Chapter 31 These Tortured Sighs Of Mine
THESE TORTURED SIGHS OF MINE
ORAZIO
I’m overthinking it.
The leathers fit her immaculately, and I silently give myself a pat on the back for being able to pull this build off without having easy access to her measurements.
I had stolen a look at the dress she wore to the gala, offered to pick it and Harley’s suit up from the dry cleaners on my way home from work.
While it gave me a starting point, I still had to guess in some places.
Harley had thanked me for the help, giving me that wide smile of his—the one that pushes his glasses up with his cheeks—but that smile made me feel guilty.
I’d been ignoring them. And I should have been offering to help regardless of my need to distance myself from her.
I should have realized that she makes them happy. Genuinely. More than I have. More than I ever could. It only took me finding her in the Woods with Jessa, after my dragon nearly burned down the forest thinking his fated was in danger, to realize that.
To make matters worse, she wants to make them happy.
That’s all I ever wanted too.
They’re going to freak when they see her in her leathers.
Alice looks… good.
Too good, I realize as she tugs at the layered fabric and leather gorget around her neck. She clearly thinks her armor is too tight, but they’re meant to be snug, to shape to your body over time as the leather is stretched and heated with repeated use.
The pauldrons curling around her shoulders widen her stature, and the cinched breastplate accentuates her waist before an added layer peplums out over her hips, helping to support the sword belt strapped around her.
Her figure flares out at her thighs; I had cut the breeches wide for easy movement.
They end tucked into knee-high boots that mold to her strong calves.
With her wild golden curls flowing down her back, she looks ethereal.
Like a Champion.
Like she belongs here.
Like she’s mine.
My clothes wrapped around her body. My land underneath her heel. My throat, soon to be at her sword’s mercy.
These are stupid, reckless thoughts.
My beast prowls under the surface of my skin, too easily tempted by her presence, and I force him down.
“You know, it would be nice if we could be friends,” Alice says as I lead her through the Woods. My boot almost catches on a protruding root, and I narrowly avoid tripping.
“Watch your step,” I grumble.
“I remember more now,” she adds, her voice tapping my back for attention. “Not everything. But enough to realize you do mean well…”
I grunt, half listening. My ears are trained on the sounds of the forest and my nose primed to scent any unwanted presence.
I’m taking a calculated risk bringing her here, though the Wandering Woods are relatively safe, so long as she has me with her.
The natural beasts that prowl are the least of my worries—the Woods like me.
Always have. It’s why I can navigate them so easily.
They shift the paths around me to my benefit.
It's only if she’s alone, or if we stay too long—if our scents grow too strong and Enzo realizes who he’s tracking—that she’s in real danger.
“And that you’re just the group’s resident grump,” she continues. “I don’t mind grumpy.”
“Alice,” I growl her name on a sigh. I hate saying it aloud. My tongue licks around the sugary syllables too easily. “I need to focus on our surroundings. Unless you want a true trial by dragon-fire, stay quiet until we get to the clearing.”
“Oh,” she whispers. “Sorry.”
It doesn’t take long for us to reach our destination.
It’s one I use often to recover in, after my—admittedly ill-advised—rampages against Enzo and Maven’s forces.
Sometimes my mind gets too crowded with thoughts for sewing to clear it, and I must purge the unsettled anger within my beast in a more violent manner.
The soles of my boots crunch over brown, scorched patches of grass marked into the green, all the moisture burned out of the blades from my dragon’s unnatural heat.
It won’t burn anyone or anything I don’t want it to; I should probably care more about the field and not stamp the land with my mark. But the idea of never coming back does haunt me, despite what Jessa and Harley might think, and so I leave a part of myself in the only way I can.
“So…” Alice says. “How’s this going to go? Are we going to run drills?”
“No,” I say, leading us to the center of the clearing.
“Okay.”
“If we’re going to do this right, we need to establish some ground rules.”
“Okay,” she drawls.
My attention slams down on her like a gavel. “Rule one: don’t give me attitude.”
“I’m not giving you attitude,” she says, raising her hands placatingly. “However, I am questioning if you know what you’re going to teach me today, since you haven’t given me any indication.”
I release a slow breath through my nose, eyes darting away from her crystal irises to the center of her forehead. I can’t look her directly in the eye for long, or else my skin starts to squirm.
“Dragon scales are mostly impenetrable due to the magic imbued in them. The only ones who can pierce this magic and do lasting damage—”
“Super smooth transition.”
“—are other dragons or Champions,” I grind out, jaw ticking. “But even so, the scales and hide are thick. Most cuts won’t physically break through, which is why you have to target our most vulnerable areas.”
I point to various parts of my body as I continue.
“The obvious one is the head. There’s a lot of soft tissue.
A well-aimed stab through the eye could prove fatal.
But where our scales thin to allow us better movement are also good targets.
They’re also easier to reach than the head.
These include the ankles, knees, elbows, armpits—” She snorts, and I freeze. “What’s so funny?”
“I’m sorry, but the image of me stabbing a dragon’s armpit is simply hilarious.”
“I’m not laughing,” I deadpan. “Therefore, it cannot be that hilarious.”
I unsheathe the sword strapped to my hip and shove it at her. She fumbles with the hilt, almost dropping it.
“Show me where else you think you should aim if you want to kill me,” I demand.
Alice shifts on her feet, adopting a decent starting stance; Jessa’s taught her well. Her feet plant themselves wide for stability as she holds the metal blade with one hand, though the point of the blade droops towards the ground, rather than at me.
