Page 49 of Dragon Cursed
She didn’t recognize it as her own.
She remembered her grandmother on her knees in the dirt, sleeves pushed up, telling Poppy that lavender lived as long as it was tended it and not a day longer.
Years and years of tending.
Gone.
She felt her knees start to give.Alsander caught her elbow.
"A chuisle."
"I —" She couldn’t get her breath."Alsander, the lavender, it was — mygrandmother—"
"I know, my love.I know."
"She planted it the year I was born."
His arms came around her.She let them.She pressed her face against his bare shoulder under the cloak and she let herself cry — sob, like hadn’t done since her grandmother died — and Alsander held her securely in his arms until she was done.
When she lifted her head, his eyes were full of sadness and guilt.
"I did this," he said softly."Oh, my love, I did this."
"You didn't."
"I did.The curse.It is in me.I brought it here.I knew it was here, I saw the bee on your doorstep that first morning, I knew —" His jaw clenched with self-hate."I knew and I came anyway.I am sorry, Poppy.I am so sorry."
"Hush."She turned to him.Put her hand against his mouth.Said it gently."Hush.We will read the books.We will find out what is happening.We will fix it.We will fixallof it."
He looked at her over the heel of her own hand.
"You are not afraid of me," he said into her palm.
"No."
"You should be."
"No."
She lowered her hand.She kissed him there, in the early dawn at the back of her dead garden, with her cottage waiting and the chest at the foot of her bed waiting and the sun coming up over the sea behind them.Slow.Steady.Certain.
She pulled back.Pressed her forehead against his.Looked past his shoulder at her own front door.
"Come inside."Her voice was steadier than she had any right to expect."Let's find out if there are any answers in the chest."
13
Poppy
She hadn’t thought havinghim in her home would feel like this.The first time didn’t count.They’d been too busy fucking like wild animals to do anything as domesticated as look around or sit in her living room and talk.In fact, he’d broken her window with the initial force of his arrival.He had pinned her against the stone of the wall outside.He hadn’t beenwelcomedin.He’d been an intruder and a furious creature and a thing she should have feared.
This was different.
The next time, she had thought, when she pictured him here at all —and she had— that bringing him into her cottage would be strange.Hewould be strange in it.He was positively ancient, after all.He wouldn’t know what to do with a kettle — not when he could simply use his magic to heat the water.Every time.Perfectly.She wouldn’t have blamed him if he looked at her grandmother's cracked teacup or worn out ironing board like they were relics from another world and curled his lip.But he didn’t.
He stepped through her door and her cottagefit him.
He had to duck a little under the lintel.She had expected that.He straightened on the inside, and her kitchen seemed suddenly smaller — the stove a doll's stove, the table a child's table, the rocking chair by the hearth a piece of furniture meant for a smaller people.He looked around with the slow attention of a man who had never been inside a human home; he looked with almost rapt attention, as if memorizing every fascinating detail.
