Chapter 9
I wake up slowly, warm and comfortable, a gentle rise and fall beneath my cheek.
It takes me a moment to remember where I am.
I am literally on top of Zan.
I am using him as my bed.
What does it mean that I can sleep so easily with him and not otherwise?
I may be as inexperienced in the ways of relationships with people as Teren judged me, but I’m not stupid.
I have, to put it mildly, an inkling.
But I don’t want to trap Zan any more than he wants to trap me.
Warm hands run idly down my back, and I shiver.
“I can feel you going tense on me,” Zan murmurs. “I take it you’re awake.”
But he doesn’t make any move to extract himself from underneath me.
In fact, if the soothing motions of his hands—or at least, I think that’s what he intends them to be, but they’re beginning to warm me in a different and much more complicating way—is anything to go by, he’s not in a hurry to.
Still. “Thank you,” I say, inadequately. And also, “I’m sorry.”
His hands still for a moment. “For what?”
“I don’t want to be a burden to you,” I say softly.
His arms tense around me. “You’re not.”
“Zan, I’m literally holding you down.”
“I could move if I wanted to, Yora. Look at it the other way.”
He doesn’t elaborate.
What other way?
If I’m not holding him down, am I holding him still? That’s not better—
Oh.
Or he’s lifting me up.
Literally and figuratively my foundation.
I shouldn’t become dependent on one person. I should learn how to live on my own.
But I’ve been on my own, effectively, and now here Zan is...
And he’s not pushing me away.
He’s waited for me to come back for five hundred years. I wonder if as I find my way, he’ll still think it’s worth it.
But right now, I don’t want to pull away.
I want to stay right here, with him.
I want him to be as comfortable with me as I am with him.
But I also have other feelings about him, which are growing the longer we touch and reminding me there are many other parts of my body that need some attention.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“You know,” I say.
“Mmm?”
“I haven’t had a bath in five hundred years.”
Zan’s chest shakes beneath me with his silent laughter.
My lips curve as warmth spreads through me.
I did that—made him happy.
He says, “We can do something about that, if you want.”
I lift my head up to meet his gaze, intrigued. “We?”
Zan’s lips twitch, and his eyes are bright with humor and—maybe something else.
Maybe something I’m scared to name, in case I’m reading him wrong, projecting my own wants.
Dryly, he says, “As in, I will show you how the pipes work and make sure there are clean towels, and you can use the bath.”
Aw. Less interesting. “What about you?”
“I just transformed yesterday. I haven’t been in human form long enough to need a bath.”
Huh. “But do you want one? Do you like baths?”
I feel more than see his shrug. “I haven’t really tried much, to be honest. I usually just take a dive into the lake when in dragon form.”
Oh.
Maybe I’m not the only one who has difficulty with softness; with letting down my guard. And we have reasons for that.
But maybe that’s also how he knew so intuitively what I needed last night.
“Is there a lake near here, then?” I ask. “I haven’t really been anywhere on the mountain except the path to the temple.”
“And some blackberry bushes off the path, now,” Zan reminds me.
I smile brilliantly at this reminder. “And so many, many blackberry patches.”
“I can show you the lake later,” Zan offers.
“Later,” I agree. “After ice cream.”
I sit up, and Zan stares up at me, his slight smile content.
I am almost overcome with the urge to lean back down and kiss him.
Is it too soon for that? I don’t know, and I’m scared of breaking this precious thing growing between us.
If there’s one thing wrath excels at, it’s destruction.
“I guess I’ll find out if I like baths,” I say, regretfully easing off of him. “But maybe you should find out, too.”
When I’m done taking care of the most urgent business, Zan knocks on the door to hand me a warmed towel.
This time I have to ask, “Are you using dragon magic in human form for this?”
His eyes twinkle. “I’ll get breakfast started. Take your time.”
I meant to. I thought I was finally ready for this: To wash away my old life, to embark on the new.
Soaking in a hot bath was never something I did, before. Baths were utilitarian, to maintain my body’s health so it could continue to serve the Order. I want to reclaim this—
But in practice I am bored.
And I would rather be with Zan.
Maybe he’d rather have a break from me, but—who knows how long he’ll be able to stay, anyway? He hasn’t said when he’ll be forced to transform back into dragon form, but I know it can’t be that far into the future.
I want to soak in my time with him more than I want to spite the Order for the sake of it.
