No man would have claimed her, not without the khan’s blessing or command.
He’d kissed her back. He’d wanted her.
A dragon.
“Why did you look away?”
She hadn’t felt him kneel down beside her, his touch against her cheek unexpected though she moved easily where he directed, met his stare when demanded. Ven closed her eyes and shook her head. This dragon, who knew nothing of human tradition, propriety. “One shouldn’t stare at someone else.”
“I don’t mind it.” Ouros looked over her, made sure she knew he was staring, that he was gathering his fill of her body before he met her gaze again. “I like your eyes on me.”
Was her mouth supposed to be dry?
She was having a hard time swallowing.
The hunger in her belly wasn’t as fierce anymore. A different hunger threatening to consume her.
He grinned, his canines longer than a human’s, reminiscent of his true self, though the appearance didn’t frighten her.
His eyes flared orange then gold when her stare held too long on his mouth.
“Food.”
His pulse was pounding against the side of his throat, fast enough to match hers.
Propriety might demand she not look, but it was hard to miss the evidence of his body seeking something other than sustenance when he returned to a stand and she took the hand he offered her.
She bent to search out the scrap of cloth she’d wrapped around herself.
“Don’t. You don’t need it here. No need to clothe yourself.”
Ven wanted to deny him, wanted to argue, hoped he couldn’t see the shiver chase over her arms at the way his voice deepened, and his eyes glowed brighter with his words.
She nodded, and he pulled her with him from the cave, the sun still warm despite the last rays sinking beneath the surrounding tree line.
They would have a few more minutes of dusk before true dark settled around them.
He might be able to see in the dark, but she was not so lucky.
The thought didn’t stop her from following him.
She would have willingly followed him anywhere, this creature she didn’t understand, was captivated by, could easily imagine spending a lifetime getting to know, and praying for a thousand more to remain by his side for an eternity.
Too soon.
She shouldn’t feel anything for him, especially not whatever that was this soon.
He was her enemy, wasn’t he?
The khan and the phai were her enemies.
She was Ouros’ enemy for generations past.
So why couldn’t she imagine him as anything but her own?
They walked through the forest, and the darker it grew, the more roots and rocks she found to stumble over until the hunt for food seemed less like a necessity and more an exercise in futility that she would be only too happy to forego.
She stumbled, and only his reflexes kept her from falling to the ground, though it didn’t save the sole of her foot a long scratch on the broken branch that had felled her.
“Clothing and shoes are for more than just protecting one’s modesty.”
“You weren’t wearing shoes when you walked into my hand.”
Well, she couldn’t very well deny that, and truthfully, the feel of the warm air against her skin, the brush of green leaves and fresh grass, was soothing.
The thought failed to make up for the scratches she’d suffered.
Though even without his scales, he seemed to be fairing better.
He made the movement of swinging her up into his arms seem easy. One moment she was held inches from the ground, and the next she was pressed against his chest.
It wasn’t that she’d been angling to be carried, but her arms wrapped easily around his neck, and if he held her closer, ensured that she was as flush against him as she could be, then she didn’t complain or mention the same aloud.
Ven pulled a leaf from his white-yellow hair.
He nipped at the inside of her wrist, and she sucked in her breath.
He soothed the sting with his tongue.
Her mouth parted, but she didn’t know what she wanted to say, if she wanted to rebuke him, or tell him to…she didn’t know.
When he took her lips in a kiss, it didn’t matter, words or food or scratches, just the feel of him.
And she found another reason why clothing would have been helpful in reaching their destination.
“We’re almost there.”
She didn’t ask where there was, rested her head against his chest and tried to match the beating of her heart to the race of his, gratified to know that at least in this, in whatever this desire between them was, he was as affected as her.
Her eyes drifted closed, surrounded by his warmth, the dark stealing what limited vision of the forest she had, and swayed in his arms as he walked.
She woke on a patch of grass, the green stalks forming a bed around her, surrounding her with their fresh scent.
Ven blinked and turned her head to stare up at the sky, the stars so close this high in the mountains, closer than she’d ever seen them before, a hand’s breadth away, all she needed to do was reach out to grab one close.
She rolled onto her stomach, rose on her arms to crawl the few feet between where he sat next to her.
He didn’t look at her, though he didn’t deny her the warmth of his side when she settled next to him.
His gaze remained locked on the heavens above.
So many years, trapped beneath the sea, no stars to light his way.
“Did you have names for the stars? Were they used to light the way in your time?”
He grunted, a response she didn’t know how to interpret, though he didn’t seem to be calling for her silence.
To the north, nearly at the top of her world, rested Adbial.
She pointed to the shining sphere of light, had to twist deeper into his side to put it directly in her line of sight. “My father said that one was the North Star. Sailors use it to navigate the seas. Wherever they were upon the waters, Abdial would lead them home again. Seryn,” she nodded to the south, a star tinged blue blinking in the dark, “was how he first found our island. He said it led him to my mother, that it was his heart.”
