by Alicia Wolfe
At the door to my rooms, I put my hand on the knob and turned it. Opened the door. I didn’t go in. I was half-turned, waiting for something.
Davril seemed to, as well. He hadn’t spoken, and he didn’t leave.
Slowly, hardly believing what I did, I reached out and grabbed his hand. Sparks veritably flared at the contact. He didn’t pull away. Still going slowly, as if I might spook him, or myself maybe, I drew him in toward me. There was no one else in the hallway. For this one moment, we were alone. It was just Davril, and me, and the, ahem, tower.
He bent over me, and I could smell him, all primal hormones pumping, his chest broad and deep, one of his strong arms going around me. He surrounded me.
“Jade …”
I placed a finger to his lips. “Shhh.”
I removed my finger and pressed my lips to his. His lips were firm and full, and they pressed against mine. Hope rushed through me, and powerful feelings that buoyed me up and lifted me high, even more than the opiate trees of Home Isle. I smiled against his lips, then pushed my belly against his. Our taut bodies rubbed against each other, and his tongue played against mine. For one wild moment it looked like all my dreams were going to come true. But then at last, horribly, with a strangled noise, Davril pulled away.
Almost stumbling, he reeled back. An odd look had entered his eyes, half despairing, half regretful. Half horny as fuck. Okay, that’s a lot of halves, but still.
“What the hell?” I said. I admit I said that with more anger than I probably should have. But my blood was going, and I knew his was, too. We had made our peace, I thought, and now here was our big chance.
He stared at me, and his face was haunted. “Jade, I … I can’t.”
“You can’t?” I wanted to pound my fists against his chest but held myself back. “You mean, like you … can’t?”
That was about the only thing that could redeem his actions, I thought. But that would also be really bad for other reasons.
“No,” he said, sounding just slightly amused. “Not that. Yes, I can, ah, do it.”
“Well, thank God!” I groaned and ran my fingers through my hair in agitation. I glanced both ways down the hallway. Someone was just rounding the bend.
I grabbed Davril and tugged him inside the room, and he didn’t fight me. I closed it behind us, then rounded on him.
“What. The. Actual. Fuck,” I said, as calmly as I could. “And don’t tell me you’re still mad about Nevos or I will strangle you! I know you forgave me.” In a smaller voice, I said, “I … felt it.”
He caressed my shoulder. “I did. Rather, I realized there was nothing to forgive. In our time on the Home Isle, you proved yourself over and over again. You are a brave and valiant woman, Jade McClaren. I know you never would have betrayed me. Regarding what happened … with my brother … I know you only did what you had to do in order to further the mission.”
My throat swelled. Forcing out the words, I said, “Then … why?”
He made a fist and shook it, but not at me. He had half turned aside and seemed to be shaking it at the walls, or at fate itself, maybe. In any case, he looked mad—at something.
When he didn’t say anything, I made myself take a deep breath. I stepped toward him and laid a hand on his arm. It was hot, and firm.
“Talk to me, Davril,” I said. “Something’s up. Something’s been bothering you … about me. Since, well, forever. I thought it was … something else. But I was wrong. There’s something … there. I mean, between us. Something I can’t see. But you can. Maybe you’re the only one who can, and if you didn’t see it everything would be fine. But you do. So spill.”
Almost trembling, he turned back to me. Sadly, he stared down at me. One of his fingers stroked my cheek. “Jade, beautiful Jade, bold Jade, you deserve so much better.”
“Better than what? You? Mr. Badass Fae Knight King Who Loves Me? Yeah, I’m sure I can find better than that seven days a week. What’s the deal? Spill, already!” I couldn’t help it. Tears welled up in my eyes and coursed down my cheeks. My chest hitched.
He hesitated, and I could tell he wanted to wrap me in his arms, to comfort me, but I guessed he thought that would send me mixed signals, so he didn’t. As if the whole of him wasn’t one big mixed signal!
“I do care for you,” Davril said.
My heart nearly exploded. “I do … for you, too.” The words came out muffled and sniffly.
“I know. But … there’s something you don’t know. I guess … I never told you. No one else ever told you. I thought you’d have picked it up somewhere, but I don’t think you ever have. It wasn’t a secret, exactly. I suppose we just felt awkward bringing it up.”
“Picked up what?” Now I did beat at his chest—once, twice, a third time. Then I dropped my fists or I would have just flailed away at him. It was hard to hold myself in. “What is the big secret about you, anyway?”
“It’s not about me, Jade.”
“Then … me?” I blinked at him.
His face was gentle. “No. Not you.”
“Then who?”
“The Shadow.”
