Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
IDALLIA
My head snaps around. Another knock can only be Bale. Everyone from the Elite Wing has already stopped by. Sybil was here when I woke up. Stuart might come back with her later, but they’d wait until after his workday is over. Unless…
My stomach drops.
Unless it’s Kellan again.
I nervously chew my lip. He came by earlier with a bucket of late-season wild blueberries he must’ve picked in the valley we found together ages ago. He knows they’re my favorite.
But they didn’t come for free. They came with a conversation that made the blueberries curdle one by one in my stomach.
“You know we could finally leave the Elite Wing together. Build a life.”
My heart suddenly pounding, I shake my head at him. “I don’t want to leave the team. I like it here.”
His blue eyes flick up, meeting mine. “Maybe just think about it?”
My jaw slowly drops. “Kellan, we’re not even together anymore. I don’t know why you’re bringing this up.”
He stares at me for so long that I itch to fill the silence, but I don’t have anything else to say. I’m afraid even confirming that I care about him, about our friendship, will just keep this discussion going for another thirty years.
“I hated seeing you hurt,” he eventually says. “It made me realize…” He trails off, and my chest cinches tight. I’m grateful that he cares about me, but he needs to care differently now. Things have changed, and I’m not going back. “Do you love someone else?” he asks quietly.
I huff an instant denial, but amber eyes and a deadly spiral abruptly fill my mind. The remembered wash of weretiger blood is so real that I can feel the wet heat all over me again. “No.”
His hard, sad smile stabs right through me. “I’m glad you’re awake.” He stands to leave. “I’ll see you at training, I guess.”
I nod. “Yeah. See you around.”
The knock sounds again, a little louder this time, and I gingerly sit up in bed, making sure I’m decently covered. The nightgown Sybil put me in after getting rid of my bloody clothes is loose at the top, and the thin straps keep sliding down my shoulders.
“Come in,” I call out. I’m awake but frankly not motivated to get out of bed, especially if it’s Kellan again.
The door swings open to reveal Bale Cinderheart in the hallway. Awareness ripples over me, and I quietly steady my breathing. He looks grim and stiff, but maybe that’s because the only times he ever seeks me out in my chambers are after I’ve been seriously injured.
“Fyrestar told us the good news. It took you long enough to wake up,” he says sternly.
“So sorry my self-healing skills aren’t up to dragon shifter standards,” I shoot back acerbically.
Frowning, he clasps his hands behind his back. “Yes, well, everything’s harder these days.”
My eyes narrow. He’d better not criticize Sybil, or I will get out of bed. “I’m fine now. I’ll probably be up for training tomorrow.”
The crease between his brows deepening, he shifts his gaze from me to Fyrestar at my feet. The babies have gone back to their roosts. “Fyrestar was badly injured. Let’s give him a few more days of rest.”
Worry rises like a swollen river inside me. Fyrestar seems fine now, but was he in even worse condition than I thought? Three days is a long time for him to recover.
“Okay. Maybe we’ll just gently stretch our wings tomorrow. Rim and Sol can fly with us.”
Bale’s lips lift in a slight smile when I say our wings. “That could work.”
He still hasn’t moved into the room. His broad shoulders fill most of the doorway, his tall body tapering to a narrow waist encircled by a worn leather belt that holds a set of double blades.
His white shirt gapes wide below his neck, the laces loose, while supple black leather pants encase his long legs, leaving little to the imagination. There are muscles for days.
I pretend not to look. I mean, I don’t look. Not really.
“But what if there’s an emergency?” I ask. “More werebeast kidnappings? Or Bloodwold vampires?” They kidnap too. A dragon shifter will sell for hundreds of gold coins at their blood markets. Humans don’t last as long and sell for less.
“There won’t be.”
I laugh without humor. “Because you can control even that?”
He doesn’t answer. He cocks his head, his jaw stiff, and the cherry-dark tattoos racing down one side of his neck seem to bulge with tension.
They’re a series of small stars, moons, and eclipses—a homage to Cealastra that I know continues straight down over the scarred skin across his heart and disappears into his waistband.
On sweltering summer days, sometimes Bale’s shirt comes off on the training field.
Those days are distracting, and if I didn’t have Fyrestar’s help, I’d probably have been decapitated.
“Are you going to loom in my doorway like a giant bat or come in?” I ask tartly.
Bemusement flits across his features. “You have an odd way of speaking to your king.”