“What was your father’s name?”
“Nemsi. He said it meant voyager, in his native tongue.”
“Where did he come from, your father? This land that was not our own.”
Havence shrugged, maintained her gaze on the sky though she felt his stare upon her face. “I don’t know. He never said, only that it was far from here, but that he’d be happy to remain for the love of my mother.”
“Did he stay?”
A wash of bitterness clogged Ven’s throat, but she knew her father’s reasoning, why he had left and not returned. “No. He thought he could find supplies if he sailed the seas, that he could bring them back to us, save us when the waters ran dry and what food we could find was gone. He boarded a ship. He never returned.”
It had broken her mother, to lose Nemsi.
It had broken Havence.
“Thats when I first began watching the seas, you know? Why I came to the shores. Why I was there that day, when my scarf fell into the waves.”
“Looking for your father?”
“Looking for hope.”
He didn’t ask what she meant, and she wasn’t sure how to explain it, even if he did.
Ven knew that if she risked freeing him, he would be as likely to kill her as save her. If nothing else, she’d expected to be enslaved to him, some form of vengeance taken against her in retribution for the years of his imprisonment that he’d suffered. That he’d taken nothing, that he’d offered her safety…
She’d hoped that if he was free, he would see that the people who had thought to save themselves by locking him away had suffered the same.
Not that it made her grandmother’s actions any better.
But perhaps that he would find mercy in the torment sh
ared by all.
Hope.
She couldn’t flee to the seas as her father had seeking salvation.
Well, she had, just a different type of salvation in the form of a dragon and the storms that could save or end her world.
Only once though.
He’d brought the rains only once, the skies clear of clouds overhead, peaceful, as he was here in his sanctuary.
Ouros moved, and she blinked, drew her mind from memories of the past and the unknown thoughts of the future. He shifted around her, and she turned to watch him stretch out on the ground, one hand beneath his head as a pillow, the other across his stomach.
“You didn’t answer. Did you have names for the stars, Ouros?”
“No.”
Ven swallowed, not sure how to continue, not when he kept his gaze overhead and she didn’t know what she’d said to displease him.
“The stars were still new, before I was imprisoned beneath the waves. They didn’t have names in my time. They were burning embers in the sky, sparks of fire risen from some dragon’s breath dancing on the breeze. Amece said that they,” he trailed off, and she stiffened, turned away and wrapped her arms around her knees, stared out ahead of her rather than the stars that he’d been denied for centuries.
She didn’t want to know what her grandmother had said, what he remembered of her.
She didn’t want to remind him of the woman who had buried him in the ocean and left him to be forgotten, to become a myth to the world.
“She said that the stars shone overhead to lead the way through the storm. I told her that was what the djinn were for, and she smiled at my words.”
Ven wouldn’t apologize again. Had she apologized already for the actions of her ancestor? She wouldn’t be bitter over the life of a woman lived years ago, far removed from Ven’s own struggles.
“What are the stars for to your people, Havence?”
“Guideposts, like you said.”
“And what do you see them as?”
I don’t know.
The stars had never been her friends before. They’d taken her father from her, stolen him away, showed him a different path home than the one she’d hoped for.
They were cold and distant and stared down to watch her without mercy.
Always in the night sky. Always too distant to care.
She’d seen them her entire life as he’d been denied their light.
She didn’t know what they were for, only that she wished they were clouded over and that she didn’t hear longing in his voice when he spoke of them, spoke of her grandmother who had looked to them once a long time ago.
“There are fruit trees. That’s what I brought us here for. Come, I will show you.”
She wasn’t hungry anymore, but she followed all the same.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
There was too much left unsaid between them, and too much history to be ignored in favor of…what?
She wasn’t his mate.
Ouros knew better than to think to claim a human as his mate, anyone as his mate. It left one vulnerable, open to betrayal. He wouldn’t risk it again.
The girl…she was not like…he wouldn’t…
He didn’t want to hurt Ven.
If truth be told, he enjoyed having her with him, but for all he knew that was because she was the only human who had come for him, who would speak with him, and not for any other reason.
Surely, she wasn’t unique among her people.
Djinn, yes.
But there had to be others who would sit with him, who he could learn. She couldn’t be the only one. Squalls, she’d said her people needed him to bring back the rains!
If he was needed, then he didn’t have to be alone.
He wasn’t with her.
His fingers clenched.
They’d sat and stared at the stars like that before.
Not Ven.
Havence.
He’d sat staring at the stars, lying as a human beside her grandmother, wondering what the great gas giants in the sky were there for, making up stories, naming the bright sparks that caught their eyes.
No, the world hadn’t named the stars then, not that he knew of, but he and Amece had.
“We can fly to them, Beloved. Your wings can take us into the heavens and we can ask the titans what it is they do in the skies, why they shine so brightly. The greatest adventure we can share.”
