16. The dragon in his eyes
16
THE DRAGON IN HIS EYES
Anahrod was thoroughly tired of waking up in unfamiliar beds.
She wasn’t in Crystalspire this time. The walls were unplastered brick layered in complicated designs. The floor was made from polished wood planks, covered by a thick rag rug. A brick fireplace warmed the room. There were no windows.
She recognized the style: Duskcloud. One of the prettier cities in Seven Crests, famous for its universities.
And for its blue dragons.
Tiendremos hadn’t taken her back to Crystalspire or Yagra’hai.
Anahrod rolled out of bed. Someone had taken the liberty of changing her clothes while she was unconscious. She wasn’t sure how to feel about that, since what she wore instead was a delicate lawn chemise under a long-sleeved shift of green mistberry silk worth its weight in sky amber.
Her own clothing lay neatly folded on a nearby chair, next to her daggers and sword. Either someone wanted to make very certain she didn’t feel like a prisoner, or they didn’t think a sword would make any difference.
Sadly, she suspected it was the latter.
[If you’d brought her to me first, this wouldn’t have happened.] She recognized Tiendremos’s unpleasant growl of mental “speech.”
Anahrod didn’t hear a response, so he was probably speaking to his rider, Jaemeh, rather than another dragon.
Tiendremos roared.
Someone must’ve said something he didn’t like.
The sound shook the entire room; the stonework creaked ominously.
[Get her out here! I want to talk to this human that’s been so much trouble!]
Anahrod contemplated her options. Easily done; she didn’t have any. A sword was useless against a dragon, and she had nothing else to bargain with.
Almost nothing.
Anahrod grabbed a knife just as Jaemeh opened the door, holding it reverse-grip to hide the blade in her long silk sleeves.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but we need you outside. He wants to talk.” Jaemeh didn’t bother to explain who “he” was.
He didn’t really have to.
She walked into the dragon’s lair.
Anahrod exited one of several dozen rooms built around the periphery of a cave sized for dragons. Enchanted crystals hung from the ceiling on slender chains to provide light, but what they illuminated…
First, Tiendremos himself.
He might have been an asshole, but he was a breathtaking, enormous asshole, larger than most dragons. Tiendremos’s blue color varied from a pale sky blue along his stomach to a dark indigo blue at the ends of his limbs—wings, arms, feet. Silver stripes ran down his length, except for places where the silver had spilled over in metallic blazes. The blue itself had an opalescent quality—shimmering with greens and purples—when the light hit it just so.
Behind Tiendremos, farther into the cavern, sat a collection of sculptures. They were all variations on a theme: a long pole with something affixed toward the top that spun. The materials and workmanship varied, and sometimes the sculptures were childish, but they were all meant for the same purpose.
That purpose became undeniably obvious when the dragon flapped his wings in frustration.
Weather vanes.
All dragons collected something, hoarded that something. It was instinctive, in the same way most people reacted to a baby crying. And in the old days, before dragons had cities and books and civilization, they often killed each other fighting over those hoards.
Now, though? No two dragons within Yagra’hai’s territory could collect the same theme. This resulted in some interesting, even hilarious, hoards. Except a dragon could duel for the right to take over a different dragon’s theme, so the more powerful dragons tended to have correspondingly impressive hoards. Weather vanes?
This wasn’t the dragon’s real hoard.
Her focus on the weather vanes distracted her from the dragon himself. Jaemeh’s entire body convulsed, and his eyes glowed.
That was all the warning she had before Anahrod found herself pushed up against a brick wall.
“I’m not pleased to have been kept waiting,” Tiendremos growled at her—using Jaemeh’s mouth.
What could she say to that? Nothing that mattered. Her hair crackled and stuck to the wall as electrical sparks jumped from Jaemeh’s body to hers, peppering her with an unpleasant tingling. Tiendremos-using-Jaemeh’s-body shoved her hard, with one arm braced across her chest and the other one digging fingers into her waist hard enough to bruise.
