54. Aurora
AURORA
After that, things were different between us.
Ryse still watched over me and protected me, but there was an added layer of affection between us once we got back to our room.
He was always putting his arms around me or kissing me on the forehead, and I understood how much he’d been holding back when he thought I was a man.
But while I was still having my courses, he was extremely gentle with me—as though he thought I might break.
“How’s your pain today, little one?” he would ask anxiously.
But when I always said I was fine, he got impatient and told M’alex to tell L’eesha to give him my pain so he could tell how bad I was really feeling.
“You don’t have to do that!” I exclaimed on the second day, when he grunted in pain and doubled over at the onslaught. “It’s really not as bad as it was.”
“Doesn’t feel much better to me,” he gasped. “All right, M’alex—I’ve got it now. Tell her to stop.” Then he pointed at me. “Back to bed until you feel better!”
He kept me supplied with willow bark tea, well sweetened with honey, and a hot water bottle that was always hot. And somehow he got even more towels from the Commissary and tore them into strips for me to use once I felt good enough to be up and about.
As sanitary napkins they were crude but effective and I washed them out in the sink every night and let them dry. In this way, I was able to get through my classes undetected—with the help of my Dragon Glass pendant, of course.
The pendant no longer worked on Ryse, however. He shook his head when he looked at me.
“You’re so fucking beautiful—how could I ever think you were a man?”
I shrugged, blushing from his compliment.
“The pendant makes other people see what they expect to see. No one expects to see a girl at the Academy.”
“No, they don’t—but they should,” he said frowning.
He was still trying to decipher the verse at the end of the oldest book, the one that had paintings of Golden Queens with female riders and Madlings in it.
He’d told me that he had a feeling the Academy was going to be very sorry they had outlawed female riders and allowed the Queen eggs to collect dust for so many years.
“But why were the Queens so important?” I asked him, as he was studying one night.
He shook his head.
“I don’t know, but I’m sure they are. They once played a vital role in the Academy’s Dragon Ranks.”
“Maybe they lay more Gold-wings and other Noble dragons than regular females,” I suggested.
“Maybe,” he said, frowning. “But I have a feeling it’s something more than that.”
Now that at least one person I trusted knew my true identity, I felt much more secure. I knew that Ryse wouldn’t betray me—he protected my secret even more closely than I did.
Every time I walked out the door, he insisted on checking first to be certain I was wearing my Dragon Glass pendant.
But I liked to take it off when it was just the two of us alone at night.
I felt less inhibited when I wasn’t wearing it and I began to wonder when Ryse might make good on his promise to kiss me “more than twice.”
But for quite a while, he was still treating me like I was made of fine china—maybe because I was still having my courses.
Finally, though, I stopped bleeding. It was with immense relief that I hid away the torn towels at the bottom of my dresser drawer and told Ryse that I no longer needed any willow bark tea or the hot water bottle he so considerately kept filled for me.
But he still didn’t do anything but kiss me on the forehead and hold me in his arms as we slept…until the night L’eesha started having growing pains.