by G. A. Aiken
Shalin sighed in absolute pleasure as she stepped into the well-lit and dust-covered library. “Aye. Very much.”
“Thought it might. Ailean’s kin—well, they’re not much for reading, are they?”
Grinning, Shalin said, “So they won’t be down here, is your point?”
“Luv, I don’t think they know the castle has one, much less where this room is. You should be fine here for quite a bit. Especially when they make battle plans. They can do that sort of thing for hours.”
Madenn placed the scones and drink on a long wooden table. “I don’t have any cooked meat for you yet, but I’m guessing the scones will hold you for a while.”
Slowly walking down one row of shelves, looking at each title, Shalin said, “You know what I am. What we all are.”
“Aye. I do. We all do.”
“But you’ve never told.”
“We never have, we never will. But it’s a long story and not one I’m much in the way of telling at the moment. Besides, it’s more Ailean’s story to tell than my own. I wasn’t there, ya see.”
Shalin grabbed a book she’d never read and pulled it off the shelf. “I understand.”
Madenn walked toward the door, but before she left, she added, “We protect Ailean and his kin as he’s protected us and ours. Our loyalty is deeper than any you’ll find and well-earned.”
Sensing some kind of warning, Shalin turned to look at Madenn, but she’d already walked out the door, silently closing it behind her.
The chant for food started when the suns set. It turned to cat-calls and loud screaming until the servants began bringing out the platters of hot food and placing them on the tables.
“Where’s Shalin?” Ailean asked Arranz, who only stared at him. Blankly.
“You lost her?”
“We didn’t lose her. She’s around somewhere. We’ll look after we eat.” Of course Arranz said that around a mouthful of food.
Afraid she might have gone off to handle all this on her own, Ailean searched the castle for her.
He went to her room first but found it empty. He went down to the small dining hall in the back of his home, thinking she might have gone there in search of food. But he found that empty as well, except for a few of the dogs playing on the floor.
Ailean walked into the kitchen, getting more desperate by the second.
“Something we can help you with, Ailean?” asked Madenn. An older human, she’d worked for him since she’d been a young girl, as had her mother and her mother’s mother. He liked Madenn very much. She made him laugh.
“The lady I brought home today? Have you seen her?”
“Last I saw her, she was in the library.”
Ailean tilted his head to the side and stared at Madenn. After a long moment’s pause, “I have a library?”
Madenn snorted. “Aye, m’Lord,” she replied, not bothering to hide her laughter. “With books and everything!”
“Truly?” He grinned now that he knew Shalin was safe and not sacrificing herself for the dragon nation. “I never knew.”
“As I’d guessed.”
“Fascinating.” He started to walk away, then gestured to the door. “Uh…can you point me…”
With a good-natured shake of her head, Madenn walked with Ailean out to the hall, giving him quick directions. “Once you’re in that part of the castle,” she finished, “go down the hall, all the way to the end, turn left, and the very last door on the right.”
“Thank you.”
“Welcome.”
Ailean followed Madenn’s directions and, as she suggested, he found Shalin in the library. Still wearing that dark red dress and barefoot, she sat on the floor, completely engrossed in a book. She probably had no idea how late the time had grown.
Even more fascinating, she had one of the new batch of black-furred puppies asleep in her lap. When Ailean had taken over this land, he’d begun to breed the animals to create bigger, more battle-ready dogs. They were wonderful pets and companions but could easily tear the limbs off a good-sized man. And had when the situation called for it.
“Shalin?”
“Mhhm?”
He couldn’t help but grin. “Shalin?” he called again.
She finally lifted her head. “Yes?”
“It’s time for evening meal.”
“Evening…” She turned her head toward the window. “Oh. It is dark.”
“Aye. It is. And I’m starving.” He held his hand out for her. “So let’s go feed, then.”
“No.” She waved him away. “I’ll be fine until later.”
“You will?”
“Aye.”
“If you’re sure…”
“Of course.” She ran a hand down the puppy’s back while staring at her book. “This little one will tide me over until I—oiy!” she barked when Ailean reached down and grabbed the puppy from her lap. “He’s mine!”
“Not if you’re planning to eat him.”
“What else would I do with him?”
“He’s a pet, Shalin. A companion animal. If you wish, you can keep him as such. But if you’re planning to eat him—no.”
“That’s unfair.”
“On my territory we don’t eat dogs.”
“You have the most ridiculous rules. You do know you’re not human, yes?”
“I’m well aware of that, Shalin.”
The puppy, now awake, yawned and tried to scramble out of Ailean’s arms and back to Shalin. When Ailean held him tight, he began to cry and paw at his hands.
“You’re hurting him,” Shalin accused, quickly getting to her feet.
“You were going to eat him.”
“Give him back to me,” she ordered as only a royal could.
Ailean moved away from her grasping hands. “Only if you give me your word you’ll not eat him.”
“Fine. I give you my word.”
“Good.” Ailean shoved the puppy back at her and Shalin snuggled him close. “He seems to like you. I’d hate for that affection to be betrayed.”
“It won’t be.” She giggled when the puppy licked her face and nipped her nose.
“Then he’s my gift to you.”
