by Imogen Sera
Tarquin stood and extended his hand to help Mira up, and she didn’t let go once she was standing. Instead, she clung to it while they walked the breezy hallways of the airy house, feeling more than a little claustrophobic.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“What is he?” Mira breathed after they’d settled in the room he’d provided, and the door had been securely bolted behind them.
Tarquin shrugged. “No one’s sure,” he said. “My best guess is some kind of strange hybrid. I really don’t know.”
Mira shuddered. “I felt like he could see right through me.” She set her cloak on the bed, disturbed but not surprised to see her bag already there.
“He’s a very rich man and he’s a very bored man. No one has any leverage over him, because he needs nothing from anyone. He’ll keep us here for a few weeks, entertain us and be entertained by us, and then he’ll tell us what he knows, whenever we begin to bore him.”
“We’re staying, then?” she asked.
He studied her face for a moment. “I told you I expected to be gone for several weeks. Is this alright with you? I can send you home.”
She shook her head in response. “I want to stay. He just—” she clenched her teeth and made an exaggerated shudder.
“I know,” Tarquin said, hefting his bag onto the bed. “I feel the same way. You should know that you’re safe here, though. I won’t let him do anything to you that you don’t wish.”
She smiled at that.
“Sorry about… what he said.” It was odd, the way he said it. Sheepish.
Mira laughed. “We have sex all the time, I’m not offended that someone acknowledged it.”
He was silent at that, so Mira decided to explore the room. It was massive, at least as big as her entire family’s farmhouse. There was a bathroom with an in-ground bathtub, closer to the size of a small pond, situated in front of a window overlooking snow-capped peaks in the distance. She stared at them for a moment, grasping for a moment just how far she was from home. She had never seen mountains before.
She turned her attention to the large mirror along the wall and grimaced at her windburned face. Her hair, too, was a mess; she’d tried to tame it in the hotel room that morning but had been unsuccessful after a long day of wind whipping through it and tangling it in her hood. Her clothes looked neat, which she appreciated, but overall she looked like a mess.
She supposed she must be one, to be playing a dangerous game like sharing a room with someone she wanted so desperately. He wanted her too, clearly, but not at all in the same way.
There was a dial on the wall that caught her attention. She turned it, and was rewarded with water gushing from the ceiling over her like a rainstorm. She shrieked at the sudden torrent and turned it off quickly, then laughed at herself. Her clothes weren’t neat anymore.
When Tarquin charged in, he laughed at her, too. “What did you do?” he asked, taking in her dripping hair and wet clothes.
She beckoned him over, laughing all the while, and when he was next to her she turned the dial on again, with her just out of the water.
She laughed hysterically, and he growled at her when he realized what she’d done. Instead of jumping out of the water, though, or turning it off, he simply lifted her to him and held her under the cold water with him. She shrieked again and tried to wiggle free, but his grip around her was firm.
She grinned down at him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Please may I get out of this bizarre, freezing shower in the middle of the floor?”
He shook his head. The water was cold, but the look he gave her was so heated that for a moment all she could focus on was the heat curling through her belly. He kept his arm around her waist, locking her to him, then adjusted the dial. A moment later the water warmed slightly, and a moment after that her lips were on his, and he lifted her so that he held her bottom and her legs wrapped around his waist.
Mira kissed him wildly, her hands on his face and shoulders and in his wet hair. When he tugged at her shirt she pulled it off eagerly, and then reached to pull his off, too. His arms were hard and lovely and slippery under the water as they held her to him, and she couldn’t stop running her hands up his arms, over his shoulders, and down his back as her tongue tangled with his. They were both naked before long, and when he braced her against the wall and pushed into her, she clenched around him and sucked at his neck. The delicious way he filled her and the water running over her and the sweet ache as he brushed his fingers over her nipples all overwhelmed her, and she shuddered and called for him as she came. He came soon after, his forehead pressed to hers as he did. His face was lovely, she thought to herself for the millionth time.
Once they pulled apart, Mira took the opportunity to actually clean herself, and was surprised when Tarquin stayed under the water with her. She was more surprised when he silently pulled her head against his chest. She considered stepping away, but the small sigh she heard when she wrapped her arms around his back, instead, made her glad that she hadn’t.
The table they were seated at for dinner was small and round, with hardly enough room for the three of them, given the immense size of the men. It was strangely out of place in a room that rivaled the dining hall in the royal palace.
Mira’s skin crawled at her proximity to Cyrus, despite the fact that he’d been nothing but the picture of politeness since dinner had started. Maybe it was the way his eyes, a lovely blue but impossibly light, continually roved over her face.