“You want me to poke you with the sword where I’d try to hit you?” she asks with uncomfortable confusion. “You trust me not to cut you?”
“If the arena decides to put you in a duel, the sooner you get first blood, the better,” I say, grabbing the blade with my hand. The cold steel bites into my palm as I press forward and lift it to my neck. “Rule two: aim to kill.”
She jerks the sword back, letting the tip of the blade fall to the dirt. “I’m sorry, did I hear that right?”
“I didn’t bring you out here to fuck around, Alice,” I grit out around clenched teeth.
Magic skitters across my skin, glittering whites and iridescent blues that match my dragon scales.
My beast sees her panic, scents the burst of burnt sugar wafting off her, and demands to be freed.
“Show me you can do this. Show me you can handle fighting a dragon. Otherwise, I’m not going to entertain this any longer. ”
It may make me a coward, but I will not see her die. I won’t allow Jessa and Harley to mourn us because of a misplaced sense of confidence that we can win the tourney. I refuse to subject them to that.
Maven may have left a scar across my chest, but waking up in Meadowbrook and witnessing the fear and relief in their eyes that I was alive, saw me scarred far worse. Never again will I be the source of such agony.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Alice says, breath coming in quick bursts. “You’re jumping from one to one-hundred real fast. I don’t know if real swords and real dragons and real injuries are typically on the syllabus for day one of dragon fighting.”
“Rule three: teacher knows best,” I taunt. “If I say attack, you do that.”
“What if I cut you and your dragon goes berserk? I don’t want to be a mid-morning snack,” she squeaks.
I loose a tortured sigh. It’s a ridiculous sentiment, that my dragon would nosh on a human for a snack—let alone consume the Champion fated for him.
Though, the sudden thought of consuming her in another way…
My ears go hot. No. Nope. Why the fuck would my brain conjure that image?
It’s all the damned sex pheromones those three left in the house.
“Yes, I might sound like a wishy-washy hypocrite right now. I know I was the one who basically begged you to do this,” Alice continues. “But I’m only being honest. My bravado got me this far and right now it has flown right out the—”
My hand swipes over my bearded jaw as I growl out, “I’m not going to eat you.”
“But what if I hurt you?” Alice shouts, and my heart skips a beat at the declaration.
She sounds so genuine. So worried. So concerned.
But the thing is, she’s already hurt me, more than anyone else has.
It doesn’t matter that it wasn’t intentional—that whatever wild magic Arcadia wields made her forget her promise.
My heart broke the day I realized she’d committed herself to anyone other than us—other than me.
I close my eyes, head falling back as I mutter a string of curses and muddied words.
Is there a part of her that wants to protect me as I have her? It’s too torturous a thought to answer.
Still, she wanted this. And she needs to understand the stakes.
“I dare you,” I murmur.
“What?” she asks, exasperated.
My head snaps forward, growling, “I said I dare you to.”
“Oh.”
“Now, remember our ground rules.”
“Wait—"
Magic fizzles over my body and I give in to the shift.
My white-scaled dragon is magnificent, but frightening.
I can see the awed terror reflected in the cool glint of Alice’s eyes.
I stretch out my wings, and a gust of hair hits her as they flap, blowing her curls in wild directions.
The grass pressed under my iridescent talons sizzles.
My tail whips, almost of its own accord, swiping close enough to Alice that she stumbles back with a shriek.
“I’m not ready!”
Steam unfurls from my nose as I loll my head from side to side. I can’t speak in this form, but I hope she gets the message.
Fight me.
My pupils turn to slits, narrowing on her, and my lip curls to reveal a row of gruesome, sharp teeth. It’s a twisted, taunting smile.
Rage, Alice. Show me all that anger you hurl at me as pretty words with the swing of your sword instead.
I know it’s in there. I remember it from when we were kids. Loved that she matched the energy coursing through my veins, rivaled the wild nature of Arcadia.
There’s never not been fire in her words or dragon breath in her lungs.
Prove me wrong. Show me you can hold your own against my brother.
“Jessa’s going to be real pissed when I tell her about your unorthodox teaching methods,” Alice yells, waggling a pointed finger as if to scold me.
I scuttle forward, and she stumbles back again, this time tripping and falling to her ass. The sword lands in the grass, and she raises her hands to protect her face.
My steamy breath hits her, parted by her delicate fingers. A rumble forms deep in my throat, causing her to drop her hands and glare at me.
Her hands curl into the field, tearing out fistfuls of scorched grass; she tosses the blades in my face.
“I said I wasn’t ready, asshole!” she shouts. “Now you’re just pissing me off on purpose.”
I chuff, shaking the ticklish grass from my snout and flashing my gnarly teeth again.
Then something changes. In her. In me. In us.
Her frustration burns through her panic, and her glare turns determined. Deadly. A myriad of thoughts pass over her expression, twisting her lips into a fierce frown.
Does she realize now, that if I were my brother, she would already be dead?
She won’t get a chance to not be ready. She won’t get to talk. She won’t get eased into a fight. Enzo and Maven will strike without preamble.
“Fine,” she sighs, rising from the ground and extending to her full height. She’s tiny, especially compared to my shifted form, but her aura is massive. It’s not a tangible thing, but the energy radiating off her pulses. “Don’t give him attitude. Teacher knows best. Aim to kill.”
Alice repeats my rules. Raises my sword, donned in my leathers.
The sight pleases my inner beast.