Shalin looked at him in surprise. “A gift? For me?”
“Of course.” He reached over and stroked the puppy’s head, smiling when the little bastard tried to bite his finger off. “While you’re here, I’ll show you how to care for him.”
“No one but my father and mother has ever given me a gift before.” She smiled, and Ailean wondered if he’d ever seen anything so beautiful. “Thank you.”
He cleared his throat and stepped back from her, wondering why he had this sudden, almost overwhelming desire to give her everything he owned and fuck her beyond reason. He’d never felt both tenderness and lust at the same time for anyone and he didn’t much like those feelings now.
“Let’s go in and eat. You can bring the puppy.”
With the puppy and the book she’d never released still in her hands, she peered up at him. “I don’t spend much time with others, Ailean. I mostly keep to myself.”
That surprised him a bit. “But all that time in Devenallt Mountain with Adienna…?”
“I just followed. No one ever expected me to do or say anything.” She gave a devious little smirk. “Very few at court find me very interesting. And I’ve found if I stay unbearably boring long enough, they wander away and stop talking to me altogether. I like when they don’t talk to me. Before I went to school in Kyffin, I could sometimes clear a chamber simply by entering it.”
Ailean laughed, tugging her forward until her bare feet touched his boot-covered ones. “Tragically for you, I haven’t been bored yet. So I know how fascinating you truly are.”
“And you’d know that how? You never let me finish a sentence.”
His own smile fell at the innocent barb. “Are you saying I talk too much?”
“Well—”
“Because I don’t. I don’t talk too much.”
“I have things to say, sure. But it’s not like I can’t shut up if I have to. Because I can.”
“O—”
“And do! When I have to.”
Shalin stared up at him once again, her mouth closed.
“Well?” he demanded. “Answer me.”
“You’re right. You don’t talk too—”
“Exactly! Now come on. You can even bring your book if you like and read at the table. This lot will never even notice.”
It was like watching wild animals feed with much snarling, growling, and food stealing. But to make it uniquely theirs, there was also much laughing, taunting, and yelling. Shalin said nothing because she really didn’t have to. With Ailean on one side of her having either a running argument or an animated conversation with his brothers—she didn’t know which—and his infamous twin cousins on the other side, yelling at different family members across the room, Shalin didn’t have to say a word. Instead, she devoured her delicious food, hand-fed the puppy comfortably ensconced in her lap and, much to her delight, read her book. That she would have never done at court. Ever. She’d have been forced to keep up some boring patter to entertain whatever noble sat beside her or she would have had to listen to Adienna softly mock everyone in the room.
Truth be told, Shalin hadn’t had a meal this lovely since she’d lived with her father. He’d always brought work or books with him to their evening meal of a freshly butchered cow or two. They’d eat, read, and barely speak and were both quite comfortable doing so.
The hour had grown late and she’d devoured half a cow’s worth of ribs before she finally lifted her gaze from her book.
“What you reading, then?” one of the twins asked.
“It’s a book on the Northland pirates. The ones who come down along the coast and raid the small towns there.”
“I heard about them. Oh, I’m Kyna by the way. This is Kennis.”
Kennis greeted Shalin with a grunt, since she had a mouthful of food. Shalin had never met the twins before, but like every other dragon in Dark Plains, she’d heard of them, the pair having cut a bloody swath through the enemy during the last battle against the North dragons. They were feared as much by their own people as by their enemies.
“So go on,” Kyna insisted, “tell us about the pirates.”
Shalin glanced at the book and shrugged. “Well, there was this one story that was kind of interesting about how one of the raids went horribly wrong.” Shalin leaned in a bit and proceeded to tell the cousins what she’d read, adding in some additional details about the town and the Northland pirates that she’d read in other books. Since the twins never looked bored the way most others did when she spoke for longer than a minute or two, she kept talking.
“He knew, then,” she said.
“Knew what?” Kyna all but demanded.
“He knew he either had to cut her throat or watch his men die.”
It was the silence Shalin noticed first. Neither Ailean nor Ailean’s kin were ever quiet. Yet for a brief moment she thought that only she and the twins remained. But when she glanced around, she gave a little start of surprise. They were all watching her. If she hadn’t known she had Ailean’s protection, she’d have feared for her very life, the way they all watched her.
Then, finally, from the back of the room someone snarled, “Well…go on, then!”
“Aye,” one of his many—many—aunts demanded. “Finish the story.”
A chorus of “ayes” followed and Shalin briefly debated making a run for it.
“You best finish,” Ailean murmured near her ear. “They’ll tear this castle down around us until they get what they want. Besides,” and the smile he gave her nearly had her melting in her chair, “I’m dying to hear the end as well.”
Realizing she really did have their undivided attention and that she didn’t much mind, Shalin continued. “But for the captain neither of those options worked for him. But if he was going to save them all, he’d have to move fast…”
The dinner ended and his family went off on their own, heading out to check Ailean’s territory or simply enjoy the quiet night before the storms came. Storms were blowing in from the east, but it was the rainy winter season in Kerezik, so no one was particularly surprised or worried.
Ailean silently watched Shalin head up the stairs to her room, the puppy in her arms.
