Page 24 of Valor’s Flight (The New Protectorate #5)

For the first time she considered how strange it must be to a dragon, who lived in towers and on mountaintops. She wondered if his home would feel as alien to her as hers did to him. Even trying to picture it was impossible. It was as fantastical to her as the idea of standing on a cloud.

Not knowing how else to answer him, she said, “It’s how we like it.”

Taevas made a curious noise in the back of his throat and tugged at his hair. “I…” Whatever he was about to say, he swallowed it with considerable effort. After a visible struggle, he muttered, “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“I’d probably find your home strange, too,” she generously offered.

“Dragons are proud of their roosts. It’s the mark of a good mate and a happy home. We build ours high and strong and— not this.”

Tired of standing in the yard, Alashiya resumed her trek up the hill. “Nymphs are just as happy sleeping on the forest floor as a bed. One of our many differences, I suspect.”

Taevas lengthened his noisy stride to catch up to her as she rounded the house. “You don’t really do that, do you? Sleep outside?”

A familiar, sick feeling coiled its slimy body into a knot in the pit of her stomach. Swallowing, she answered, “I have, yes. We hibernate under the soil during the winter — or when hard times come.”

She reached for the kitchen door, but Taevas’s long arm beat her to it. He swooped in over her head and pulled it open for her with a slight smile. Giving him a bemused look, she stepped inside.

Following after her, he remarked, “But you don’t do that alone, do you? What if someone were to find you out in the forest all by yourself?”

“The same thing that’s happened to most nymphs in that scenario: I’d be killed.

Eaten, maybe. Or worse. It’s a good thing that normally we’re very hard to find.

” Padding across the kitchen floor, she went straight for her small tea collection.

If any situation called for a cup of something comforting, it was this one.

“Why would anyone hurt a nymph? You’re basically defenseless.”

Alashiya kept her focus on filling her kettle and pulling down a couple of cups when she answered, “Why does anybody hurt anybody? To gain something, to take something away from someone else, to right a wrong, or just for fun.”

Movement in the corner of her eye at last drew her gaze to Taevas, who braced his palms against the edge of the counter beside the stove. “That explains why you live in a fortress of wards, I suppose. But is that why you ran? You thought I might try to hurt you for fun?”

She shrugged. Alashiya didn’t feel like explaining that she had no idea why he might’ve wanted to hurt her, only that the likelihood was high enough that the urge had been too hard to resist. An opportunity had presented itself, survival instincts kicked in, and she’d gone.

She wasn’t proud of it. After all, hadn’t she stood up to him when he was the size of a truck? But something about facing him, a real man with unknown motives and those burning violet eyes, had seen all her courage drain away into nothing.

Monsters were easier to face than men, apparently. But then again, monsters had never hurt her.

Selecting a blend of her own dried herbs, she quickly prepared a cup of tea for both of them. The weather was a little warm for a hot drink, but the comfort made it worth it.

“Here,” she muttered, passing a cup to Taevas. His hands were so much bigger than hers that when he accepted it, his palms nearly engulfed hers. There was an odd moment, just the span of a few heartbeats, where they both held still, his hands over hers, the warm cup nestled in her palm.

Taevas had long, sooty lashes. They fanned out over the tops of his cheeks when his eyelids lowered, shielding those penetrating eyes from view. His voice was a low, low rumble when he said, “Thank you, metsalill. For this, and for your trust. I promise you, it’s not placed in the wrong man.”

A warm sensation bubbled in her veins. It was a bit like the tingle that came with a kiss from a much-loved one, or the sensory joy of cool, running water over naked skin on summer’s hottest day.

She’d felt its echo several times during his stay in her home, but it was much more potent now that he was… him.

Unsettled, Alashiya gently extracted her hands. She couldn’t quite manage to look at him, so she grabbed her tea and made her way over to the kitchen table, which had been mostly unusable when the dragon occupied the room.

Her knees were weak. She sank into her favorite seat gratefully, her tea held close to her chest, and tried to get her thoughts in order. “I suppose we should figure out how to get you back to your people,” she mused.

“Yes.” Taevas gingerly lowered himself into the chair catty-corner from hers.

His legs were so long that one of them bumped hers beneath the table.

He didn’t move it, but rather rested his knee against her thigh until she scooted self-consciously away.

It was one thing to cuddle with the dragon, but it was quite another to be touched by him.

Everytime it happened, her body and mind went haywire.

Oblivious, Taevas pressed a few fingers to the space just before his right ear and stared into the middle distance for the span of a few heartbeats. Closing his eyes, he muttered, “Damn.”

“What?”

“They took out my communication implant, which means I need access to a secure, private line,” he explained, eyes opening.

His proud features sharpened in a way she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

One moment he seemed worn, his exhaustion apparent, and the next his jaw was firm and his broad shoulders straight.

“I have to get word to my people that I’m alive. They’ll send an extraction team.”

“I’m not sure I know what you mean by secure, private line,” she admitted.

“I mean any phone on a private network or that uses an encrypted line. A satellite phone would do as a last resort.” Taevas glanced around the kitchen with a knowing look. “Shiya, do you even own a phone?”

“No. Why would I?”

“To talk to people.”

Giving him a narrow-eyed look, she replied, “I know what phones are for.”

Taevas stuck a knuckle in his eye again. “Then why don’t you have one? What if there’s an emergency? What about your business?”

“If there’s an emergency, I can go to the Thompsons’ farm. And I do business how my grove always did it: through the mail. The atelier sends me the orders and the supplies, I send the order back to them, and they forward it to the client. Easy.”

He looked quite keen then, though she hadn’t a clue as to why. There was an avid gleam in his eye when he muttered, “That— I want to talk about that later. I have to stay on track right now, but later I want to hear everything about your business.”

“Okay,” she replied, openly dubious.

“Back to the phone— What if you want to talk to someone who doesn’t live in Birchdale? Most people don’t write letters anymore.”

That was an easy one. Alashiya took a slow sip from her tea before answering, “I don’t talk to anyone.”

“What? No family? No friends?” He didn’t sound like he thought she was a liar, exactly, but it also didn’t feel like he believed her.

“I never had many friends,” she explained, “and the few I had left Birchdale decades ago. We exchanged letters for a while, but you know how things go — you travel, you have babies, you get busy. All untended things wither in the end.”

The ball of his throat bobbed with an audible swallow. “And family?”

Alashiya’s gaze roved around the kitchen, where her grandparents, her parents, her cousins, and all the members of her grove had once cooked, eaten, loved, cried. As she often did, she imagined what would happen to it and the rest of the home when she joined them by Grim’s riverbank.

All untended things wither.

It was not a sorrowful mantra, but one of studied release. It was a beautiful thing to wither. To fade. To return to the earth and be remade.

She took a sip of her tea. “My family is dead.”