Anahrod looked into those glowing eyes and knew that if she wanted to live to see a new day, she’d have to pander to the dragon’s ego.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, keeping her voice small. “I was scared. Please forgive me. I thought you were going to kill me, but your rider explained everything. I won’t run again, I promise.” She flipped the knife hilt in her lowered hand, while she splayed the fingers of her other hand across Jaemeh’s/Tiendremos’s chest.
How many times had she seen a dragon speak through their rider? More than she could count. And yet somehow, she’d always assumed the rider was a participant, that the sharing was mutual, consensual.
She found no sign of Jaemeh in those glowing eyes, no sign of him in that cold sneer. Would he even remember this conversation? Tiendremos was doing to Jaemeh what Anahrod did to Overbite.
Except she gave Overbite considerably more agency.
This was Tiendremos shoving himself up against her. Tiendremos grabbing her. Tiendremos staring at her with a look in his eyes that seemed equal parts fury, greed, and something that an ugly, dark whisper said could only be lust.
That last idea was ridiculous—and horrifying.
For Tiendremos to look at her with sexual attraction would be like a human experiencing sexual attraction to an ant. But she didn’t know how else to interpret that stare. She wasn’t imagining it.
Tiendremos’s eyes narrowed. He removed his arm from her chest, but only to grab her throat with a hand clenched like claws. “You had best not run again, or my anger will shake the skies. I own you, and you would do well to not forget it.”
Anahrod fought her instincts, which told her to spit in his face and bury her dagger in Jaemeh’s groin. No one owned her. No man, no woman, no person, no dragon would ever own her. She’d kill herself first, assuming she couldn’t kill them first.
“I won’t forget,” she whispered back. “But you’re hurting me.”
He frowned, a bemused expression stealing over his borrowed face. Tiendremos glanced down at the lack of space between them. His clothed form pressed against her, wearing only nightclothes. She must have looked vulnerable. Fragile.
He liked it. She could tell he liked it.
“Don’t disappoint me, and my rewards will be beyond your imagining,” the dragon promised.
His eyes stopped glowing. The cave echoed as the dragon returned to his body, claws scraping against the ground, scales sliding across each other. Tiendremos’s agitation and frustration radiated with every shift of weight.
Anahrod didn’t turn her head to look.
Her attention focused on Jaemeh, returned to his body only to find it in a more compromising, intimate position than when he’d started. He backed away, his face flushed with shame.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You have to believe me. He would never have done… he would never force himself…”
“You’re right.” Anahrod shifted the grip on her knife, so the metal caught the light.
He glanced down and stiffened as he noticed where her hand had been. Perhaps he noted the proximity to his groin, or how easy it would’ve been for her to open an artery in his thigh. Either way, the fight would’ve been over—at least for him—before he’d noticed the danger.
“I see…” he said. “The whole time?”
“The whole time.”
The corner of his mouth quirked in a self-deprecating smile. “How humbling.”
How much of that smile was a defense mechanism? Had Jaemeh learned to counter threats and abuse with humor and charm?
Probably.
“I wouldn’t be offended if you were mad as hell,” Anahrod said. “As long as you remember what ‘no’ means.”
“Always.” A smile returned to his face, brittle but still present, and he gestured to the side of the cave, to the tunnel leading back to the room where she’d woken. “In the meantime, when you’re done changing, I’ll bring you to the others—”
[Enough. This is pointless. I’ll return later. Make sure she’s cooperative this time, or you’ll suffer for it.] The dragon turned on his hind leg, took several thunderous steps toward the cave opening, and launched himself into the air. Jaemeh watched him go, his face carefully blank.
“Interesting,” Anahrod commented. “I never knew a dragon could flounce out of a room before.”
Jaemeh made a shocked sound and shoved a knuckle into his mouth. His bite was so forceful that she winced in sympathy, wondering if he’d draw blood. When he finally pulled back his hand, white marks outlined the indents left by his teeth.
“Please,” he murmured, breathing slow and shallow. “Don’t be funny, I beg you.”
Guilt stabbed at Anahrod as she realized why he’d fought so hard to stifle his laughter.
Because Tiendremos might feel his rider’s amusement, and not think the joke funny at all.