Page 74 of House of Ashes

So he wasn’t going to shift back to his grounded male form. I shrugged, then took my waterskin from its saddle pocket and knelt beside him, refilling it with water that was ice cold despite the sunlight dancing off its surface.

I didn’t realize how thirsty I was until I took the first sip, which became deep gulps, water spilling over my chin.

When I was done, I found Rhylan had finally withdrawn his head from the river. He shook it, droplets glittering as they splattered all over me.

“Thank you so much,” I said pointedly, wiping my face. “You really know how to keep a draga’s ego in check, don’t you?”

A harsh, rumbling dragon laugh. The birds in the nearby woods went silent at the sound.

I squinted up at the sun, at the cloudless, clear blue sky. “Actually, no, I do mean it. Thank you. Thank you for everything…for every single thing you’ve done since you came for me.”

Rhylan made a noise that I took to be a question, but still made no effort to shift and speak in words.

I leaned against his warm side, staring into the frothing river.

“You saved me from Kalros. I would’ve been powerless to stop him from taking anything he wanted. He would’ve raped me into a mate bond, and pressed his will over mine, and then I would’ve been riding him while he attacked the eyries. I would've been part of the destruction of Akalla. I wouldn’t have even been myself any more after that. I would’ve been a doll, just…a thing for him to use and toss aside after he’d won.”

Rhylan’s enormous sides heaved with every breath. I traced a scale with a fingertip, watching the sun play over the darkness, blue iridescence rippling over its iron-hard edges.

“You saved me from Mistward Isle. I…I haven’t told you what it was like there. Not really. I think it’s easier for me to think of that place in bits and pieces, because if I look at the whole, I can’t believe I survived a single day of it.”

My fingertip slipped on the scale as my mind went back to that first day…the day Princess Serafina finally understood that she understood nothing at all.

“That first day we were brought out of the ship, I was horrified. It was an island of nothing. Just barren rocks and mist, and the only settlement in the whole place was Fartown. That’s where…a lot of draga sentenced to Mistward bartered themselves in Fartown. The first week there, a ferryman told my mother that if she were smart, she’d sell me off and take whatever protection that offered, because sure as all Nine Hells, we weren’t going to manage it by ourselves.”

A low snarl slipped from the dragon, and I stroked his side reassuringly. Let me tell my story. After a tense moment, Rhylan quieted, swinging his head closer as he listened intently.

“But as strict and cruel as my mother could be, she would never have sold me. She wouldn’t have dreamed of it. She spat in his face when he told her that, and then she…well, she did what she never would have allowed me to do. She told me she was too cold, too distant for a mate bond to ever form, and if we had money, at least we’d have a tiny foothold for survival.

“I even offered to take up a dragon on a mate bond, but she wouldn’t hear of it.” A bitter laugh slipped out of me, and Rhylan huffed, his eye gleaming like coals stirred to life. “She slapped me when I said I could get the strongest dragon on the isle to mate bond with me, and then we’d be protected. She told me that I was her daughter, Nasir’s daughter, and I was not to be wasted on lunatics or criminals. But as angry as I pretended I was, I was really just relieved. That was…the last thing I really wanted to do.

“So as time passed, I found that I was grateful that I didn’t do something in those first frantic weeks that I’d later regret. We found our little cave, and we learned how to do everything for ourselves.” I frowned, pressing a hand to my stomach as the memory of dire hunger intruded. Plenty of dragonbloods had no idea how far they’d go to stave off death; I’d eaten things I couldn’t bring myself to think about again. “We were always hungry, because there’s not much money there even if you sell yourself. You’d have to be mate bonded to someone like Kalros to even have a prayer of a full stomach there. Someone strong enough to steal the food from others.

“We were always in pain. Always sick. My mother died of a cough in the second year, and I…” I held up my hands, examining my claw-like nails, the shimmering silver lacquer Nilsa had brushed over them. How odd to see them this way, when I was used to jagged, dirt-encrusted hands. “I dug away the stones in that rocky soil. I scraped out the grave with my own fingernails. I’d tried to get her to come with me to Fartown and visit the sawbones, but she wouldn’t have it, and we couldn’t have afforded it anyway. So I buried her, and then I was alone, and that was when the real fear set in.”

I sighed, leaning my forehead against Rhylan. Letting the warmth of him, and the sunlight on my back, wash away the cold memory of Mistward. “Because in the end, it's easier to face the wolves at the door when you have someone to lean on. Once I was alone, I thought I was…fracturing. I wasn’t myself anymore. Sometimes I thought I was becoming something else, that my entire past life had just been a dream.

“So when you brought me back…and I saw myself in your eyrie…I realized that I was still me, I just wasn’t…me. I felt like maybe the old Sera was buried in there, but I would never be her again. She was just a reflection I could hardly see.

“But when you brought me to Varyamar, and I saw home again, you brought her back to life. I can see her now. She’s not perfect, and she’s not quite the same, but I feel like the real Sera again. I think that little flame of hope was all that was keeping me alive out there, but…” I stepped closer, staring into that glittering eye, seeing the dark flames in him. Basking in their heat, in the fire that only a brave draga would dare to touch. “You turned that flame into an inferno. Everything I am now, I owe to you.”

I ran my hand along the thick scales of his jaw, tracing a horn. A slight smile curved my lips. “All that to say, thank you, Rhylan.”

Rhylan exhaled, and then he moved, curling his entire enormous body around me. I found myself gripped in claws, pulled up close to the dragon’s chest, and he laid his head against me, every movement careful and precise.

I leaned into him, spreading my arms out. Soaking in the heat of him, the primal security of a dragon surrounding me, matching the rise and fall of his breaths.

And simply felt…safe.

Chapter

Sixteen

Arms stretched wide, holding still as a statue, I did my best to keep my teeth clenched together as Jenra flitted around me, making approving noises as she pinned fabric in place over the swell of hips that hadn’t been there two weeks ago.

I had confessed…at least some small portion of what I felt to Rhylan, and while I didn’t regret it, nor had he said anything in return.

In fact, he had remained in dragon form for the rest of the day. And the rest of the night. We had returned to the eyrie, where he’d gently bumped me with his ridged snout, and Kirana had been waiting to collect me for weapons training.