I was still surprised that Ryse wasn’t mad at me. More than anything else, he seemed more relieved to be certain that what he’d been suspecting about me was true.
“You’re welcome, little one.”
Leaning over me, he smoothed back my hair and placed a gentle kiss on my forehead.
I smiled dreamily up at him.
“That feels nice.”
“For me, too. You don’t know how much I’ve been longing to do that,” he murmured, stroking my cheek. “Just to kiss you and cuddle you and protect you.”
“You’ve been doing that all along,” I pointed out. “Well, except the cuddling. And we’ve only kissed twice.”
His golden eyes went half-lidded.
“I want to kiss you a lot more than twice, little one.”
I felt my cheeks get hot with a pleasurable blush.
“I want to kiss you, too,” I admitted.
He stroked my cheek gently.
“Later—when you’re feeling better.”
Then he kissed my forehead again and went to check on my dragon.
54
AURORA
After that, things were different between us. Ryse still watched over me and protected me, but there was an added layer of affection between us once we got back to our room. He was always putting his arms around me or kissing me on the forehead, and I understood how much he’d been holding back when he thought I was a man.
But while I was still having my courses, he was extremely gentle with me—as though he thought I might break.
“How’s your pain today, little one?” he would ask anxiously.
But when I always said I was fine, he got impatient and told M’alex to tell L’eesha to give him my pain so he could tell how bad I was really feeling.
“You don’t have to do that!” I exclaimed on the second day, when he grunted in pain and doubled over at the onslaught. “It’s really not as bad as it was.”
“Doesn’t feel much better to me,” he gasped. “All right, M’alex—I’ve got it now. Tell her to stop.” Then he pointed at me. “Back to bed until you feel better!”
He kept me supplied with willow bark tea, well sweetened with honey, and a hot water bottle that was always hot. And somehow he got even more towels from the Commissary and tore them into strips for me to use once I felt good enough to be up and about.
As sanitary napkins they were crude but effective and I washed them out in the sink every night and let them dry. In this way, I was able to get through my classes undetected—with the help of my Dragon Glass pendant, of course.
The pendant no longer worked on Ryse, however. He shook his head when he looked at me.
“You’re so fucking beautiful—how could I ever think you were a man?”