“The … what?” I stepped back. The back of my knees hit the bed, and I sat down on it abruptly. Utterly perplexed, I stared up at him. “What about the Shadow? What does it have to do with … us? Did Vorkoth put some sort of spell on you? If that’s what it is, I’ll go over to the Fae Lands and beat him until he releases you right now!”
“No, nothing like that,” Davril said. “It’s the nature of Vorkoth himself. It’s what makes it so hard to be around you. Don’t you remember Lord Strongwall calling Vorkoth the Great Worm?”
“Yes …”
“And remember, when you first met the Queen, how she reacted when she learned you were half dragon shifter?”
“Yeah …”
“Well, that was for a reason, and it’s the same reason I don’t know if I can … be around you. In that way.”
“I’m going to throw this pillow at you. Just say it, already! Something about Vorkoth, you were saying.”
Davril nodded, his gaze far away. “Lord Vorkoth … the Enemy … My family and I have fought him for centuries, for as long as I can remember. Always we were on the front lines of the conflict. We held him back so that the other kingdoms of the Nine Thrones could live in peace.”
“Until Nevos betrayed you. Yes, I know.”
“No, that’s not the important part. The important part is that I fought Vorkoth and his brood, and his hosts, for all my life, and I hate him. Them. And all their kind.”
“I …. him … them … their kind?”
I was starting to get a bad feeling about this.
“The Queen hates them, too,” Davril said. “It’s why she’s so good at fighting them. But she can’t hate them like I do, I who lived on the front lines for centuries.”
“But ‘them’ … You mean goblins?”
“They are just the pawns, the cannon fodder of the Shadow. But Lord Vorkoth’s true followers, his highest agents and disciples, are those of his own brood. His spawn. And I battled them for many years. They killed my friends, my loved ones. And I hated them as I could never hate the goblins, because unlike the goblins they had a choice. They were powerful enough to throw off the sway of their sire if they had wanted. But they didn’t. And so my hate grew.”
“Hate … them …” The world tilted around me. Shuddering, I clutched at my chest. My heart hurt. “Don’t tell me. Them … Vorkoth …”
Davril’s attention returned to me. His face was very grave. “Vorkoth is a dragon, Jade. A great black dragon of incalculable age. His spawn are mighty worms, as well. Some of them can change shape, become human.”
“Vorkoth … is a dragon.” The tears erupted from my eyes again, and I tried to hold them back, to stem the tide, but it was no use.
Slowly, Davril sat beside me, so that he was no longer towering over me. “Yes,” he said.
“And so you hate dragons … and I’m a dragon.”
He clasped my hand. “It’s been hard, being your partner. But I’ve come to trust you, to believe in you. I overcame my … feelings … about that. And now … this thing between us …”
He raised my hand to his lips and kissed it, but it was a formal kind of kiss, not a loverly one. Not a passionate one. A kiss of friendship, maybe.
“So what now?” I said. “I mean, you overcame your distaste for me before. Maybe … in time … ?”
“Jade, I don’t have distaste for you. I … I value you very deeply. And I … am very fond of you.”
“Fond …”
He patted my leg. Quickly he pulled his hand away. “More than fond,” he said. “But the only dragons I have ever known are those touched by the darkness. I … don’t know if I can love a dragon, Jade.”
He didn’t say it meanly. If fact, he said it as sadly and solemnly as a person could, as if the very notion tormented him. But it wasn’t just a notion, I saw. It was a fact. It had been invisible to me all this time, but there it was, between us, and now I could see it for the first time. I had hoped it would be a flimsy partition I could knock aside, but this was thick, and it was concrete.
Davril might love me, but he hated what I was. He had been conditioned to hate it since birth. Hatred for dragons was all he knew. They and their evil sire had destroyed his entire civilization. And now here he was, forced to work with one on a daily basis. The wonder wasn’t that he’d balked at kissing me. The wonder was that he’d tolerated me for this long. Instead of anger at him, I felt a new respect for him build in me. He must have struggled with this for months and not said anything about it. And he wouldn’t have said anything now if I hadn’t forced the issue.
If our … love … hadn’t forced the issue.
And I knew that’s what it was. I felt it, just like I had felt the invisible barrier. He said he couldn’t love a dragon, but I knew he did.
He might love a dragon, singular, but he hated dragons, plural.
I wiped at my eyes. “It’s a pickle, isn’t it?” I said.
He leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead. A friendzone kiss.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said, got up and left.
I stared at the closed door. I was alone, me and my pounding heart. The world spun around me, and I fell backward, onto the bed.
“Well, shit,” I said.
THE END
Grab the next book in the series HERE.
In Dragon Fire, Jade will have to choose between love . . . and fire!
A Note from Alicia Wolfe
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Till next time!
Hugs,
Alicia Wolfe
Email: [email protected]
