Page 95 of The Dragon Queen Complete Series Collection
Chapter 94
Brom looked back into the room and, seeing that we still had an audience, he flicked the long sweeping curtains across so it created the illusion that the two of us were alone. He reached out for my hand to escort me over to a bench that ran the length the balcony along the wall. But I found myself unable to do anything other than stare: at him, at his gesture, at everything. He let out a frustrated little huff of breath then shrugged his shoulders and went to sit on the bench, looking at me to see what I would do. I sat down near him, though not close, pulling my feet up onto the bench in front of me and hugging my knees to my chest.
“When did you know you were attracted to men?” Brom asked me.
“What?”
“Not when you were growing into a woman and were told you would need to marry this man or the other,” he continued. “When were you first drawn to someone of the same sex or the opposite?”
I frowned slightly as I racked my brain, aware that Brom was asking the questions, not me, but I was willing to at least give him that.
“I was never attracted to other girls,” I replied. I knew that some were. “And boys…?” I frowned slightly as the memory came. “When I was fourteen, there was a stable lad with the most brilliant greenish blue eyes. He wasn’t special in any other way but for that. I met his gaze when he was saddling my horse for me and…”
It came back to me then, hard, that feeling. Like a bolt out of the blue, utterly alien and yet entirely instinctual. I’d stared, struck by the colour of the lad’s eyes, and had done so for long enough that some of his fellow stable lads snickered before an older man clipped them around the ear for their impertinence. I’d hauled myself into the saddle then without even a thank you, something Father took me to task for later, but… A strange feeling, like the way the air feels after a lightning strike, had filled my body for the entire ride afterwards. We’d trotted past fields and workers, cottages and the nearby stream, but I didn’t see any of it. Just him and his pretty eyes instead. I told Brom this and he nodded.
“And is it a man’s eyes that draws you closer?” Brom asked, a strange kind of brittle quality to his voice. “Is it for the way that we look at you that you decided to bind yourself to us?”
“No, though each of you have fine eyes in different ways,” I said, then I frowned. “But… this has little to do with you and Draven.”
“It has everything to do with me…” He shook his head then. “I can’t speak for Draven and I won’t for Ada, but…” When he sighed, I wanted to lean closer, to touch him and wipe the frown away, but I held myself apart. I was the one who was the cause of that frown or, rather, his failure to be open with me was the cause. “For men, it’s often some quality that draws them to a woman. A pretty face.” He spared me a much softer look then, something that had me snorting. “Breasts that spill out of her neckline, a well-rounded arse.”
“Well, it can’t be any of those things that drew you to me,” I said, shifting uncomfortably on the stone bench.
“You’d be mistaken if you thought not one of us has watched the twitch of your hips, been captured by the shape of your breasts,” Brom said, “let alone your arse.”
“And Draven’s?” I asked, hating myself for asking, but unable to stop. It felt like if I just relented and crawled into his lap, he’d hold me close and kiss all my worries away, but I needed to know. Kay’s wariness, Ada’s claims, the way Bernard gazed at his butler, it all weighed so heavily on me.
When he responded, I thought for a moment that Brom wasn’t going to answer my question. Then I realised that he was, just in a more roundabout way. “But I’m different.” He looked out onto the scene beyond, and my eyes followed his gaze. The wonders of Dragon Home were out there, tugging at our attention, but they couldn’t compare with the feeling that struck me, that we were balanced on the cusp of him sharing something fundamental, something pivotal for our relationship, and that was what drew me back to him. He drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, before continuing. “I don’t have a type, not a physical one at least. It isn’t any particular quality that draws me closer to a person, or has me engaging in frantic little trysts in the ruins near my parents’ house.”
His focus shifted back to me.
“Nor will it have me nobly offering to marry the one woman that I and all my men are infatuated by. I’m not drawn to a particular type of girl or man. I feel next to nothing for potential partners, until I get to know the person themselves. It’s… who they are that intrigues me, forces me closer, has my breath catching in my throat, making it hard to breathe, my words failing me as I want to tell them everything that burns inside me, but dare not.”
He turned to face me and put his hand on the bench between us so he could lean closer, though he stopped partway when I leaned my body away from him.
