27. Not So Different
Not So Different
I wake to a chamber much darker than the one I fell asleep in.
A soft glow of multicolored light throbs on the air, flowing from the gemstones embedded in the walls and sitting upon rock shelves.
I’m on my back, and high above, hundreds of rock teeth point down at me from the ceiling. Somewhere nearby water drips a soft cadence.
I inhale warm skin. The crisp wintry scent. Loam and leather.
My breathing comes faster, harsh little puffs, and I quickly shut my eyes, willing myself back to sleep, to return to oblivion where I have no awareness of the body beside me. Not the thick thigh pressing into mine. Not the long arm roped with muscles and sinew against my slighter one.
“How long are you going to pretend to sleep?”
The air catches in my throat, further giving me away. “I’m not awake,” I insist, ignoring the absurdity of my words. The last time I woke in the night with a dragon whispering in my ear, I was greeted with threats and fear.
He shifts, and I know without looking he has rolled onto his side, facing me.
“I’m not accustomed to sharing my space with anyone.”
I snort, still stubbornly keeping my eyes closed. “I did not ask to be here.”
“Didn’t you?”
My eyes fly open, and I turn my head to find him so close—dark violet blazes at me.
“Because I tried to escape? Well, I promise I won’t quit. I will keep trying, so maybe you should find a better place for me to spend the nights.”
He doesn’t smile. Doesn’t blink. Doesn’t move.
The sight of him with his hand tucked so innocuously beneath his cheek completely unmoors me.
At least I know where I stand with Cyphus. With Tage, I’m at a loss, a ship floundering at sea. He could be thinking anything.
My thoughts travel to those horrible places. Had I pushed him too far? Was my proximity too much? Was he thinking the kind of things Cyphus thought? Ugly nasty ideas that end with me as meat.
Does it ever cross your mind that my forefathers ate your kind?
Just when I think I can’t stand another moment of his probing inspection, he asks, “What am I going to do with you?”
It feels like a rhetorical question, for, undoubtedly, he knows what I want him to do with me.
The real question, the real fear is . . . what is it he wants to do?
This fear becomes too much. Trapped in the too-close quarters of his den, in the limited space of his bed, in the dim radiance of gemstones that rival the magical glow of his eyes, I cannot bear another moment of not knowing, of not properly deciphering what unsettling thing lurks in those eyes.
“I won’t taste good.”
This gets a reaction. “What?”
“I won’t taste good,” I repeat.
“Why are you . . . saying such a thing?” he asks in halting speech, his brow creasing.
“Cyphus may have mentioned that your ancestors ate my kind.” I offer this up hesitantly, like I’m afraid I might plant the idea into his mind if it doesn’t already exist there. “He . . . uh . . . wonders what I would taste like. He says you all do,” I accuse.
“That . . .” He stops himself as though too astonished to speak. He slides his hand out from under his face and knots it between us in a white-knuckled fist. “That isn’t true. We’re not the skelm. We don’t eat humans.”
The vehemence in his voice offers some reassurance.
He continues. “For whatever we are, a part of us is like you, and we’re not cannibals.” His lips twist in distaste at the notion.
I’d only ever thought of our differences . . . that the blood in his veins does not run red. I never looked at him and considered our similarities. “Cyphus clearly doesn’t feel that way.”
“He’s just trying to intimidate you. He doesn’t mean it.”
“He’s not like you. He’s an animal.”
Only once the words leave me do I realize I revealed a certain amount of partiality for Tage. Heat blooms in my face.
A lazy smile curls his lips. “Well, fortunately, he doesn’t lead the pride. I do.”
“Yes.” Fortunate for me.
“I’ve spent some time among your kind. He has not.”
“You have?” Intrigued, I roll onto my side.
“Years ago.” He nods. “I thought it wise to understand humans. I mean . . . I spent the beginning of my life looking fully human, and even now we spend most of our time grounded and walking around on two legs. Humankind nearly wiped us out. I wanted to know everything I could about your kind.”
“And what did you learn?”
“We’re not so different. We feel the same things. Hope, fear, anger . . . love.”
His gaze roams over my face and settles on my eyes .
. . and I try not to shrink beneath the scrutiny, knowing that in all his travels he did not run across eyes like mine .
. . or if he did, he probably only ever heard others denouncing them as an affliction, the mark of something broken within me.
Given the unlucky trajectory of my life so far, maybe they would be right.
He continues. “There was a village. West of the Borg. Tongrun. I would visit there.” I do not miss his use of past tense. “I grew to know many of the villagers.”
I listen raptly, fascinated with the idea of him in Penterra, walking the streets of a village like Isstad, passing for human, interacting with people.
I considered him as they must have—a young man in the prime of his life. Strong . . . handsome. He would have caused quite the stir in Isstad. I imagine he did in Tongrun.
“There was a widow there. She would put me up and feed me in exchange for work around her farm.” His look turned intent, probing. “A young widow.”
A young widow. Oh.
I breathe in just as a flash of something hot and bitter scores me.
Of course.
It’s plain that he provided more than farm work to the young widow.
Staring at him, I realize he wants me to know this. Why? So I will fear him less? So I will see him as an ally? As a dragon with no desire to feed on humans?
So I will know that human women like me find him desirable?
“What . . .” I stop and modulate my voice. “What was she like?”
“Bertine was—” He paused as though remembering. “She loved to sing.” His throat works as though on the verge of saying more, but no words come. “She played the lute.”
I hear what he is not saying and envision a younger Tage then, sitting by the beautiful Bertine’s fire, listening to her sing as she strums a lute with elegant fingers.
