3. Izzy
IZZY
I woke with a cut-off scream as the nightmare of Saldrea torturing Myel while I slowly died faded away.
Koar was at my side in an instant.
“It’s over,” he whispered. Then, as if sensing exactly what I needed, he poured some water from a pitcher on my nightstand into a glass and handed it to me. I slid up, reclining against a cushioned headboard, to drink. The chill water soothed my parched throat and cooled my sweat-slicked body.
As I did, I looked around. I had some vague memory, more like a dream, of Koar carrying me and laying me somewhere soft, but now that I got a good look…
Wow.
Wherever I was, it was swanky. This room was easily twice the size of my old apartment and didn’t even have a kitchen.
“Thanks,” I said to Koar, handing back the empty glass.
Koar refilled the glass, but I declined a second round. I was still thirsty, but if I drank the whole pitcher — which I probably could have — I’d have to pee in an hour, and all I wanted to do was stay in bed and rest.
“Anything else you need?” Koar asked, attentive.
His golden eyes shone with dedication and a hint of concern.
Long silver hair fell loose around his hard-featured face.
I wasn’t sure I’d completely noticed before how lustrous that silver hair was, how silky and soft.
It seemed a bit discordant with that heavy brow and hard, square jaw.
I wanted to run my hand through that hair but stopped myself. Now wasn’t the time.
I smiled. “Just more rest,” I said in response to Koar’s question. Though as I looked around, spotting Myel on the bed not far away and Rook snoring, slumped in a chair in that lowered sitting area, I wondered…
“Where’s Vyns?”
I tried to reach out through my spirit for his familiar humid feel, like a warm summers-rain… but I couldn’t find him.
“He’s in another room,” Koar answered quickly. “He… he may have burned out his spirit helping you. We’ve summoned a spirit master to look at him.”
“Oh.”
He’d burned out his spirit?
That was possible?
I had so many questions, but I had a feeling the answers would only lead to even more questions, so I stopped myself from asking… for now.
Though one question I did ask was…
“Whose clothes are these?”
I was dressed in silk pajamas, a loose pale-pink top and matching long, billowy pants.
They were hella comfortable, but definitely not mine.
I didn’t have much in this world. Most of what I’d been wearing lately had come from my grandmother’s closet.
This set definitely hadn’t come from Olinara, far too conservative.
“The clothes you were wearing were dirty and shredded. Zora came and bathed you, then dressed you in these. I don’t know where she got them.”
I’d been bathed?
I certainly felt cleaner than I had after the fight with Saldrea, but I was surprised I’d been so out of it I hadn’t noticed a bath.
“How long was I out?” I glanced at the massive bank of windows overlooking the ocean. Colors painted the sky. Evening. But was it the same day or…
“Twelve hours.”
The same day. I still wasn’t used to the strange thirty-hour days in this world, but then, I hadn’t even been here two weeks. It felt more like two years with everything that had happened.
Wait…
“Have you slept?” I asked, concerned as I snuggled back down under the covers.
Koar gave a rumbling chuckle. “Dragons don’t sleep like others. I’ll sleep in a few hundred years for a century or two.”
I blinked. Sometimes I forgot about the stupidly long lifespans of people around here. Casually throwing around “century” as a viable timeframe for anything broke my brain.
“Oh… good. Yeah. Okay.”
“Rest,” Koar whispered, leaning in to kiss my forehead. It felt familiar. He’d done that before… I think? It didn’t matter. It felt good. What felt even better was his large hand smoothing down over my hair. I closed my eyes and let that soothing touch lull me back to sleep.
But sleep didn’t come. I wasn’t completely exhausted anymore, just normally tired, and apparently that wasn’t enough to stop thoughts trampling through my head like an army marching in every direction at once.
I sighed and sorted through my thoughts; maybe that would help me sleep.
First and foremost…
I rolled over and looked up at Koar.
“Saldrea?” I asked.
“In prison, along with her cronies.”
I nodded against my pillow and rolled back over.
Yet, knowing the false princess was out of the picture didn’t really still my thoughts.