“I’d fly to the moon and back, so long as you were with me.”
Havence hadn’t asked him to fly her anywhere.
He, Storms, Ouros didn’t want to stay here though.
The orange fruit was ripe to his touch, pinched gently from the lowest branches of the tree. “Persimmons,” he said, handing the morsel to the woman at his side.
She frowned at the berry, stared at it, not knowing what to do.
He didn’t feel hunger like humans. His belly didn’t rumble though he knew when he needed food and when he could go without. In this form, he needed less to eat than as his true self, but he took the fruit from her and sank his teeth into its ripe flesh.
Juice squirted from between his lips.
The sugar sprayed over her face and he opened his mouth to apologize, when she laughed.
Her laughter should not have had the power to change his mood the way it did. The storms in his heart might not have called the clouds into existence this night, but the moment she laughed, the moment the sound filled his breast, all hint of lingering resentment, uncertainty, unknown – vanished.
And, Snows be merciful, he wanted to keep her.
She wiped the back of her hand over her cheek, stared down at the pink-tinted juice on her skin, swiped a tongue against it, tasting it, while he held the fruit between them.
He knew the taste to expect, the burst of honeyed sweetness that lingered on the tongue.
Her eyes widened at just a hint of the juice, not even a true sampling of the full flavor of the ripe fruit.
Ouros kept the morsel in his hand, head tilted to the side, watching her as she looked to the piece, her eyes following where he moved while he kept the delicacy just out of reach.
She didn’t grab for it.
He wanted to see how long it would take her before she did.
He raised the berry above his head, and she looked up at the tree, the branches bursting with the teardrops, though she likely could not see their burning color in the dark of the night.
She didn’t jump for his withheld treat.
He blinked, and she moved away from him, ignoring the harsh bark beneath her hands and feet to climb the tree.
It was not so large or tall like the other trees in his forest. The persimmons grew closer to the ground, branches too heavy to rise too high into the sky when burdened with their fruit.
She only needed a few feet of leverage to reach the lowest hanging fruits.
If she fell, she would be bruised, but not likely injured.
Knowing that and watching her climb were two different things.
His heart leapt to his throat and he threw his piece of fruit away to wrap his hands around her waist when she leaned over one of the tree limbs, scrabbling at the leaves.
She didn’t slip.
He kept his grip on her hips all the same, lifted her to the ground once she’d grabbed her morsel, kept her far from the bark that would have scratched against her.
Her arm slipped around his shoulders, a leg wrapped over his thigh, holding their bodies flush together.
He took a breath, and she bit down into the plump flesh of the fruit in her hand.
The spray caught his chin and she grinned around her mouthful.
She cupped his jaw, fruit still held between her fingers, trailing the juice over his skin as she leaned up, used his body as a step to rise enough to place her lips to his neck, lick the sap from his flesh.
It tasted sweeter, the honey he stole from her kiss than from the fruit itself.
It was sweeter, when she dropped the persimmon a
nd clung to him as desperately as he clung to her, open and willing and welcoming when he sank to his knees in the grass covered orchard and laid her on her back, joined their bodies together to the gentle swaying of the wind touched branches overhead.
In the moonlight, in the aftermath, Ouros held her against his chest and returned his gaze to the stars overhead.
He’d named one for her grandmother a lifetime ago, the star she’d called Abdial.
The star used to guide its gazers home, shining too brightly upon the woman in his arms.
He looked down at her.
Home was a dangerous place.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
She stood at the edge of the pool, staring at the way the water glistened over his skin, the way it highlighted the teal speckles of his scales shining in the bright sunlight, and twisted her fingers in the wrap she’d donned before his declaration that today she would learn to swim.
He’d taught her to hunt the day before.
Not just to hunt, but to use her magic in the process.
The bow, a remnant of centuries passed, carved by his claws from an oak tree, cured in the heat of his fire, had rested in a grave in the farthest reaches of his den. Amece must have buried it there before she left Ouros to imprison him on the Mount of Dragons. That he’d sensed it, known its resting place, had willingly brought it to her, had made Havence nervous. It was not a gift she would have expected, a weapon that could be turned against him if she acted as her ancestor in betrayal.
But he’d offered it freely, had dressed her in her grandmother’s clothing to protect Ven’s skin from the sting of the bowstring.
The braces on her arms were from a deer’s hide. He’d worked the same dragon sigil branded onto her skin into the leather.
She didn’t need to ask what came first.
Somehow the khan had found the marking and used it to define Havence’s line, not knowing it was a piece of the dragon they feared.
He stood behind her, and raised the bow, her hand held steady beneath his on the old wood.
It was his will that fit the arrow to the string, pulled back and let fly the bolt.
Without his added strength, she didn’t think she would have managed the feat, but he helped her only the first few times, then turned and told her to practice, to grow strong.
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