“You’re not eating?” she asked, suspiciously, watching him as a thick slice of meat was set in front of her and Tarquin.
Cyrus shook his head and reached for a grape from the platter of fruit in the center of the table. “The flesh of the dead holds no appeal to me, dove. But eat up. I don’t wish for my guests to go hungry.”
She glanced down at her plate. She wasn’t sure the flesh of the dead appealed to her, either.
“Tell me about your mate,” said Cyrus, directing his strange gaze on Tarquin.
“I’d rather not,” he replied.
Cyrus pressed his lips together at that, then turned his attention to Mira. “You tell me about his mate, then.”
Mira shrugged and cast a sidelong glance at Tarquin. “I haven’t been deemed worthy enough to hear about her.”
“That’s not—” Tarquin trailed off as he turned to her.
She just raised her eyebrows and turned her attention back to their host. He was watching her intently, in a way that made her feel like he could see right into her, down into her soul. She watched him back, trying not to shrink from his gaze, trying hard to suppress the shudder that desperately wanted to come over her.
“We appreciate your hospitality, Cyrus,” said Tarquin, and when the strange man turned his attention away from her she felt as if she could breathe again.
“I’m always pleased to welcome an old friend,” he said, “especially one as amicable and conversational as you.”
Mira couldn’t stop the stunned laugh that escaped her. She was even more stunned, a second later, when Cyrus turned to her and winked.
“Tell me about yourself, dove,” he said.
Mira shrugged. “There’s not much to tell,” she said.
“That can’t be true,” he said, his voice silky smooth. “You’re a mortal. Tell me why you’re here.”
She glanced at Tarquin uncomfortably. “I was bored.”
Cyrus laughed, and the sound was reassuringly human. “You come from human lands, correct? Tell me how you came to be here in Amling?”
She told him about the plague, and when pressed, told him about the farm and her parents and her three older brothers. She told him about being carted off to Dragongrove, and then her brief time working there until it had burned. She told him of her hating being back at home after learning the truth about the world, and how when the queen had asked her to court she’d left the same day and had only gotten lost twice on her way.
She tried to politely skip all of the parts with Tarquin
, but Cyrus seemed to be especially interested in those.
“Where you’re from, mortals don’t have knowledge of the dragons?”
She shook her head. “Not really. There are a few crazy people who seem to think they exist, but…” she trailed off, then glanced around the room. “Maybe not so crazy.”
Cyrus smiled at that. “So he—” he gestured to Tarquin, “—landed right in front of you, and you didn’t even know they’d existed.”
She nodded and laughed. “I just froze and waited to be burned to death, I suppose? I have excellent survival instincts, obviously.”
Tarquin turned to her. “You never told me that. I assumed Helias had told everyone.”
“You never asked,” she said, not taking her eyes from Cyrus’s. He had seemed to transform as she spoke. He was still strange, still undeniably different, but the more he talked the more she didn’t mind it. And as he pressed her for mundane information and as she considered his tiny table in his massive house, she was struck with the thought that he was lonely.
After they’d finished eating, Cyrus merely picking at pieces of fruit, he’d escorted them both to a room he explained that he liked to retire to after dinner. Mira loved it right away, and wandered the cabinets and shelves, admiring the little pieces of daily life the Cyrus explained he’d collected over the years. There were jewelry and trinkets and books and notes, and even a collection of crude prehistoric tools. There was everything she could imagine, each with a different owner and story, and she could scarcely listen as Cyrus and Tarquin talked, and she examined every inch of the room without invitation. She was sure she was being rude but could hardly bring herself to care.
The most striking part of the room was the miniature river carved right into the floor. It was wide enough that there were several bridges to cross it. Water flowed through it, providing a relaxing ambiance, and when she finally returned to where the two men were talking, she saw that Cyrus had rolled his strange pants up and was sitting with his feet in the water.
It looked so nice, so freeing, that she didn’t even think before rolling up her own pants and sitting right next to him. The water moved faster than it looked like, and was surprisingly cold, but the rush of it against her feet and ankles was exhilarating and relaxing all at once.
Tarquin watched her strangely, and when she decided to chance a smile at him, she was surprised when he returned it.
“You like him,” Tarquin said to her after they’d returned to their bedroom, after many stories and more drinks. It wasn’t a question.
She shrugged. “He’s growing on me.”
“Be careful,” he said.
It was all he said that night. It was odd to think that he might be jealous, but she relished the thought and didn’t bother to say anything to soothe him. Cyrus was growing on her, but he was still a terrifyingly monstrous… thing. Besides, how could anyone compare to Tarquin for her?
