by Hanna Dare
“You mean aside from the greed, the hoarding, the pretension?”
Ormur gracefully disentangled himself from Tris and got up from the bed. Tris groaned in protest.
“Dragons don’t change,” Ormur continued as he moved to the falling water at the mouth of the cave. The view of his naked backside almost made up for the lack of his warm body in bed. “Dragons would rather turn into stone before they’d let a new idea into their heads.” Ormur reached a hand out to the water and splashed himself with it. “That’s how we end, you know, if we’re not killed first. Sleeping for centuries on a pile of gold, until there’s nothing left but a vaguely dragon-shaped mound of rock.” He scrubbed himself firmly. “I decided a long time ago that’s not going to be my fate. I changed.”
Tris supposed he should wash too and he got up reluctantly and made his way to Ormur. “How did you change?”
“I gave up treasure, territory, status — all the things that dragons are supposed to want.” Ormur made room for Tris by the waterfall. “Spite is a powerful motivator. Other dragons mocked my ideas, so I wanted to prove that I could do it. Now this is the life I prefer. I live without attachments.”
Tris gasped as he touched the water. “That’s freezing!”
“Your powers of observation astound me.” Ormur rubbed at Tris’s chest with wet hands. Tris liked this combination of sharp words and soft touches.
“What does that mean?” Tris asked. “Living without attachments?”
“Nothing binds me. Take this place.” Ormur jerked his head toward the cave. “It’s perfectly suitable. I like it, I suppose. But I don’t think of it as mine. I’ll move on when I have to, and I won’t look back.” He flicked water at Tris. “You’re making a face, but are you so different? You talk about that valley you’re from, but all you do is leave it. Why do you let that place have a hold on you?”
“But it’s my home. My family’s there. I have to go back to them, sooner or later.”
Ormur pressed against him, hips moving in a slow circle. “It’s a cage. Better than the one I was in, but a cage nonetheless.”
“I don’t think that.”
“Well, you would think so, wouldn’t you?”
“That makes no sense.”
Ormur pulled Tris back toward the bed. “Do you really want to spend the rest of the night fighting when there are better things we could be doing?”
“This isn’t fighting,” Tris protested, even as he stretched out on the bedding and tugged Ormur down on top of him. “I want to understand you.”
Ormur laughed without humor. “It took me more than two hundred years to understand myself, how can you possibly hope to in a matter of weeks?”
“I just think—”
Ormur stopped his mouth with a kiss before sliding down to take Tris’s cock into his hot mouth. Tris knew it was an obvious distraction, but as he swelled against Ormur’s tongue he couldn’t quite remember why he should object.
Ormur sucked with skill, opening his throat to Tris’s increasingly urgent thrusts. All too quickly, Tris was coming with a wild shout. Ormur lifted his head, licking his lips and looking as smug as a cat who’d stolen the cream.
As soon as he caught his breath, Tris pushed Ormur onto his back to return the favor. There was no way he was as experienced as Ormur — Tris was still reeling from the idea that he could be two hundred years old — but he was enthusiastic and Ormur groaned and gripped Tris’s hair tightly as he came. Ormur’s spending warmed his throat and belly as Tris swallowed it down happily. And when Ormur pulled him up to kiss him, licking his lips until they parted so that he could chase the taste of himself in Tris’s mouth, it was thrilling in its intimacy. He couldn’t imagine being closer to another person.
Tris forgot their conversation and fell into an untroubled sleep in Ormur’s arms with the sound of the waterfall filling the cave.
When Tris awoke, the lantern had gone dark but enough daylight was coming from the cave entrance that he could see clearly. What he saw, though, was Ormur standing, dressed and with a full rucksack at his feet.
Tris sat up. “Oh.”
He was very aware that he was naked but didn’t want to take the time to pull on the clothes that were scattered on the cave floor. He worried that if he turned away from Ormur for even a second, he would lose him. Tris clutched a blanket around himself as stood up, his eyes never leaving Ormur.
“As you can see, I’m leaving,” Ormur said flatly.
