by Hanna Dare
Still, Tris couldn’t help but feel the weight of everything that he had brought to his home. “If I hadn’t stopped you back in the forest that night, it would’ve saved everyone a lot of grief.”
Ormur lifted his head from the pillow to look at Tris. It was too dark for Tris to make out his expression properly, but his voice was soft and he pressed his body against Tris’s without hesitation.
“You rarely take the easiest path, Tris, but it is usually the right one. I’m learning to trust that.”
Tris nodded and settled Ormur’s head against his shoulder. He enjoyed the quiet of the familiar house and the feel of Ormur in his arms.
“But,” Tris said, “just so you know, if Marius somehow escapes and turns up again—”
“I will bite his head off immediately.”
“Yes, please do.”
The sun beat down on Tris’s shoulders and he drew an arm across his forehead to wipe away the sweat.
“Take your shirt off,” Ormur suggested. “It will greatly improve the view.”
They were on the roof, repairing the wooden beams. Tris’s parents were below along with a half dozen neighbors, tying bundles of straw together to be used as thatching. The neighbors had brought the straw, along with food and sympathy, but mainly they were there to gawk.
Tris smiled. “You’re the one everyone’s looking at.”
He didn’t blame them. The sun brought out golden tones in Ormur’s brown skin and the brightness of his silvery hair. Tris had dropped the hammer twice already, just from staring at him. Right now, in fact, it was hard to keep from tallying up the sweep of freckles on Ormur’s cheeks and appreciating how they looked when he scrunched his nose up, like he was doing now.
Ormur shook his head, causing Tris to snap back to reality, fortunately before he dropped anything else. “Nonsense, it’s you they’re talking about. I can hear them. The one who defeated the evil dragon hunter.”
Tris didn’t like taking credit for jumping someone from behind. “But it was you who—”
“Stood by you,” Ormur said firmly. “That’s all anyone needs to know. Maybe given enough time your parents will forget what I did to their roof.”
“They won’t forget it.” He kept a firm grip on the hammer as he hit a nail. “They’ll always be grateful.”
Ormur looked down. Tris’s mother waved up at them. “Come down, lads, and have some ale,” she called. “Lily sent a barrel from the inn. You know what they say, ‘nothing grows on parched ground.’”
“No one says that,” Tris muttered. “That’s not an actual saying,” he called back.
“Don’t disrespect your mother,” she shouted. “What will Ormur think?”
Tris was a bit worried about what Ormur was thinking, but the other man only smiled slightly. “I suppose I should be surprised at how well your family is treating me, but they did raise you after all.”
“C’mon,” Tris said, tucking the hammer into his belt. “Let’s go get that drink.”
They moved along a beam to the ladder. “Let me go first,” Ormur said.
“You think I’m going to fall down the ladder? I’m not that clumsy.”
“I know.” Ormur grinned unexpectedly. “Like I said before, it’s more about the view.”
Then Tris had to worry about blushing in front of his parents and the neighbors, because every time he glanced back on the ladder, Ormur was staring up at his backside with a definite leer on his face.
It was, Tris explained before anyone asked, a very warm day.
It was easy to slip into the rhythm of village life. And more enjoyable than Tris had remembered it being because everything felt new with Ormur there.
At first, Tris worried that Ormur would be bored within a day or two, and that he was hiding his disdain behind good manners, but the other man seemed… happy.
He did groan in the early mornings when Tris slipped out of bed — careful to go back to his own room before his parents woke — but Ormur would get up to help with the morning chores. He actually became quite skilled at tending to the chickens, perhaps because they were among the few animals that didn’t startle or shy away from him. Tris suggested it was because the chickens may have been distant relations to dragons and was rewarded with an increasingly rare scowl from Ormur. Tris had missed those scowls.
It took a few days to get the roof and the inside of the house righted to his mother’s satisfaction, but once that was done, he and Ormur had more free time on their hands. Tris showed him the pastures where he’d spent so much of his childhood. Once the view from those mountain meadows had been dizzying, but Tris had gone so much higher since.
They avoided other shepherds and their flocks and sought out the remote and hidden spots. He and Ormur could stretch out in the tall grass and kiss each other in the sunshine, their soft sighs punctuating the hum of bees and chirps of crickets.
One lazy afternoon, they re-enacted that night in the cell when they’d watched each other through the bars. This time Tris was able to touch Ormur’s cock and stroke it with a sure and steady hand, while Ormur drove him mad with his teasing. Then they switched techniques and Tris ran light fingertips along Ormur’s straining length until the other man called him cruel and begged for release. For his part, Ormur used his long-fingered hands to wring sounds from Tris that he’d never made before.
“I could stay here forever,” Ormur murmured into his ear as they drowsed in the aftermath.
“I couldn’t,” he replied honestly, thinking of the valley that lay below them. “I mean, I haven’t been able to before.”
As happy as he was, Tris could feel the stirrings of his old restlessness. It was nowhere near as sharp as before, but there was that urge for more. There was a whole world out there and he imagined what it would be like to see it with Ormur beside him.