He didn’t reach for her once.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Mira found herself alone with Cyrus the next afternoon after Tarquin had disappeared with a vague explanation of meeting contacts. She sat next to Cyrus in the room with the miniature river, and was pleased to roll up her pants again and let the stream wash over her feet.
“You love him, don’t you?” Cyrus asked her, breaking the comfortable silence they’d slipped into.
Mira raised her eyebrows, surprised. “That’s very blunt.”
“I’m an old man, dove. I don’t like to dance around what I mean.”
“You mean you don’t have time left to not be blunt?” she asked, not meaning to be unkind, but regretting the words as soon as they were out of her mouth.
He surprised her by laughing. “I mean you don’t have time left,” he said. “There’s no end to my time.”
She studied his face for a moment, wondering about his meaning. She sighed and resigned herself to the depressing truth. “Is it that obvious?”
Cyrus shrugged. “It is to me.” His voice was slippery smooth, still, but the more he talked the more she enjoyed listening to it.
“I’m an idiot,” she said. “He misses Aurelia.”
“His mate? He was so reluctant to talk about her.”
Mira nodded miserably. “I only even know her name because—” she trailed off, realizing what she was about to say.
Cyrus politely ignored that. “It’s natural that he misses her,” he said.
“Yes, of course it is,” she said. “It’s not that he misses her. I expect him to do that. It’s that he seems to live like nothing could possibly come after her.”
“Hmm,” was all Cyrus said.
They sat in silence for a few minutes, but it was a silence that was full of potential.
“This is prying,” he warned her. “May I ask the nature of your relationship?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I love him. He hates me. We have sex because I want him and because he can pretend I’m her.”
“That sounds mutually satisfying and emotionally nourishing.”
Mira couldn’t help it; she snorted. She eyed Cyrus beside her. “Why do you care?”
“I’m a wealthy man,” he said. “And an old one. I want for nothing. I can simply imagine something and it appears for me, the mages in my employ are that skilled. But I get bored, and living vicariously through these ridiculous dramas occupies me for a bit.”
“I’m glad my life is fodder for your boredom,” she said, but she smiled as she said it.
Cyrus bared his bright teeth at her. “For what it’s worth,” he said, “I don’t think he hates you.”
Mira raised her eyebrows at him.
“Like I said, little dove, I’m a very old man. I’ve seen this play out over and over again. He doesn’t hate you, he’s just… uncomfortable with what he’s feeling.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “He seems more relaxed here than he ever has at the palace. Maybe because he’s not surrounded by everyone he knows? He was nicer to me last night than I think he’s ever been when we’re not in private. And I just sit here and put up with it because I’m stupid and childish and crazy about him.”
Cyrus leveled his gaze at her. “Being in love isn’t stupid, dove, but he shouldn’t treat you that way.”
“I know,” she sighed, and she couldn’t help her chin wobbling. “I’ve just gotten to this point where I… need him, and I’ll take whatever pathetic scraps he throws to me. I avoided him for a month before we came here, and as soon as he asked me to come I said yes without a second thought. And as soon as I was in a room with him I fucked him. Because I’m sad and lonely and pathetic and I don’t know how to say no.”
“Is this how he sees you?” Cyrus asked.
“I don’t know why he’d see anything else,” she said.
“Well then,” he said, “don’t you think you should stop that? Maybe take control of the situation a bit more?”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I disagree with your assessment, Mira. I don’t know you well, but I’ve known Tarquin for a long time. I don’t think he sees you as some pathetic thing that he can treat however he wishes. I do see him as a very insecure man who has lost a precious loved one and is feeling guilty about moving on.” He leaned forward to reach into the water with his fingertips. “I think that you should make your own feelings perfectly clear. I think that you need to take a leap of faith, here, and I think it will pay off. Tarquin is a good man, I think, but he’s a terrified man, and I don’t think that he’ll be the one to take that first step.”
She bit her lip as she watched him, her mind swirling with possibilities. She hadn’t admitted to even herself that she loved Tarquin, not until Cyrus had somehow effortlessly pried it out of her. She eyed him with renewed suspicion, but admitted that his advice seemed to have merit. Of course Tarquin would be skittish after losing Aurelia.
Mira bit her lip. “Can I ask you something that I’m sure is terribly rude?”
He chuckled
darkly. “You don’t strike me as the type who worries about whether your questions are rude.”
“That’s true,” she admitted. “I’m universally reviled for it.”
“As we’ve been discussing your sex life, you may ask me what you wish.”
She took watched her feet in the water for a moment. “What are you?”
He watched her thoughtfully for a moment. “Would you believe me if I told you that I didn’t know?”
