Chapter 23
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ZOVAI
Istrode up the spiraling stairs two at a time, anyone who was in my path seeking to get out of the way as quickly as possible. It was a good thing we were interrupted.
It was a good thing.
It was a good thing.
If I kept the sentiment alive in my mind, perhaps both me and my dragon would believe it.
Another breath and I would have laid her out on the table, right on top of that scroll, and finally found out what she tasted like.
I didn’t quite make it to the door, leaning my hands against the wall next to our chambers. “Fuck.”
Over the years the Elders had tried to mate us. Whether taking a mate together or separately. They wanted Heirs beyond us, and though the three of us took our pleasure when we had need, no one had ever appealed to us in that way.
So why was a human woman the first creature that had enraptured me? Not just me, but all three of us?
Idroal’s words to us kept rattling around in my mind like loose stones. What you are experiencing was once not so uncommon.
All of a sudden I was racing back down the stairs and it was still too slow. I leapt into the open space of the spiral and fell, catching myself on the stairs every few floors until I reached the bottom.
Most of the dragons in Skalisméra hated it down here. Some worked here out of necessity, some lived here because of punishment, like those we’d just sentenced. And then there were the few who loved the mountain more than the air and reveled in it.
Idroal was one of those dragons.
The door to their apartment opened before I could raise my fist to knock, and they lifted an eyebrow. “Your method of getting here was loud, my lord.”
I smiled in spite of myself and brushed past them into the apartment. Easily the largest one beneath the bastion, and it glowed cheerily with warmth. Idroal returned to their couch and the pipe with smoke still curling from it. “To what do I owe this great honor?” It was lightly teasing.
“I know there will be some questions you can’t answer,” I said. “But I still must ask them.”
They smiled and blew a smoke ring toward me. “Of course, my lord. And you know as well as I do that a lack of an answer is an answer all the same.”
Wasn’t that the truth. Every time we asked the Elders to release the power binding Endre, they responded the same way: with silence. It was as clear a message as any.
Idroal gestured to the couch across from them, but I couldn’t sit. Not now. “You said this wasn’t uncommon long ago. Do you mean you’ve seen this before?”
“Yes.”
“A dragon, or more than one, drawn to a human.”
“Yes,” they said again.
I drove my hands into my hair before pressing my palms against my eyes. There were too many things to ask and I couldn’t think of them and all I wanted to do was go back and find Lena and finish kissing her if only to feel the heat of her lips beneath mine. “I shouldn’t have come here,” I said. “I’m sorry for disturbing you.”
“Zovai, sit down.”
They were one of the few in the world that could speak to us in such a manner and have it be tolerated. Idroal had been there since my birth and had served the three of us without wavering. In many ways, they were more of a parent than our own sires and savans.
I sat down heavily, dropping my head into my hands. I’d been alive for nearly four centuries and I’d never felt like this. Restlessness was a part of my being, but this was torture.
“Where are the others?”
“Sirrus went to fly. I think Endre is running himself into the ground again.”
“Why?” Idroal offered the pipe to me and I declined.
“To keep themselves from this. I just saw her. We were interrupted, and now…”
They looked at me, their bright green eyes pinning me to the spot. “Speak your fears.”
“I am not afraid.”
“Aren’t you?”
“Idroal,” I huffed. “I am driven to distraction. My dragon clamors for her and nothing else. Like he will not be sated until?—”
Standing, they went and poured a drink. I smelled the strength of it before they handed it to me. “Drink it.”
“I didn’t want to smoke, and I don’t want to drink either.”
They put the glass in my hand. “It wasn’t a request.”
We glared at each other for long moments, and I knew I would lose. Idroal had the patience of the mountain itself. So I tossed the burning liquor down in one swallow and set the glass on the low table between us. “Happy?”
Smirking, they blew another smoke ring into the air. “I shall phrase my question another way, my lord. What keeps you from her?”
“You ask that as if it is simple.”
They shrugged. “It is.”
“She’s human.”
“So are many in this world.”
I shook my head. “She is marked for death. When we tell the Elders, I do not think they will be kind. And they will assume Endre is to blame. If I go to her and then have to watch her killed…”
Idroal’s eyes sharpened. “So you fear your own pain. What might happen. To you. To Endre and Sirrus. To Lena. You fear that giving in to what is between you will break you when you have nothing left to be broken.”
My dragon unleashed a soft growl. The kind that came from utter blackness before the swift, killing blow. I hated that they were right and could state it so plainly. “Yes.”
“And which is worse?” They leaned forward. “To try and feel that pain? Or to resist and never know?”
I threw myself to my feet. “Neither is a good option, Idroal. Stop speaking in riddles, please. I don’t have the patience for it.”
Slowly, they put their pipe down and stood, looking at me. “I can only tell you what I know, and that is this. You are an Heir to a world that is dying. Because the humans do not understand and the dragons refuse to work toward a peace in which we could help them. There is much that has been lost, Zovai. Would that you could have seen a world before your time. This one is bleak in comparison.”
“And what am I to do about that?”
“I cannot dictate your actions or your path. You know that. But I will tell you that in my experience, trying to alleviate future pain often causes more. And there is only so long something that is dying will wait before it protects itself.”
We all knew Viria was dying. And if we hadn’t known, flying to Gleira made it really fucking obvious. The dry and brown land was steadily creeping toward Evrítha, crawling outward from the north and west. If reports were to be believed, the farthest reaches of Craisos were nothing but desert now.
Once the rot and dying land passed Evrítha, there would be no more ignoring it. And it would happen in a heartbeat. A handful of years at best. Mere moments for a dragon. And it would be catastrophic.
But with the dragons and humans at odds, we couldn’t fix it. We couldn’t replace the sheyten. Stars, we didn’t even know where they were, even if the Elders would allow us an attempt at salvation.
And even knowing the dire state of things, the only thing in my mind was Lena. The glint of her hair in the setting sun. Her tiny gasp when my lips brushed over hers. The way her body shone through that dress she never should have worn.
Idroal pressed their palm to the center of my chest and looked me in the eye. No lies and no manipulation lay there. “The three of you must choose. Not because of fear. Not because of anything or anyone else. But you must choose, and do it soon.”
“About Lena?”
They looked at me, and their non-answer was indeed an answer. Not just Lena. About everything. I nodded before I turned to go. My chest and heart still roiled with indecision and agony, but it had been tempered—barely, by a tingling of hope.
“Zovai.” I looked back with my hand on the door. “I have lived a thousand years. There are no accidents. Do you understand?”
I took the stairs three at a time on the way up.