Ormur raised an eyebrow. There was grass stuck to his hair and Tris picked it out idly. “As much as I’ve enjoyed our time here, I can leave whenever you want.” He closed his eyes and pillowed his head in his arms as he lay on his stomach. “Just not before next week — your mother is going to teach me how to bake a pie.”
Tris ran a hand along Ormur’s back. “There’s no rush. I don’t know where we should go or what we should do to start with. Do you have any ideas?”
Ormur shrugged a shoulder, seemingly close to drifting off to sleep. “It doesn’t matter where we are as long as we’re together.” His lips curved. “Besides, your plans tend to have so much of the unexpected to them — I prefer to be surprised.”
Tris groaned and decided that it would be the perfect moment to find out if Ormur was ticklish.
He was, and in some unexpected places.
As content as he seemed in the valley, Ormur was still a dragon and so every few nights he left the cottage to change his form and launch himself into the dark sky. He flew high and fast, so that anyone looking up would see nothing but a swift-moving shadow. Tris often went with him, clinging to his neck and whooping with joy even as tears froze to his cheeks.
It was coming back from one of these nighttime jaunts that Tris encountered his father. Ormur had already gone into his bedroom and Tris was about to follow him in when he saw his father peeking around his own door, wearing a well-worn nightcap.
“Good night,” Tris said to the surprised Ormur and quickly shut the door. He moved toward his own bedroom, fully aware that his cheeks were wind-burned and that he was wearing a heavy coat. “I was, uh, out for a walk. But I’m back now so… g’night!”
Tris practically shut the door in his father’s face. He felt like pounding his head against the wood.
The next morning his father sought him out to help repair a fence. Tris stayed quiet as they walked the length of the fence, hoping that his father had forgotten seeing him last night and knowing in his churning stomach that he hadn’t.
“Hold it steady now,” his father said as Tris moved a fallen piece of wood into place. Tris’s father secured the fence, his weat
hered hands moving steadily.
It was those familiar hands that caused Tris to break his silence. “Pa—” he began.
“Ormur seems a good sort of fellow,” his father said. “For all that he’s not a fellow at all. It’s easy to forget.”
Tris held his breath.
His father leaned against the fence and looked out at the mountains ringing the valley. “I’ve lived in this valley my whole life. Never saw a reason to leave, so I never understood why you were always so fired up to go out into the world.”
“Dragons,” Tris blurted out. “I was looking for dragons.”
“Aye, and you found one. That’s quite a feat to be sure. But it’s more than that. I forget that there’s all kinds of folk in the world and all sorts of ways to be happy. I’m sorry, son, that I thought — likely made you feel — that you were aimless or not being responsible. You had a purpose — you were looking for how to live your life. I just couldn’t see it because it’s not gonna be anything like mine. But that’s all right. A father should want his children to go beyond him.”
“I’m—” Tris swallowed around the tightness in his throat. “I’m not so sure I’ve figured my life out.”
“But you’ve found someone to spend it with.” He turned his eyes to Tris and smiled. “And that’s important.”
Tris could only nod. His father blinked a bit and patted Tris’s shoulder with rough affection.
“C’mon now, we’d best be getting back to the house before your mother starts fretting.”
Tris nodded and rubbed at his eyes. “Should I talk to Ma about Ormur? Ormur and me, I mean?”
His father snorted. “You think she doesn’t know? Why do you think she’s spending so much time with Ormur? She likes him a great deal. You’d be hearing about it if she didn’t, dragon or no.” He shook his head. “Who would’ve thought dragons would do so much for our family?” He smiled at Tris’s look of surprise. “Lily told us the other day, when you lads were out, about how she got the money to buy the inn years ago. The start of so much good fortune for all of us.”
He paused to stare up at the house with its new roof. Ormur and Tris’s mother were coming from the barn. Ormur was carrying a basket of eggs as Tris’s mother told some story that involved lots of hand waving. As they watched, she elbowed Ormur in the ribs and he grinned.
Tris’s father shook his head again, but he was smiling. “Dragons really are quite the wonder.”
Tris linked his arm in his father’s as they walked up to the house. “I feel the same way.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Tris had avoided taking Ormur into the village.
He knew how folk gossiped, and Ormur would be a prime target, being all the things that inspired the most talk — he was from outside the valley and stood out in looks and personality. Tris wanted to protect Ormur from all the stares and speculation — he didn’t want to think what would happen if rumors of Ormur’s true form started up.
Tris wanted to protect Ormur from people. And he wanted to protect people from Ormur.
He liked Tris’s parents and was unfailingly polite to them, but his remarks about the neighbors showed that some essential parts of his nature had not changed.
“How long can supposedly sane people reasonably discuss the weather?” he hissed to Tris after one round of visits.
“Well,” Tris said, feeling like he should offer some defence, “if you had to worry about crops and sheep you’d think about the weather a lot too.”
“I fly in that weather. Yet I don’t feel the need to discuss every cloud or drop of rain I encounter. Of course those people’s heads would likely explode if they had to express anything less vapid.”