Tris nodded slowly as he felt the ground drop out from beneath him. “I guess you warned me. No attachments.”
“That’s right,” Ormur said coldly. “I warned you, so you should stop looking at me like that.”
Tris didn’t know how he was looking, but he couldn’t stop himself from saying, “I guess I just thought— I mean, I hoped—”
“You’d hoped to ride a dragon and you got to, in more ways than one. Consider it a repayment for your help.”
Tris flinched. “It wasn’t like that. Never.”
Ormur stood, slender and unrelenting. “Have you considered that I was just using you to escape?”
“Yes, lots of times,” Tris said miserably, “and I wouldn’t hold it against you. Not ever. But what was all this?” He gestured at the bed. “I mean, you wanted me. You said. That was true, wasn’t it?”
Ormur raised his chin. “And now I’ve had you, so I can move on.”
“Just like that? It’s so easy?”
“You’re very young, Tris, and haven’t much experience in these sorts of things—”
“Stop trying to use my weak spots against me. Just speak plain.”
“Fine. I want to be free.”
Tris flung up his hands. “You are free! That’s what all this was for.” He stopped. “Oh, you mean free of me,” Tris said quietly.
“I really wish you would stop looking at me like that.” Ormur jerked up the rucksack and turned to the cave entrance.
“Ormur!” Tris couldn’t let that be the last sight he had of him, so he tightened the blanket around himself and followed Ormur out of the cave. His bare feet were cold on the wet stones, but the feeling in his stomach was colder still.
Ormur stalked down to the edge of the pool with long strides. “I heard you the other night, you know. That awful night in the woods. That I was a person, not a dragon. That’s what you said to that man.”
“What?” Tris tried to remember. “You mean with Marius? I was saying anything to stop him. He was about to skewer me and take you.”
“But there was truth to it, wasn’t there? A dragon can’t be a person to you. I’m just a dream, an abstraction.”
Tris wasn’t sure what ‘abstraction’ meant, but he heard the doubt in Ormur’s voice and grabbed onto it desperately. “Are you just trying out excuses to get rid of me?”
“I don’t need an excuse,” Ormur snapped. “I don’t owe you anything anymore.”
“But you never owed me. I just wish I’d got you out sooner is all. I’m so sorry for that.”
Ormur flung his bag to the ground. “Why don’t you get angry? You should be. I’ve used you and now I’m casting you aside.”
“Would that make it easier for you to leave? Because I don’t know how to do that.” He stepped toward him but stopped as Ormur flinched away. “Here’s what I think — you’re lonely and you’re afraid to admit it.”
“Dragons don’t get lonely.”
“You’re supposed to be so different from regular dragons. You keep saying.”
“That doesn’t make me human.”
“But—”
“I fuck humans. I don’t stay with them, I don’t…”
Ormur wrapped his arms around himself, bowing his head to stare at the stony ground. He glanced at Tris from beneath his hanging braids.
“Stop looking at me like that.” His voice was no more than a whisper.
“How?” Tris begged. “How am I looking?”
Ormur’s head snapped up. “Damn you. You
look like yourself — good and honest and kind.”
He seized Tris by the arms and kissed him fiercely. It was a breathless mix of lips, tongue, and teeth, and Tris groaned into it. He did his best to kiss Ormur back with all of the longing he was feeling, but as soon as he reached out to pull Ormur closer, he was pushed back. Tris stumbled over the blanket and fell to the ground.
Ormur stood watching him. A number of expressions moved over his narrow face, but he finally settled on resolved.
“If you follow the river, you’ll reach a fishing village on the coast.” He waved a hand at the pool and the waterfall. “Stay here as long as you like, take whatever you want from the cave, I won’t be back.”
He stepped even further back and all at once he was a dragon again.
Tris took in the sunlight glinting off Ormur’s silvery scales and blinked back tears. Ormur was so beautiful, but the sight of him felt like a sword in the gut all over again.
Ormur dangled his rucksack from one claw as he rose up on his hind legs and ruffled his pale wings.
“Ormur,” Tris said, despite himself.