I laugh for real this time. “Are you going to loom in my doorway, Your Big Shadowy Majesty, or come in so I don’t have to shout across the room?”
Bale’s mouth twitches. When the battle horn blows, he’s all business and fully in charge.
In training, it’s mostly that way too. Otherwise, he always seems happiest when none of us treats him any differently from anyone else on the Elite Wing.
The warbirds and the team are like family to me, and I’m pretty sure Bale feels the same way.
He moves inside and shuts the door on the chilly cross breeze from the open window, but instead of sitting in one of the chairs Sybil left next to me, he stops at the foot of my bed and puts a hand on Fyrestar.
Fyrestar’s feathers warm, and so does my heart. A soft, internal sigh echoes bleakly inside me. Bale really doesn’t make it easy to get over this infatuation.
I wiggle up a little more, sitting straighter against my pillows.
His eyes flick up, then quickly away, and I glance down, seeing that the neckline of my nightgown has slipped dangerously low again.
I tug it back up, my face flaming. I try to pull the sheet up, too, but Fyrestar’s weight pins it down.
I clear my throat. “Can I offer you…” Glancing around, I realize the only things I have in here are weapons, clothes in a free-standing dresser, a screen hiding a bathing and personal needs area, two chairs, and a bed and bedside table.
Warmth crawls up my neck again. “A glass of water?” There’s one clean glass left.
“You keep very sparse quarters,” Bale remarks, scowling as he looks around my spacious but mostly empty bedroom. “The others have set up their lairs more…” He hesitates, his amber eyes swinging back to me. “Comfortably.”
That’s something he knows from checking on team members after injuries.
Otherwise, he’s never on the Elite Wing level inside the mountain and hasn’t once in almost two hundred years tried to join us in our lounge in the evenings.
I can count on one hand the number of times he’s joined us in the Drayke Mountain dining hall for dinner, most of them in the last few years.
The only time Bale doesn’t choose isolation is when we’re out on missions and he’s truly part of the team, not something inherently separate.
It’s not that he and I don’t talk. But usually, he finds me on one of the open, south-facing sun porches or pulls me aside for extra training. And I need it. I’m sure he knows my room best since I’m always the one getting hurt.
I shrug. “I’m not a dragon shifter. I don’t need a lair.”
“You need a home.”
“This is a home.” I nod toward the roosting wall with the deep, built-in cavities for my phoenixes and their nests. “And I have my birds.”
Bale’s expression darkens. “This is basically what prisoners have in my dungeon, and even they ask for more. There’s not even a rug. Or a fire in the hearth. Is this what you were used to at Glarraden House?” His frown deepens. “Cealastra knows there was gold enough to provide.”
Taunting voices fill my head. Gildenfae-gold kid. I shove the remembered jeering aside.
“I’ve never been deprived in my life,” I answer honestly. Except of answers. Of attention. Of friendship. Anything material I ever wanted or needed, I had.
And of course, everyone knows about the gold arriving systematically on Dragon’s Night. My known history is an open book, just like Bale’s, Maia’s, Arran’s, Wade’s, Kellan’s, and Danica’s. We’re famous in Torridaig. And infamous everywhere else.
One of Bale’s eyes narrows, pinching with a quick twitch. He continues gently stroking Fyrestar’s head. “My garrisons in the northeast say Bloodwold vampires are getting bolder by the day. Torridaigans in the border cities keep disappearing without a trace.”
I can only assume the change in subject means Bale is over his indignation at my plain living space.
I feel my body temperature rise again, this time in pleasure that he’s bringing the affairs and concerns of the kingdom to me.
Bale doesn’t keep advisors on staff, so if he needs to bounce ideas around or work on strategies, it’s usually with me, Stuart, or Sybil. We all realize how unique that is.
“Should we retaliate?” I ask.
“If we don’t, I fear they’ll only grow bolder.”
“But we’ll have to do it on our side of the border, which means waiting for them to attack.”
“And more Torridaigans could get caught in the crossfire.”
“But if we cross the border, even in pursuit, Rannigan Bloodthief will go after you at the upcoming Council for aggression. You know the Were King will side with him just to keep Rannigan from looking his way, and the fae could easily side with him too.” The fae kingdom of Tanturriff is safely across the continent from Bloodwold, with the whole of Torridaig in between, and the fae can suck down vampire years just as easily as vampires can suck down fae blood.
It’s led to a stalemate of sorts—and an alliance at times.