“Don’t even think about it.”
Ailean turned away from the tantalizing sight of Shalin walking away to that of his twin cousins, Kyna and Kennis.
“Don’t think about what?”
“Now that is an innocent face, isn’t it, Kyna?”
“That it is, Kennis. That it is. You’d never think he has nefarious plans for Shalin the Innocent.”
Ailean rolled his eyes and laughed. “I do not have any plans for anyone.”
“Not sure I believe that, cousin. Who can resist a female with the moniker ‘the Innocent’?”
“Your lack of faith in me, Kyna, hurts.” He held his hand to his chest. “Deep inside.”
His cousins, two of the greatest Battle Dragons he’d ever known, laughed and each punched one of his arms. He gritted his teeth, trying to ignore the pain.
“They have a point, though, brother.”
Forcing himself not to rub where the twins had hit him, he focused on Bideven, who stood over him. “What are you talking about?”
“You with a fresh, untried female under your roof. I’m concerned.”
Ailean pushed away from the table he’d been leaning against and stood tall. “Concerned?”
“Aye, brother. Concerned. Shalin the Innocent is not like your other—”
“Whores?” Kyna added helpfully.
“Aye. She’s not.”
Ailean felt his rarely used anger growing. “I never said she was.”
“But I saw how you looked at her.”
“I have eyes. I was looking. It doesn’t mean that I’ll—”
“Take advantage?”
“I don’t take advantage. I’ve never had to before.”
“She’s naive, Ailean. Sheltered. She’s never been away from her library and her books before.”
“And?”
Kyna stepped between the two brothers who were now toe to toe. “And she might misunderstand or expect more. More than you’re willing to give. No one wants her hurt. Least of all you, I’m guessing.” She rested her hand on his chest. “You have the biggest heart of us all, Ailean. But sometimes you make the mistake that everyone thinks like you. Or us. She’s not like us. She’s cultured and that, isn’t she, Kennis?”
“Aye. Cultured and soft.”
Kyna brushed her hand against Ailean’s jaw. “Breakable, Ailean. So be careful what you do.”
He took his cousin’s hand, kissed the back of her knuckles. “You’ve a good heart yourself, little cousin.”
She smiled, seconds before she slammed him hard across the face with her free hand. “Don’t try and sweet-talk me, you wily bastard.” But she grinned just the same.
“We’re off, then,” Kennis informed them all, heading toward the door. “We’ll go up north a bit, make sure there’s no other surprises from the Lightnings. We’ll be back later tonight.”
“And if you find more of them?” Ailean asked. “More of the Lightnings? What will you do then?”
Kyna grinned as she followed after her twin. “Then we’ll have more horns to add to the ones already on our den walls, won’t we?”
Ailean turned back to Bideven, but his brother did no more than sniff in disgust before storming off.
“What is wrong with him?” Ailean snapped, knowing Arranz stood behind him.
“Don’t know. He’s been strange all day. So are you going to fuck her?”
Ailean sighed and walked off.
“It was just a question.”
4
It really galled him that his own kin thought so little of him. Thought he’d take advantage of Shalin
or any female merely to sate his lust without a care for the female. He didn’t need to take advantage of anyone and it insulted him anyone thought he would.
Passing Shalin’s door, Ailean heard her cooing to her new puppy. Her scent had him pausing a moment. She always smelled so…delightful. Enticing.
His knuckles almost struck the door before he stopped himself.
Gods, I am weak.
Before he did something foolish, Ailean went to his bedroom, stripped, and got into bed. He ignored his desire to crawl back down the hall and scratch on Shalin’s door like that puppy. He’d leave her alone. He would.
An hour into that chant, and the knock on his door came.
He ignored it, hoping she’d believe him asleep.
“Ailean,” Shalin whispered urgently through the door. “I need you!”
When he still didn’t answer, she began banging on the door.
“Hold on,” he snapped, getting out of bed and wrapping a fur around his waist. He snatched the door open, ready to order her back to her own bed when he saw tears streaming down her face. “Gods, Shalin. What is it?”
She grabbed his hand. “I think he’s dying!” Then she dragged Ailean toward her room. Once she got him inside, she dragged him around her bed where her puppy was hunched over.
“Do something!” she demanded, her panic tugging at his heart.
Ailean crouched next to the pup and said, “Well, luv, there’s not much we can do.”
Shalin looked at him with something close to abject horror. “You’re just going to let him die?”
“No. I’m going to let him bring back up whatever he’s been eating.”
And that’s what the little bastard did.
They both moved back, disgusted.
“Oh, that’s vile!” Shalin gasped, covering her nose and mouth.
“That it is.” Ailean glanced around until he found a few rags piled in a corner. He grabbed them and quickly cleaned up the mess while the puppy whined softly and crawled into Shalin’s lap.
“He’s still sick.”
“His stomach ails him, is all.” He took the rags out into the hall and dumped them where the servants could find them in the morning. When he came back in, closing the door behind him, he found Shalin staring down at the pup like she feared he might gasp his last breath at any moment. “Shalin, he’ll be fine. You just have to watch what he eats.”