And as the Sage of Wrath, spiting people is highly relevant to my interests.
Although for that matter, a sage having a real connection with another person—and especially with a dragon—is spiting them anyway. So, best of both worlds.
They wouldn’t approve of all the ice cream I’m about to embark on, either.
I can choose the ways I reclaim myself from their conditioning that work best for me, rather than centering them.
When I emerge wearing new clothes, though, Zan turns to greet me and then chokes.
And my fears about whether he actually wants to see me vanish.
I smile and do a little twirl. I’ve put on spare clothes Nomi packed for me, a simple knitted dress in purple, with Zan’s blue sash still belted around my waist.
I look soft.
I look feminine, in a way I was never allowed to explore lest it affect public perception of me, but what do I need to care for that now? I can kill a man just as easily in a dress.
Maybe I’ll decide I don’t like it, that the familiarity or protection of pants are best. But the dress is comfortable and flexible and I look like an ordinary person who does not spend my days murdering, which is what I wanted to try today.
Though maybe, given Zan’s quickly contained gobsmacked reaction, “ordinary” is not quite what I managed.
But I find that I am also quite comfortable with him not finding me ordinary.
“Purple suits you,” he finally manages. “You should ask Teren to make you some accessories.”
Accessories! Another whole new world.
...And an overwhelming one, but maybe not if I let Teren choose.
Or Zan, who is way more comfortable with domesticity than I would have expected.
And I wonder if anyone else knows that about him—if he even knows.
“Did Teren make this?” I ask.
“Probably,” Zan says, turning back to whatever he’s doing at the kitchen sink. “He’s always doing something with his hands.”
Ahh. That must be how Teren’s managed his power for so long without katas. I’ll have to think on that, and how I might adapt it for him.
“Maybe that’s my problem,” I muse.
Zan looks a question at me.
“The bath was boring,” I admit.
His lips twitch. “I wondered why you were so quick. Want to learn how to cook eggs and toast? I haven’t started yet—I had to clean all the cookware first, since no one has lived here in a while.”
My eyes brighten. “Yes! Tragic that I missed the demonstration of your rapid dishwashing skills, though.”
“You wouldn’t have properly appreciated them yet anyway.” Zan sniffs. “But you will.”
I snicker and join him in the kitchen.
The amount of things I don’t know about a kitchen could fill a tome, but Zan starts me off as simply as he can.
Here’s the bread. Here is the knife to use to slice it. Here’s how you store it so it doesn’t dry out.
Here’s how to turn on the stove, how to adjust the heat, how to not get burned.
Here is the butter, which makes everything more delicious so we should add extra. No, more than that.
Okay, that last one was from me, but it steals another rare smile from Zan so I have no regrets.
My head is still swimming with all the new knowledge, and I’m sure it would have been faster for Zan to just cook by himself, but he at least appears content to take time with me.
To make sure I won’t be dependent on him once he has to leave, probably.
But even in that he is showing me his care.
Zan directs me to where we apparently keep plates and silverware and cups, and we set a table with toast and scrambled eggs and a bowl full of blackberries and extra butter, just for me.
It’s simpler, but I decide I like this even better than yesterday’s sandwich.
After breakfast Zan shows me how to wash a dish carefully, and then makes me fall over laughing when he then cleans more with exaggerated super immortal dragon speed.
We go to unpack his bag. Zan apparently didn’t finish last night as I expected, because he wanted me to know where things were.
("You can always change it later—”
“It’s your house, too,” I practically growled. “And between the two of us you actually know how a human house works.”
Supremely ironic, given that he’s a dragon, but true nonetheless.)
And once that’s done, he takes me out to the ice house to show me where it is and what food we have inside.
An ice house, apparently, is a small building used to store ice throughout the year.
During the winter, ice and snow are taken to the ice house and packed with insulation so that they will stay cold for months.
Then other foods can be stored there to keep them chilled, too, so they will last longer, because otherwise apparently many foods quickly rot and are no longer edible.
That’s a thing I knew in theory, but have never personally had to contend with.
Butter in its special crock doesn’t go bad quickly, nor sugar in its jar, Zan assures me, but milk is another matter.
The ice house in this case is made of stone in a sort of dome shape, but tall enough that we can walk into it—and this one is bigger than average, because it was once used to feed the entire temple.