Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-Three
SEB
Zoe attacks the problem of the ring like her life depends on it, but there’s only so much she can do.
Each of the layers of enchantments takes days to cure into the gold.
It’s all I can do to get her to eat and rest. She needs both those things.
In the middle of the night, I catch her thrashing, caught in some nightmare.
She calls out my name sometimes, not in the way she does when we have sex, but like she’s scared for me.
I pull her against me and she calms, but it’s clear the idea of me facing Roman weighs heavy on her mind. I need to help her relax.
On the fourth night, with two spells in place, I take her hand and lead her out the back door. “Where are you taking me?”
“Your studio. Have you even used it yet?”
She snorts. “Uh, no. I’ve been a little busy trying to save dragons.”
“Well, put on your dancing shoes. We’re taking the night off.
” I half drag her toward her cottage. The place has been dark for days.
She’s stayed with me since our mating, moving her clothes and things into my place.
But the studio is in her cottage. I know her.
I know this witchy work she’s doing on my behalf drains her, and I know what medicine will make it better.
Zoe needs to sing.
She lets us into her place, and I step around the still-unboxed items from her old apartment. “I can have Patrick put these into storage for you,” I say.
She stops in the middle of them and plays with the edge of the cardboard. “Patrick has offered multiple times. I wouldn’t let him.”
“Why?”
Her eyes meet mine. “Everything I was before I met you is in these boxes. I’m just not ready to let it go yet.”
I reach into the nearest box and pull out a stained plastic ladle, holding it up between us. “What part of who you are is memorialized by this ladle?”
Zoe starts to laugh and rubs her temple. “Honestly, I don’t even remember that one.”
“Hmm.” I stick the ladle back in the box.
“You can keep all of it, Zoe. You can decide to never unpack these boxes, or you can put everything inside them away in the cabinets. You can take your time sinking into your new life. Hell, you can even go back to your old one if you want, although I would absolutely hate to see you in that apartment building again. You are still everything you were before you met me. The only thing that has changed is that I love you. I’ve bound myself to you. My dragon is yours to command.”
She wipes under her eyes and moves to me, reaching inside the box and grabbing the ladle. Spinning around, she opens the cabinet under the sink and tosses it into the garbage. “I’m really not that attached to who I used to be, actually.”
I catch her as she runs back into my arms and kisses me in a slow, lazy way. But I stop her when my dragon starts to wake from his slumber. “As much as I’d love to continue where this is going, we came here for a reason. I want to hear your music. Where’s your guitar?”
She smiles and almost reluctantly heads into her bedroom, returning with the instrument in her hands.
I lead her into the converted second bedroom, which is now a recording studio, and gesture toward the door to the booth.
“I don’t know what you want me to do in there.
I haven’t played for weeks. I don’t have any new material. ”
“So, play me your set. The same one you played when I watched you at the Barrel Room.”
She looks down at her guitar, hesitating.
“Just for fun. It doesn’t need to be perfect.
But I can go first, if you’re nervous.” I step into the booth and pick up the electric violin I used to practice with inside this room before it was hers.
I flip on the lights and double-check that the battery is charged.
I unplug it from the wall and grab my bow. Then I tuck it under my chin.
She watches me from the other side of the glass as I draw my bow across the strings, getting a feel for the instrument again.
I adjust one of the strings. When everything is ready to go, I look at her and wake my dragon.
He fills my skin. He’s never been very good with words, but this part of me is a wicked-good communicator when it comes to music.
I start with a low staccato, thinking about the moment when I first saw her, before we even met.
Mimicking how I’d looked at her picture and my heart beat faster.
Then I speed up, finding a lively and dynamic melody, a legato that embodies my enchantment with her the first time I saw her perform.
I move around the room, expressing through dance what I can’t with my instrument, building to something that emulates flight, the beating of my wings.
She’s never seen me in my dragon form, but I try to show her through the music.