“This has to be,” Ormur said. He shook his great head, spiked tendrils curling and uncurling around it. “I am a dragon and you are not; you cannot ask this of me.”
“That’s just it. I never asked.” He got to his feet. “But I’m glad I — we — got to… I’m just glad I found you.”
Ormur curved his neck as he drew back. “Goodbye, Tris.” His voice was rough.
Ormur’s muscles bunched as he launched himself off the ground, wings unfurling to beat toward the open sky. Tris watched him grow more and more distant, until Ormur was nothing more than a dark silhouette against the clouds.
Only then did he allow himself to whisper, “I love you.”
CHAPTER TEN
Tris sat for a long time near the waterfall hoping that Ormur would return, but the sky remained empty.
He finally got to his feet and made his way back to the cave, every step heavy.
He hadn’t wanted to take anything of Ormur’s, but his shirts had been ripped up into bandages and he couldn’t find his sweater, so he ended up going through Ormur’s things looking for clothes. There wasn’t much. Less to be attached to, Tris thought bitterly, and then he had to sit down for a while and try not to cry. It didn’t help that the bed smelled of them.
He finally found a light wool shirt that he suspected was a nightshirt, but it was loose enough that it didn’t strain over his shoulders and he rolled the too-long sleeves back. Then Tris did up his coat, picked up his bag, and left the little cave where he had been so happy just a short time ago. He wished he could say he didn’t look back, but he did, lots of times, craning his neck to keep the waterfall in view for as long as he could.
During the walk to the fishing village — which was not an easy distance — he went through a range of emotions. Anger, sorrow. A lot of self-pity. He tried on gratitude, because he’d got so much — more than he’d ever imagined — but the problem with fulfilling his dreams was that they’d been immediately replaced with new and bigger ones. Mostly, he stuck to heartbreak. As Tris finally limped into the village, footsore and hungry, he was wrung out and all that was left was annoyance that Ormur hadn’t bothered to give him a ride.
The village was a small one without such niceties as inns or taverns to drink away his sorrows in; most of the space was taken up with racks of drying fish. He bargained a half day’s labor for a bed in a barn that night and a couple of fish-flavored meals, and then the next day, when his work was done, Tris found a fishing boat that was willing to give him passage to Rivermouth. He was reluctant to spend the money he’d earned working for the Earl, so he paid his way by helping with the fishing — mostly hauling in nets and sorting their smelly contents. It was hard work that left him too tired to think, and if the sharp wind and sea spray disguised any tears he shed, all the better.
Rivermouth was no more welcoming than before. The muddy brown water of the Black River was matched by the even muddier roads of the town. The shingled roofs of its clustered buildings pointed up sharply like teeth bared in an unfriendly grin, and the weatherbeaten wood used everywhere seemed even shabbier when approached by sea. Maybe his eyes had grown sharper.
Tris stood on a dock and watched crates being loaded and unloaded. Fish and lumber from nearby, expensive spices from places he’d never been and never would be going to. Gulls screamed harshly overhead, fighting over scraps discarded from the ships, and men shouted at Tris to get out of the way as they sweated under heavy boxes and sacks. The sights and sounds and smells seemed to scratch at his skin and Tris finally shouldered his bag and went off in search of a drink.
He ended up at the Tooth and Talon tavern for wont of another place to go. They’d forgotten him in the weeks that he’d been gone, and the bartender tried to talk him into kissing the fake dragon tooth behind the bar again — and spending more on drinks. Tris told him to pour an ale and shut up.
He sat down with his ale next to Gilbert, still in his place by the fire. The old man looked up and nodded like Tris had been there the whole time.
“I’m telling you, Gilbert,” Tris said by way of a greeting, “finding a dragon is one thing, it’s keeping them that’s the hard part.”
“Dragon hunter, are you?” He smiled toothlessly. “You wanna play cards?”
“Against you? Never. I’ve lost too much of late.”
