48. Lucy #2
The city. The stores. The farmer and his fields. I could feel the change building within me. The logic of letting whatever may come happen, if it meant others surviving. But did it truly mean that? Everything was an assumption.
“I need—” I stopped walking, looking at him. The Ossira burned and he was standing right there and I needed something that wasn’t the hunt. “Distract me. Right now. Before I shift again.”
His mouth curved. “Right now?”
“Now, Riot. Before I—”
“You’re in that dress,” he said, like it was a complete and reasonable sentence, “and you want me to focus.”
“I want you to say something that isn’t about the dress.”
“Give me a moment.” He looked at the sky. Looked back at me. “The dress makes it difficult.”
“Riot.”
“Come with me.” He turned away. “It’s not far.”
I didn’t move. The pull was still there, south and east and insistent, and the idea of shifting while the Ossira burned was not something I was inclined to do on faith alone.
“I can feel it building,” I said.
“I know.” He looked back over his shoulder. “Fight it for ten minutes. I have something to show you.”
“What kind of something?”
He paused, his voice lowering. “A treasure.”
Something gripped my chest before I could stop it. The deeply dragon part of me responded to that word in a way it responded to nothing else. Immediate and completely involuntary.
“Do you know,” he said, turning fully now, something insufferably knowing in his expression, “how much a dragon loves treasure, Lucette?”
I felt the pull of the Ossira and felt something else pull harder in the opposite direction.
“Because I have one.” He tilted his head. “For you.”
I held out for exactly three more seconds.
Then I shifted and followed him into the dark. He landed at the mouth of a cave set into the rock face, the entrance half hidden beneath an overhang that would have been invisible from the air if you didn’t know exactly where to look.
I landed beside him and felt every muscle in my body go tight.
A cave. The last time we’d been in one together the mountain had come down around us. I still heard it sometimes. The crack of it. The helpless certainty of everything above becoming everything pressing down.
Riot pressed his forehead to mine before I could say anything.
The Ossira went quiet. My breathing steadied. I shifted, but he could see the worry on my face as clearly as I felt it.
He lifted my chin and whispered. “I promise it’s safe.”
When I was ready, he let me inside. The dark was complete for three steps. Then he reached out and touched something set into the wall, and small lights bloomed.
Not torchlight. Something warmer and softer, floating points of gold that rose from the walls and hovered near the ceiling in slow drifting patterns, lighting the space from everywhere at once.
I stopped.
The cave was wide enough for two dragons to move in.
Deep enough to sleep in. The walls had been smoothed in places, not by water or time but by deliberate, patient work.
There were spaces that suggested intention without demanding it.
A wide flat area near the far wall. An alcove where the stone curved inward.
A place near the entrance where the ground had been cleared and leveled.
He’d been here during the days. All the days I’d been behind the wards, pacing corridors and keeping notes and trying to hold onto the memory of him, he’d been here.
Building this.
I stood in the red dress with the floating lights catching the fabric and Riot watching me from across the cave with an expression that made it difficult to remember what I’d been anxious about.
His eyes moved over me slowly, the full weight of his attention moving from my face to my shoulders to the way the red silk fell, and when his eyes came back to mine they held something that settled low and warm in my chest.
“In case this is our reality,” he said quietly, “I want you to be at home here with me.” He looked at the floating lights, at the walls he’d smoothed, at everything he’d made from nothing while I was locked away. “Not in there with them.”
I could hardly breathe. “You built me a home?”
“I built us one. It’s not done yet. I was going to wait to show you. But distractions were needed. Do you like it?”
I looked at the light drifting near the ceiling. At the walls. At the man standing in the middle of all of it watching me with eyes that held everything he didn’t say out loud.
“I love it,” I whispered, hoping it was both permanent and temporary in the same breath.
“I’ve only managed the bed so far. And some clothes I bought for you.
” Riot came close enough that I had to tilt my head back to hold his gaze, and his eyes dropped once more to the red dress before coming back up.
“Though I’ve changed my mind about the clothes entirely.
” The corner of his mouth lifted. “I think this is all you should ever wear.”
I dropped out of my coat and left it on the floor, spinning for his pleasure.
He gripped his chest, stumbling backward at the full view.
The laugh came out of nowhere. Real and full and completely unguarded, the kind I hadn’t heard from myself in longer than I could account for, and once it started I couldn’t stop it, my hand finding his chest as I laughed against him. “It’s just a dress.”
He was smiling when I looked up. Not the careful kind. The real one, the one that transformed his whole face, and the sight of it moved through me like the silence he gave, complete and immediate and entirely his.
I stopped laughing, sliding my hands up his chest to grip the lapels of his long coat and pull him down to me. “Can we make a house rule?”
He brushed his lips over mine. “Five seconds and you’re already in charge.”
“It’s a good one, I promise,” I whispered against his mouth.
He swooped me up into his arms, kissing me. “I’m listening.”
I bit his bottom lip. “The gentleman stays outside.”
His smile was more of a smirk now. “We’ll see how long that lasts.”
He moved to the back of the cave and stopped at the bed, setting me down gently before he stretched out beside me.
One hand ran over my thigh, tracing the slit the dress had given him access to.
I pushed him onto his back, straddling him until there was no space between us, and nothing but heat and hunger that felt like home.
And when I could breathe again, I whispered against his lips, “I never want to leave.”