It’s a big sound but graceful, the sound of wings catching wind, moonlight on scales, the passage of towns and cities under soaring claws.
My violin sings to her as I smile through the glass, and when I end on a high note, I can see she’s crying. I set down the violin and rush to her, wiping her tears. “What’s wrong?”
She laughs. “If you think I’m following that, Seb, you are out of your mind. Fuck, you’re really, really good.”
I shake my head. “You don’t get it, do you?”
“Get what?”
“Why do you think Patrick works for me?”
“You said it inspires him.”
I snort. “You are a dragon’s mate, Zoe. Use it.”
She narrows her eyes on me and slowly walks into the booth. After a few adjustments to her guitar, she experiments, picking out a few notes.
I press the intercom button and say, “Don’t think too hard about it. Feel it. Let it out.”
She nods. And then she starts to play. The sound is somewhere between folk and rock, her fingers picking at the strings in a way only a handful of musicians can.
And when she starts to sing, I feel her magic again.
She has power inherent in her skin. Whoever told her she lost it is a damn liar.
She doesn’t need gold dust. All she needs is to open her mouth.
“Silver morning melody—
Whispers wake me from my dream.
The way your dragon sings to me
speaks to my very soul.
And when you’re over me
Like a sunrise over raging seas
Your beast calms this beauty
My broken pieces become whole.
Take me away
On wings of gold
Sing to me of
A world unknown
I’ve been lost so long
My skin’s grown cold
But lend me your fire
Watch our dreams unfold.”
I listen to her words and am swept away by images of being over her this morning, of my mating trill echoing in the room, buzzing against her skin.
There’s only warmth in her eyes. The music she’s making is brilliant, and I’m tempted to record this, but I don’t hit the button.
This is for me. Just for me. This one, I’m keeping for myself.
Our eyes are locked through the glass as she strums the last few stanzas of her song, beaming at me with a smile I can tell comes straight from her heart.
That was beautiful, I think into her head.
“Thank you.” She rests her guitar in the rack and comes to me, throwing her arms around me in the small space. I hug her back, wrapping my arms around her and lifting her feet off the floor.
“You can do this, Zoe. Plan your album. We are going to make you a star.” I set her on her own two feet and smile down at her.
“It felt like… It felt like being in the Gold Room. It felt like I was channeling the goddess.”
“It feels like sorcery when you sing. I think, with practice, you could learn to leverage the power in your voice. I’m no witch, but I can sense magic, and you have it.”
“I’m beginning to wonder…”
“Wonder what?”
“When I was at Beltane, Jeremy admitted he had feelings for me.”
A growl rips from my chest before she can get another word out, and I can only imagine what my expression does based on her reaction. “Tell me what happened. Did he touch you?” It’s the dragon’s voice, gritty and harsh, not my own.
She stumbles back, her smile melting into a frown. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me,” my dragon grits out.
“Seb, your eyes.”
I close them and shake my head, taking charge of my inner beast once more. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to come out like that. What happened with Jeremy?”
“Maybe it’s best we don’t talk about this.”
I take a deep breath and blow it out slowly. “I’d really like to know.”
She remains silent for a second and then says, “I mentioned before that Jeremy confessed he was attracted to me. I rejected him and fired him as my doctor.” Her tone is almost clinical. It’s a good thing, because I think if I heard even a hint of receptiveness on her part, I’d lose it.
“I remember.”
“I wonder, though, if he was being honest with me about my limitations. I wonder if he was keeping me weak so that I’d be dependent on him.”
Oh, how my dragon wants to pounce on this and rip Jeremy to pieces verbally before dissecting him physically, but I force myself to stay in control. “Is there a way you can test your abilities? See if you’re right?”
“Yes,” she says tentatively. “But not tonight. I’m tired. I should wait until tomorrow and set myself up for success.”
I move in closer, my smile returning as I recognize the hours we have ahead of us. “So…what do you want to do tonight?”
She gives me a wicked smile. “I want to meet your dragon.”