Page 24 of Dragon Cursed
He couldn’t undo it.
He didn’t want to.
Mine,the dragon murmured from the deep place where it lived.Sleepy.Satisfied.Ours.In our lair.Where she belongs.
"I was being selfish when I brought her here.She does not belong here," he whispered to the dark."She belongs anywhere but here."
The dragon didn’t bother to respond.
She stirred.
He held very still.
Her brow furrowed.Her hand closed on the fur beneath her cheek, fingers testing the texture of it, and a small line appeared between her brows that he understood — even from across the room —she had registered the texture aswrong.The bed was wrong.The smell of the air was wrong.She was awake.
He sank deeper into the shadows.
Her eyes opened.
She didn’t sit up.She blinked slowly at the firelit ceiling.Turned her head.Took in the chamber in slow degrees — the high vault of the stone above her, the fire in its iron cradle, the shelves cut into the rock.His books.His charts.The small green bottles of medicine.The low wooden table he had built himself two centuries ago.The chair beside it.The map on the far wall.
He waited for her reaction.Wonder.Anger.Fear.Any moment she would realize that this wasn’t just a cave.
Someone lived here.
Someone had lived here for a very long time.Alone.
She sat up.
The fur slid down to her waist.She still wore the sweater and jeans he’d found her in the day before.He had pulled the boots from her feet and set them neatly beside the bed.
She took it all in.Sighed.Swung her legs over the side and stood.
Her balance held.He hadn’t been certain it would.She took one careful step.Another.Her hand drifted out to touch the spine of a book on the nearest shelf.She didn’t pull it back.
His chest tightened uncomfortably as he watched her examine and touch his possessions.He couldn’t escape the feeling that she was examining more than his treasures, she was examininghim.Who he was.
She moved along the shelf, inspecting his things.Took her time.
Not afraid.
Curious.Reverent.
She stopped at the table.Bent over the open book he had left there.Her lips moved as she read.A small soft sound escaped her that might have been a laugh, and the knot in his chest pulled tighter than he could bear.
She straightened.Turned in a slow circle, taking in the rest of the chamber.Her gaze settled on the dark at the back of the room.
Found him.
She didn’t flinch.
"Oh."Soft.Almost a greeting."You're here."
He couldn’t make himself answer.
She didn’t move toward him.Didn’t move away.She stood in the firelight in her sweater and her jeans and her bare feet on his furs as if she belonged there.
"I thought I'd dreamed it," she said."Waking up.I thought I was dreaming."
