Chapter 22
We were now in the part of the city where some of the oldest and most prestigious homes had been built before dragons had become a normal part of life in Cavaria.
These buildings had been altered to accommodate for the rising city streets.
Their original front doors were now bottomside, boarded up or padlocked, and above, the second story windows had been altered to become front doors.
The grand entrances, the ones built long ago, had been forgotten, buried like the past. We approached one house that had once boasted an inviting red front door, but now someone had carved an unpleasant word into the wood with a knife.
Covington dug into his pocket and withdrew a large key. He shoved it into the door and pushed the handle down. The door creaked as it opened. “We don’t usually use this entrance,” he said, as if apologizing.
“Why don't you fix this?” I said, staring at the rude word as I strode into the darkened house.
“I’m the only one who ever comes down here,” he said, shutting and relocking the door behind me.
“I can't see anything.”
“I know my way around,” he said. “Here.” In the dark, he reached for me, his hand brushing my arm, sliding down until it found my fingers.
He tugged me forward, my entire body tingling from the contact in the dark.
I stumbled and gripped his arm with my other hand, following behind him like a scared puppy.
“I feel like following you into the dark was a bad idea,” I said, attempting to go back to the way we’d always spoken before.
But it wasn’t like before anymore, not now that he’d saved my life, and my dragon’s.
He’d proven he wasn’t just some rich boy with a fancy name to hide behind.
I gripped his arm for dear life as we stumbled through the pitch-black space.
If he let go, I feared what would reach for me from the dark.
“There are stairs here,” he said, kicking one with his shoe so I could visualize where they were. “Here’s the railing.” He placed my hand on a smooth wooden banister, holding his hand on top of mine until I took the first step up.
He let go, and I flexed my fingers, resisting the urge to reach out and grab his jacket. I followed the sounds of him rising in the darkness ahead of me.
A door at the top of the steps clicked open, and with it, thin light shone down into the darkness, revealing an ornate wooden staircase covered in dust.
I walked in a daze behind him through an empty emerald-green foyer, high ceilings dark with shadows.
He grabbed a handheld lamp from a table in the entryway and crossed into a drawing room paneled with warm wood.
Ghostlike furniture, draped in sheets, gave the space an eerie, cryptlike feel.
He led me toward a back door that opened to a bricked courtyard.
“Myth is already out there.” I pointed at the window in surprise. “How did he know where we were going?”
Covington only gave me a half-smile and reached for the knob. A tall lair took up the back portion of the property, built to accommodate no more than two dragons but still a large structure.
“Shouldn’t you treat that first?” I asked, looking down at his arm. My back was aching fiercely, but I maintained an impassive expression. “You’re dripping blood.”
“Saints,” he spat, cradling his arm. “I don’t have much feeling left in these two fingers. I couldn’t feel it dripping.” He wiggled the last two fingers on his left hand. He spun back around and squatted down, squinting at the hardwood floor.
“There,” I said, pointing at a red dot with my foot.
He swiped up the blood with his thumb. “Anywhere else?”
My eyes traveled to the plush red rug we’d crossed. “If it’s on that, I doubt anyone will ever notice.”
Covington stood quickly, brushing past me as he scanned the floor.
He swiped up one more drip from the foyer before appearing satisfied.
“I have something in my room that will stop the bleeding. Come on. I need you to tell me if I leave any more drips behind.” He started up the stairs, carrying the lamp in his uninjured hand and pressing his other to his stomach. “We’re not supposed to be here.”
Eyes on the floor, I followed, looking for blood. I barely registered when I stepped into a bedroom, crossed the room, and paused beside a lavish four-poster. Only when Covington passed into a washroom too small to enter did I realize I was in the room he’d called his.
There were no sheets covering the furniture in here. On the wall hung a painted wooden ship, and on the writing desk sat a bottle containing a miniature, immaculate replica of a merchant vessel. In the flickering light coming from his washroom, I bent to examine the tiny ship.
“Found it,” he said, coming back into the room.
I straightened. “Did you used to want to be a sailor or something?”
He stopped short. Then he set the lamp down on the desk along with a small bottle that made a quiet thunk.
He pulled his jacket off, flinching slightly as the movement stretched his wound, and set the jacket over the back of the desk chair.
