Chapter 8
" I —" Her brow creased. Should she tell him about her family’s journal? Tell him she knew about the other Secret Kingdoms? The knowledge passed down to her was sacred, forbidden knowledge. Could she trust him fully? Did she dare take the risk? There were others who knew. Other families like hers. Would confiding in Alsander put more than herself at risk? Would it endanger the other families? She didn’t think it her place to reveal their secrets, but she couldn’t stand the thought of lying to Alsander, either.
"I — I just knew it. The way I knew your name. "
"You knew my name."
"When I woke up. I knew it when I woke up." That much was true.
He shut his eyes.
"Poppy. Listen to me." He opened his eyes.
Made himself say it. "The word you just said — the name of my kind.
No human is supposed to know it. No human has been allowed to know it for ten thousand years.
Longer. The laws of my people are older than your language.
The punishment for a human who learns what you have learned is death . "
She had gone very pale. "Always? Has there never been an exception?"
"I don’t know."
"Alsander —"
" I do not know. " His hands tightened on her shoulders.
"I have not seen another of my kind in centuries. I do not know if they are dead or if they have abandoned this place to me. Either way, you have spoken a word that could end you, and you knew my name when you woke up in a chamber you have never been in, and you walked up to a dragon in his own lair as if you had been doing it your whole life, and I do not know what you are, Poppy . I don’t know what you are. "
She put her hand back on his face. Her thumb stroked his cheekbone. She refused to let him pull away.
"Then tell me what you are." Her voice was steady. "Tell me everything. We can find out what I am after."
The trust shining in her eyes broke him.
"I am the last guardian of this forest." He said it into her palm. "My line was given the keeping of it a thousand years before your village had a name."
"Your line."
"My family. My sister and I were the youngest of our line. The last."
"The figure on the wall."
"My sister. Mairin. She was the keeper of the relic."
"What relic?"
"At the heart of the wood. It holds the magic of the land — the green of the trees, the clean of the rivers, the small lives in the moss. Mairin was bound to it. She wasn’t just its keeper. She was the forest in a way that I am not."
"What happened to her?"
He couldn’t answer at once. Poppy waited.
"Something came for the relic." His voice went flat.
Emotionless. It was the only way to survive the retelling of the story.
"It corrupted the relic before we knew it was there.
The corruption took my sister first because she was bound so closely to it.
She died in my arms on the floor of that shrine. "
"Alsander —" Her voice was full of compassion.
"The forest was dying with her. I should have died with her. The vow held me. The vow holds me still. It is the curse."
"What vow? What curse?"
"I made it to her as she was dying. I swore on my blood, all that was magic inside me, that I would keep this forest alive until I found a way to undo what had been done.
" His jaw locked. "My blood is the only thing keeping the forest alive now.
Every season I bleed and pour all my magic into the roots and the roots take it, and the trees stand one more year, and the rot at the heart of the wood does not spread quite as fast as it would.
It is not enough. It has never been enough. The curse is winning."
Tears flowed freely down her cheeks and her eyes were full of sympathy, but she didn’t interrupt. She waited patiently for him to finish.
He made himself say the worst part.
"The pull you followed yesterday. That was the vow. The curse. It is in the trees and in the water and it is in me , and now —"
He could barely make himself finish. "Now, I think it is in you ."
Poppy didn’t move.
"The garden at your cottage is dying because I kissed you in it. The bee on your doorstep died because I lay with you in the moss. I should have had the courage to come and tell you to run when I realized the truth."
There.
He had said it.
He waited for her eyes to fill with fear, for her hand to fall from his cheek. He waited, with dread in his heart, for her to stand and back away from him and run for the entrance of his lair like every cell of her sensible mortal body should be screaming at her to do.
She was crying. He expected the crying, and her tears twisted something in his gut.
Jaw clenched, he prepared himself for the worst. Crying wasn’t the same as being afraid. Fear would be next. Then rejection.
He watched. Waited. Braced for the inevitable.
But she didn’t do either. She looked at him with the same tenderness she had used on his books, on his table, on the dragon. Not with pity. Not horror. Something underneath that he had no word for.
He had told her every black thing. Stood in front of her as a beast and as a man. Laid out the curse, the killing law, the dead sister, the failed vow.
And she was kneeling in front of him on the floor of his lair with her hand still on his face.
Looking at him like that .
With acceptance. Love. Devotion. Not pity. Not fear. Want. For a beast. For a curse. For a man who had just told her he was killing her with every breath he took in her direction.
He wasn’t prepared for it.
His chest cracked open and the horrible, awful thing underneath three centuries of grief and silence rose up and took him by the throat.
Something inside Alsander snapped clean in half.
She wants us. Get up, fool! T he dragon snarled into his skull when Alsander stayed rooted to his spot, too stunned to move. She knows what we are. She knows what we have done. She knows we are killing her. And she wants us anyway.
"Poppy —" Alsander’s voice cracked.
"Alsander." She moved closer. Settled between his legs. Her hand slid from his cheek into his hair. "I heard you. I heard every word."
"Then run."
"No."
"Poppy. I am begging you —"
"I said no."
She pressed her forehead to his.
Her breath was warm against his mouth. Her hand clenched in his hair.
Her body was inches from his. He could smell the want on her — the slick honey-warm scent of a woman who had been thinking about a dragon for days and had just walked through her own fear to find him.
The dragon's nostrils flared. His own cock answered.
"You should hate me," he whispered. "You should be running."
"I should." Her mouth was an inch from his. "I am not."
" Poppy ."
"Alsander. Come here ."
The dragonfire magic he’d forced down during the shift roared up the back of his throat in a single hot rush.
The dragon let go of the reins.
So did the man.