Tris wasn’t sure what ‘vapid’ meant, but he got the feeling they shouldn’t accept the neighbors’ invitation to go around for supper.
Still, after several days of Ormur asking about the inn, Tris finally relented and they took the road down into the village, walking easily in the cool evening air. There were some stares from the people they met along the way, but they were accompanied by greetings and nods, just like Tris had encountered his whole life.
Ormur looked around curiously as they went inside the inn. To Tris’s eyes it was looking a bit shabby and he was conscious of the nicks on the dark wooden tables and chairs and the soot marking the stones of the great hearth.
“Not as grand as I made it out to be,” Tris said apologetically.
As if to prove his point, one of the blacksmith’s apprentices belched loudly from the other side of the room, to laughter from the others at his table.
“On the contrary,” Ormur said with a smirk. “It is exactly as I imagined.” But his face softened as they sat down. “Is this it? Your table?”
Tris nodded. Ormur reached beneath the table to search out the spot where Tris had carved his initials.
“Ah, there you are.”
“You remembered that story?”
“I remember everything you said to me.”
Tris winced thinking of the mindless chatter he would make to try to draw Ormur out. “Sometimes I was just talking for the sake of talking, you know.”
“Not all the memories are pleasant ones,” Ormur said dryly. Then his face clouded and Tris knew he was thinking of the long days in the small cell. It made his heart ache to think of it, and he inwardly cursed himself once more for not getting Ormur out sooner.
Ormur looked at him with great seriousness in his brown eyes. It was easy to make out the glints of gold in them. “I’m lucky to have met you, Tris.”
They looked at each other for a long moment, the noise of the large room dropping away. It was just them. It would always be just them, for now and forever.
Ormur shifted slightly. “But you usually sit here do you not? So you can see the room and touch your name under the table and remind yourself that you belong here. Do you want to switch seats?”
“I don’t need that anymore,” Tris said softly, in a voice pitched so that only Ormur could hear. “I know who I am, and I know where I belong.”
Ormur pursed his lips, though he looked pleased. “I’m going to assume that your rather foolish expression means you belong with me.”
Tris felt a smile pulling at his lips. Something light and bright filled his chest. “Foolish, am I?”
“You must be.” His face changed to something that was both gentle and sad. “I’m a very aggravating person. I can’t imagine why you’d want to be with me.”
Tris shrugged and leaned forward. “Well, you don’t have much of an imagination. We’re gonna have to work on that.”
There were many promises in Tris’s voice and even more in Ormur’s eyes. Ormur’s finger stroked the back of Tris’s hand as it lay on the table. It was a whisper of a touch that sent a shiver through Tris, even as his face heated.
Lily suddenly dropped down into the chair beside Tris. “What are we talking about?” she asked cheerfully. “Embarrassing stories about Tris? I have lots of those.”
Tris groaned, ready to jump in both to save Lily from Ormur’s rudeness or Ormur from her bossiness.
But Ormur laughed.
After that, they got into the habit of dropping by the inn, if not to stay for supper, then at least to have an ale in the evening. It was there that Haymon found them one night.
“I just got a rider in from the capital,” he said as he settled with a sigh into a chair. “There was a message about your dragon hunter.”
Lily came over with a tankard of ale for Haymon, her hands moving anxiously over the folds of her skirt after she set it down.
“Do we have to go there for the trial?” Tris asked, glancing at Ormur. His face was still and politely blank.
“There won’t be a trial.” Haymon paused to take a long drink while Tris’s hands twitched from the desire to shake him. Haymon wiped traces of foam from his beard. “That Martin fellow, or I mean Marius, is well known there—”
Tris’s stomach began to sink at the though
t of some influential person turning Marius loose.
“A well-known criminal, it turns out.” A hint of a smile moved over Haymon’s mouth as he looked at their anxious faces. “He’d been convicted of murder and theft years before but had escaped. So once they found out who he was, he was sent back to prison right away. He’ll be there for years, if not the rest of his life.”
Lily let out a noisy sigh. She swatted at Haymon’s shoulder. “You do like to drag out a story.” There was a crash from the direction of the kitchen, and she got up. “I’ll be back.”
Haymon turned a deceptively mild gaze to Ormur. “How long are you planning to stay in the valley?”
Tris sat up a little straighter, but Ormur answered Haymon coolly. “I have no plans at the moment. Are you offering to make some for me?”
Haymon waved one of his broad hands. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for your help. That Marius isn’t the sort we want around here.”
Ormur’s tone was very precise. “And am I that sort, Lord Protector?”
Haymon smiled. It was the same kindly smile Tris had grown up seeing. “I’d say you are, but talk of dragons stirs folk up around here. They start imagining things. The sound of wings in the night, reports of unusually large owls.” Tris made himself stay very still and not squirm, because he and Ormur had gone out to fly just last night. And almost every night that week. They’d been so careful, but Haymon shifted his gaze to Tris. “You know what this valley is like, Tris.”