“I’ve never cared much if someone is a man or a woman, just whether or not they intrigued me. I was fascinated by the pig lad with the bearing of a nobleman when he came to bring beasts to feed my dragons. When that lad turned out to be the missing Lady Wentworth, my interest only increased. And when it became apparent she would need to find a husband among our number, the part of me that had been planning my courtship in my mind, since we’d left your estate, shoved itself to the fore, demanding I make a play for you.”
He paused then, eyes shining, and I saw in his face the conviction of the man who’d slammed his hand against the stone wall, who’d made it clear in a hoarse voice that he wanted me.
“You’re so strong, Pippin, and that’s what’s had me pursuing you. Because you were surrounded by people less than you, who were threatened by your strength, and still you never let it stop you. No matter what was thrown at you, you rose above it and I…” He sighed. “I wanted to be the one who took some of that burden from you, who woke up each day thinking of ways to support you, protect you, so you weren’t forced to be so unrelentingly strong all of the damn time.”
But it wasn’t just my strength that had drawn his eye. I knew at least a part of me was hurt because the illusion that my husband wanted me and only me had been cruelly ripped away and replaced with…what? That’s what I needed to find out.
“And Draven?” I asked, watching his face closely. “And Ada? Were they strong too? Is that what you were drawn to?”
“Ada…” Brom shook his head slowly. “Ada was just a pretext, I think, something, someone to put between Draven and I to legitimise what was unfolding. We told ourselves we were vying for her attention when really…” He let out a noisy breath. “But she’s not the one you want to know about, not really.”
He moved so that his legs fell either side of the bench as he leaned forward again, and his hazel eyes hardened as he stared into mine.
“You want to know what would have happened between me and Draven if Felix hadn’t died and was still in line to inherit? If Draven was still free to do as he wished? If Beatrice was married off to his brother, not him? If we were still able to fly as a wing, the prince going on routine patrols and dispensing the king’s justice, like any other dragon rider?” Brom shook his head then. “We’d have told ourselves the lies we always had, that the stolen little moments in the dark were just a passing thing, an animal instinct for comfort and satisfaction.”
I didn’t often hear this level of passion, this intensity, in Brom’s voice, but it made my heart hurt to hear it. Because while the way he spoke about me both reassured me and reinstated me as his wife, as someone he cared for immensely, I wasn’t there alone. I shared that place of honour with one other. A man who most often could barely stand to be in the same room as me. The one who’d forced me to shovel dragon shit because he knew exactly what it would do to me. The one who… My negative line of thought faltered as I remembered the way Draven had dealt with my poisoning.
“But it would have been a convenient lie I told myself, because that’s not how it works for me,” Brom said. “Sex is just a… mechanical act, like scratching an itch, meaning less than nothing. Unless I’m with someone I care about. Then it’s fucking everything, just like it is with you.”
I sucked in his hot, hard look, greedily storing all that longing up and into my aching heart, because I knew it was about to be bruised some more.
“And Draven,” I finished for him. “Like it is with me and with Draven.”
“I haven’t touched him since the night the crown prince died,” Brom told me, with complete earnestness. “I haven’t even discussed any of what went on before. I was free to come to you, free to make an offer of marriage.”
“No, you weren’t.” I leaned closer, my eyes stinging as I did so, because I couldn’t hold back from this, and as his arms closed around me and he held me as tight as he could, I knew there was more than just the two of us in this embrace. “You care for me?—”
“Desperately, ardently. I promise to make you the happiest of women every day that I’m alive.”
“And you care for Draven just as much.”
I felt his sigh on the back of my neck, my short crop of hair providing little protection and somehow that felt right. In this moment I felt scraped clean and raw, as if I’d washed my skin with coarse sand or something. His grip tightened exponentially as if he was scared I’d pull away from him, but I needed him. I clung to him just as tightly, as if that would be enough to get us through this.
“The truth, Brom. Please.” I turned towards him, pressing my mouth against his and whispered the words, as if they were a spell to force him to do as I asked.
“My mother always said I cared too much, too deeply about everything,” he replied. “That I took the world’s pain on. But this?” He sighed and then pressed his lips to mine in a gentle kiss. “I didn’t know it was possible. Hoped by all the gods that it wasn’t, but…”
I knew the answer to my question before he said anything, yet the words still slammed into me hard when they came.
“No matter what the two of you do, where you go, how far you walk away from me, I’ll love you, Pippin, and Draven, prince of the realm, until my dying day and I wish to all the gods that this was not the case.”