Of course she is beautiful. I can see it so clearly, this woman I don’t know with her flowing hair gilded in firelight.
This woman like a siren that he would return to again and again.
“How long ago was that?”
“Eight years ago.”
“And you . . . stopped visiting?” I ask. “Why?”
“There was nothing left after the skelm got finished with Tongrun.”
I suck in a swift breath. “Oh . . . no. I’m sorry.” There’s no mistaking what that means.
He doesn’t look away from me. “I wasn’t there.”
“And what could you have done if you were? By yourself, on your own, what could you have done?” I press.
He shakes his head slightly. “I don’t know . . . something.”
“Die,” I say succinctly, biting off the word between my teeth.
“Alongside the rest of them. Alongside Bertine. That’s what would have happened.
” I resist the impulse to close my hand over his resting between us.
“You can so clearly see the danger waiting for me if I were to venture into the Crags alone. Can you not see the danger of you alone battling multiple dragons?” I shiver, remembering them in all their terrible brutality etched against the night sky.
“You couldn’t have done anything except get yourself killed, too.
I’m sure she was glad you weren’t there.
” I pause and swallow against the sudden thickness in my throat.
“I, for one, am glad you weren’t.” I exhale, wondering if I should have said that last part, an admission that I care about him, but the words can’t be snatched back now.
He stares at me for a long moment, the soft myriad light from the gems flickering over his features, battling the shadows and revealing him in all his attractiveness.
Of course Bertine was glad he lived. She must have loved him.
She probably lived for his visits, for the times he would show up on her doorstep.
Finally, he sighs and nods roughly, as though reaching a difficult decision. “I wasn’t completely honest with you earlier.”
Wariness itches under my skin. “About . . . what?”
“I have wondered what you taste like.”
I recoil, my tender thoughts for him bursting like a bubble. Something sick twists inside me and dies a little at his declaration. I thought he was different with his story of mourning a woman from Penterra. He almost convinced me. Almost fooled me.
There’s no time to get away. He hauls me against him, trapping my knotted fists between us.
“I do think about it,” he admits, his voice a rough growl.
One of his hands reaches for my face, fingers spearing through my hair. His palm cups my cheek. I flinch and then freeze when his thumb strokes down the center of my mouth, nudging my lips apart slightly.
I pant hard breaths against his thumb, bracing for what’s to come.
His eyes flash more purple than black, and, in that moment, I come to understand that his eyes burn purple when he’s emotional, angry . . . stirred . . . hungry.
Hungry for me apparently.
As similar as he might be to a human, there’s this other side of him, too. The side fueled by a hunger too strong for him to resist.
“I do want to taste you,” he confesses.
I shudder in equal parts fear and disgust, waiting for his teeth to find me, to sink deep, for pain to arrive. I don’t have long to wait.
I gasp at the firm press of his lips to mine, bracing for the rip of teeth. For pain.
It never comes.
His lips slant on mine, increasing in pressure, moving, gliding over first my top lip, then the bottom. When his tongue slides into my mouth, he groans.
I startle at the contact, at the hot stroke of his tongue against mine that doesn’t feel unsafe . . . precisely. No. At least not in a way that leaves me fearful.
No, the sensations charging through me are nothing remotely like fear.
Warmth curls through my belly, melting and tightening, coiling like a screw within me that makes me gasp, widening my mouth. He widens his mouth, too, deepening the pressure of his lips and something indefinable coils deliciously tighter and tighter.
Our mouths fuse, all heat and slickness as he licks his way inside. I’m boneless, sinking back into the furs, whimpering under his ministrations, marveling, confused . . . wondering when the pain of it will begin.
He pulls back, his violet-dark eyes burning into me. “Arden . . .”
The growl of my name is demanding, probing, but I don’t understand what he’s asking.
My breathing falls in jagged spurts between us. “Please . . . don’t eat me . . .”
Surprise cuts through the heat in his eyes like the sudden flash of light in a dark room. “You still think . . .” He stops abruptly and withdraws as though touching me is suddenly repugnant.
Sitting up on the bed, he props his elbows on his knees and drops his head into his hands with a muttered, “Fuuuuck.”
Tension radiates from him.
I can’t breathe. I hold myself as small as possible in the bed, wondering what is happening.
Finally, he lifts his head. Without looking back at me, he speaks into the air in front of him, his voice flat. “You must think me a slavering beast, right?”
I moisten my lips. “I—I don’t know . . . you just said that . . .”
“I said I’ve thought about tasting you,” he grates out.
“Not because I want to eat you.” He stands suddenly and spins around, towering over me.
“Do you understand that? I don’t know how to be any clearer.
” He drags a hand through his dark hair like he wants to pull the thick strands out by the roots.
He blows out a rough breath tinged with disgust. “Of course. You are not exactly experienced, are you?”
I don’t know how to answer that. It’s true, of course. In a way. If one does not count vicariously living through others for the last decade. I’m guessing he would not count that as experience though.
He blinks long and hard. Shaking his head, I sense that his disgust is self-directed. “When I say I’ve thought about tasting you . . . I mean kissing you, Arden. Do you understand that? I mean fucking you.”
I gasp at his blunt declaration, gaping up at him, clutching the fur to my throat. His words make me feel . . . strange and fluttery inside.
With another curse, he turns and strides from the bed before I even have a chance to say anything—before I even know what I want to say.
He violently flings back the pelt that serves as a door to his den. It swings there for several moments in the wake of his departure.