As much as a part of me hoped things might settle and go back to normal — not that I’d known a normal day in this world — I had a feeling that wasn’t going to happen.
It might have been nice to be a student and go to classes for a while but given how many people had been there to witness Saldrea’s fall, it wouldn’t take long for word to reach her mother.
And what would the queen regent do?
I honestly had no clue. By all accounts, she was even more unstable than Saldrea, but I didn’t really know what that meant.
Would she fly off the handle and come down here to get her daughter…
or would she do the last thing I expected, which by virtue of being the last thing I expected, I couldn’t even imagine what it might look like?
All I could be certain of was, there’d be consequences for defeating Saldrea.
And without any more information, I put that rampaging train of thought aside and focused on other things.
Like… the increasing number of men in my life.
Koar had changed his tune. He’d gone from “duty before booty” to attentive caretaker who kissed my forehead and smoothed my hair.
I had a feeling once I was back on my feet, he’d like to sweep me off them.
And yet, despite him being all in — as he’d said at the arena — it wasn’t like he was lying next to me in bed being my extra-large big spoon.
He was still in guard position next to the bed.
Did that mean something?
Was he waiting for an invite… or was there still something holding him back?
Because if that was the case, I wasn’t sure I could handle any more emotional issues from the men in my life right now.
Rook seemed to have come around from being a ghosting prick, but we still hadn’t talked and I didn’t know if that was going to be an emotionally draining conversation or not.
And Myel… well the last time we’d talked — when I’d been transforming him, enhancing him for his fight with the troll, which felt like a lifetime ago — he’d been all uncertain and “I’m not worthy” and such.
I couldn’t handle another man giving me mixed messages.
All of this “I want you, but…” was getting old fast. I hoped Koar wouldn’t be like that, that he’d figured himself out, but I honestly didn’t know.
Luckily, he was the only one awake right now, so if I wanted to talk to him and find out exactly how he felt, I could.
And I really should do that… but first I wanted to tackle some of the other thoughts swirling around in my head.
Because if I was going to get all uppity about the guys being immature, then I should make sure I wasn’t doing the same.
I had my own issues with relationships, and perhaps I should figure out what I wanted before I talked to anyone.
So… what did I want?
With Myel, I wanted a bit more certainty and trust. I hadn’t talked to him since before his fight with the troll, but I’d sensed his emotions, and there’d been a lot of self-doubt and pain and confusion and a general sense of being lost. To be fair, he’d been Saldrea’s prisoner — and tortured to death, then revived — so all of those feelings were perfectly valid.
But still…
When we’d talked, he’d shared his fear that I would discard him once I was queen.
And even when I’d told him I wanted him, he’d been concerned that my desires would change over time.
He didn’t trust me to keep being me and not turn into another oppressive elf.
And given the thousands of years of ingrained indoctrination in this world, I really couldn’t blame him.
We’d decided to take things one day at a time, to talk often and be open with each other, as terrifying a thought as that was for me.
And I guess that’s what I was hung up on.
I was trying so damned hard to be open and accepting of him and tell him everything he needed to hear, but I didn’t always feel like I got that in return.
Sure, he was very giving physically, and when I was near him the bond soothed me…
but that was a passive thing. I wanted more active emotional support from him in the relationship.
I’d been forced to trust him, thrust into this world and our bond, but he didn’t seem to trust me to be there for him.
And despite barely knowing each other — we had only met two weeks ago — he’d already professed his love for me… and I hadn’t reciprocated. It sort of felt like he’d skipped to the end without doing the emotional work in between, while I was still stuck in the mire of overwhelming feelings.
Maybe if I committed fully, we could take a step back and actually get to know each other? It seemed backwards, but then, everything in this world was topsy-turvy, so that might just work.
Except, to do that, to commit, wouldn’t I have to love him? I still wasn’t sure I could say those words.
He’d done so much for me. He’d always been there for me. I should love him… right?
Yeah, that wasn’t how love worked. Not that I was any expert, but if I had to ask myself that question, then I had a feeling something was missing.