His aversion to spending tainted money faded and he found a cheap place to stay. There was likely work to be had down at the docks, but Tris couldn’t bring himself to go asking. Nor could he make himself plan the journey back to Shadow’s Vale. Instead, he spent his days wandering the town and the shores, finding quiet spots to sit and think about nothing. He always knew it was time to get up and walk somewhere else when he found himself staring too intently at faraway specks in the sky and hoping that they weren’t seabirds but something larger.
In the evenings he drank — never enough to forget but enough that the remembering didn’t hurt quite so much.
After a few nights at the tavern, he spotted Jeffer and Petrus standing at the bar, looking around and no doubt sizing up the crowd for a likely mark to press-gang onto a ship. Their hard eyes slid over him briefly before turning their gazes elsewhere.
“What?” Tris demanded loudly. “You don’t want to buy me a drink? Maybe let me tell you my troubles and then take me to meet a friend of yours down by the docks?”
“Fuck off,” Petrus said.
Tris got the feeling Jeffer recognized him because his hand shifted to his side. A knife, maybe, or a club. He didn’t seem the type to go in for something as fancy as a sword.
Tris stood up so quickly his barstool clattered to the floor. “Try it. Please.”
Whatever was in his face was enough that they both backed away. They actually looked nervous.
Jeffer spread his hands. “Whatever it is that’s upset you, friend, we meant no offence.”
“What could possibly be offensive about how you drug and kidnap people?”
“Stop bothering the customers,” the bartender snarled. At Tris.
He laughed disbelievingly. “I’m bothering them? Me?”
He wanted to fight, Tris realized. Jeffer, Petrus, the bartender — the whole tavern. He wanted to take on everyone around him. Smash and punch and bleed, until he could finally howl out all of the anger and pain he was feeling. But that wasn’t right. He wasn’t angry at them, not really. Tris closed his eyes.
When he opened them, the bartender was glaring, and Petrus and Jeffer were gone.
The bartender crossed his arms over a leather apron, sleeves rolled back to show his thick forearms. “It’s time for you to go home.”
Tris nodded and let out a long breath. “Long past time.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Tris stopped on the road to look down into the valley of Shadow’s Vale.
It had been more than half a year since he’d last stood at thi
s spot, creeping home at the end of another fruitless journey, but this time he didn’t feel any of the usual dread at seeing his family and facing their disappointment at his seemingly directionless life. He didn’t feel any regret either, just a quiet resignation. He had found what he’d been looking for, so now he would stay home and tend to smaller dreams. It was fine. He’d already gotten so much. He’d loved and lost and that was more than some folk ever got.
He did love Ormur. Tris had spent a lot of time on the journey home wondering if it had been a fleeting thing, made up of lust, danger, and Tris’s dreams. But it was more than that. He had loved him when he’d thought Ormur was an ordinary man — well, as ordinary as Ormur could be — then finding out he was a dragon… Well, maybe that had been part of his fantasy, but Tris thought it made him care for Ormur more. All the parts of Ormur were wondrous.
Tris couldn’t even be angry at him. That feeling had faded with each step down the road. Ormur had been a prisoner, so of course he should do whatever he needed to free himself. If Tris had been on the other side of the bars, he might have done the same. Tris tried to make himself feel flattered that he had indeed been wanted by such a remarkable person — if only for one night.
Given enough time, all of his searing heartbreak might change into something milder and more wistful. Maybe even a sweet memory of something that could never be. He had time now. He had his whole life ahead of him, and here in this place, with its familiar rhythms of the seasons and the sheep, he could find some kind of peace.
Maybe. That hope was all he had left now.
Tris stared up at the sign above the door of his sister’s inn. It was carved and painted to show a cat and a dragon — a sight that usually made him smile, but now he just set his jaw a little more firmly as he went inside.
“Tris!”
One of the barmaids, Idna, beamed as she hurried over to him, wiping her hands on her apron and smoothing her dress. The gesture also tugged the bodice of the dress a bit lower over her generous bosom. Tris pretended not to notice and fixed a smile on his face. He hoped it looked genuine because she was a nice person. It wasn’t her fault if he wasn’t up for flirting right now.