He grabbed the bottle and uncorked it with his teeth.
In his hand he held a white towel, which he pressed to the bottle before flipping it upside down.
Dabbing the towel on his bleeding cut, he said, “Captain, actually. But I’d settle for pirate. ”
My lips quirked. “Covington the pirate. You’d have to come up with a pirate name.
” I almost hated knowing his childhood dream.
It felt too personal, too raw, but I couldn’t help but smile to think that the boy who’d been raised with every comfort in the world still had dreams of another life.
Dreams, it seemed, didn’t care where a person was born.
His gaze flicked up to mine then back down to his arm.
“Oh, saints. You already have a pirate name.” I covered a laugh.
“I can think of a few names for you, shovel girl,” he snapped.
“But you already have that most eloquent title.”
He smirked but didn’t look up. “And what did a bottomdweller like yourself dream of as a child?”
The term bottomdweller was the less kind term for bottomsider. I’d heard it my whole life, but the jab still hurt. He was clearly annoyed I’d found out about his sailor dream, but I couldn’t understand why he was so embarrassed. Dreams were the one thing we all had in common.
“I dreamed of flying,” I admitted, crossing my arms.
He looked up. “Then it sounds like we both wanted to escape.”
That wasn’t the word I’d used for my dream. Freedom. Privilege. Honor. Those I’d used. But he was right. I’d wanted to escape the life I’d been born to. But why would he?
“Your turn.” He lifted the small bottle toward me.
I waved him away. “I don’t need it. I’m not bleeding.”
He walked over to me. “It’ll help anyway. I can tell you’re in pain.”
I scrunched my face in disbelief, but he tapped my shoulder with the bottle.
I took it. He walked back to the bathroom and brought me a fresh hand towel.
The bottle’s contents smelled like licorice.
I tipped the bottle onto the towel, accidentally dripping a little on the floor.
Covington watched from a step away, propped against his desk as he wrapped a bandage around his cut.
Discreetly, I attempted to dab the towel across my back, but the movement brought more pain than I’d expected. By my third attempt, Covington caught my hand and slid the towel from my grip.
“Turn around.”
I obeyed.
His thumb grazed my skin first, perhaps testing to see where I’d successfully applied the medicine.
Gooseflesh prickled down my back and arms. The towel tapped lightly against my back.
A single drip escaped and ran down my shoulder blade.
A warm finger stopped it and slowly traced the line up.
I bit my lips to keep from making a sound, but I couldn’t hide the shudder that shook my shoulders.
He held the towel with gentle pressure against the worst of the bruise.
“How’s that?” he asked, his voice close, warm.
A nod. A thousand heartbeats.
Then he removed the cloth, but he did not step away.
I was frozen to the spot, paralyzed by the strangeness of his touch, his presence, this room. If I turned around, I’d be standing too close to him. If I stepped forward, I’d fall into his bed. Somehow, I could feel his gaze against the bare skin of my back, as if his eyes blazed a trail on my skin.
“The pain…it’s already almost gone.” I whirled around, too surprised to care that I nearly knocked his injured arm. “How is that even possible?” I backed up, bumping into the bedpost. “What is that stuff?”
Covington corked the bottle and set it on his desk. “Magic.”
“No, really.” I stepped around him and grabbed the bottle. There was no label on the dark glass. “Why doesn’t everyone know about this stuff?”
Covington’s jaw flexed. “I just told you. And this stuff isn’t available for the general public. It’s something my father has brewed by his…chemists.”
“But you said it was…”
He nodded.
“Magic isn’t real. It’s…” I held up the bottle. “Only in stories.”
His brows lifted, and he took the bottle from my hand. “That’s what they want you to think.”
“They?”
From his bathroom, he called, “The people who erased it from history.”
“No one has that much power.”
His head popped around the doorframe. “Want to bet on that?”
“I don’t bet.”
He leaned against the doorframe, and the corner of his mouth curled into a smirk.
“You don’t bet, Arivelle, but you staked your future on no one finding out your wild dragon’s pedigree is a fake?
” My pulse quickened. He pushed off the door and strode into the room, pausing at a small table to slide a single card off the top of an abandoned card deck.
“You don’t bet, but you threw down blackmail to keep your secret. ”
“That was your—”