Page 26 of Dance with the Dragon Duke

His stomach tightened pleasantly.

“Hm,” she hummed, steadying herself. She tested her weight with a tentative step. Then another. “I would guess your fairy girls are your most favorite, but you mentioned rarity being very important to dragons and you have so many of them . . .”

“That’s correct,” he said, following at her heels, ready to catch her if she fell again.

She went for the astronomy tower first. Tomorrow opened the door and wandered inside. Dark didn’t let people inside his hoard. On the rarest of occasions when he allowed a family member like his sister to visit, they didn’t ever touch or explore any of his things. It didn’t bother him at all when Tomorrow did that very same thing, though. In fact, he enjoyed it.

Her eyes lit in the most charming of ways as she pulled open drawers and lifted the lids on chests, finding gems and coins and various assets inside. Committed to her objective, she headed up the winding stairs.

The top of the tower was furnished with an oversized bed made from solid mahogany. The heavy curtains that hung at its sides had been hemmed by a famous Unseelie seamstress, the velvet woven from the finest silks.

Tomorrow’s breath caught when she spotted his golden telescope set up near a large open window trimmed in similar velvet drapes. “Can’t be,” she said in awe. “That’s not solid gold.”

“Most of it is.” He tucked his hands in his pockets, doing his best impression of demure.

Tomorrow padded across the stone floor, reached for the telescope, then seemed to think better of it. Lower lip trapped between her teeth, she pulled her hand back sheepishly. “And what’s under there?”

She pointed at the potted tree in the corner. The pot was made of terracotta with scales painted on it. He had the tree covered in canvas. That particular plant flourished best in the shade and needed warmth. Eager for her reaction, he pulled back the covering.

Tomorrow’s jaw dropped and her hand went over her mouth in the most gratifying way. Mirth rumbled out of him.

“Dark . . . are those . . . ? No.”

“Yes.”

“They can’t be,” she whispered.

“They are.”

Diamonds?She mouthed the word.

The Hell tree was covered in diamonds. They grew on its spindly branches like little droplets of crystalline water. When the light hit the stones, they made the tree look like it was on fire. The topmost limbs came up to his shoulders now. It had grown a lot that year.

“Diamonds,” he repeated. “You can touch it. Just don’t pick one. Once picked, the tree stops growing and won’t produce more. It’d be a shame not to see how large it gets or how many gems it can make.”

Tomorrow’s hands went into the air in surrender. “I can’t touch them. It would be a crime to get a single smudge on either of these precious things.”

Her brows pinched together. She glanced down at his worn boots which needed replacing. He had a finer set in a chest at the bottom of the tower, but he neglected to wear them in public.

“If you have all this,” she wondered, “why do you stay at The Boot? Why don’t you own a proper house full of guards andmassive copper bathtubs and seven sitting rooms and acres and acres of fruit trees and servants to tend to your every whim? I’d have at least that if I could.”

Dark scratched a hand through his hair, flattening errant strands around his scaled horns. “Treasure is for hoarding, not for spending.”

“But all of it?” her voice pitched high. “I approached you because your boots were worn and your jacket was faded and I thought you might be as down on your luck as I am, but just look at all this.” She gestured broadly at the wealth around the room.

He shrugged. “I learned long ago that if you want to avoid the attention of wicked, powerful men, then it’s best not to flaunt what you have that’s worth taking.”

She looked at him with sad, sympathetic eyes, then her gaze narrowed. “Dark, if you were never actually destitute, why’d you agree to help me?”

“Because I wanted to finally get right something that I’ve often gotten very wrong in the past,” he said. His chin dropped. “I wanted to help you. Needed to. And now I owe your cousin a dagger in his leg.”

“What’d you get wrong?” She shifted closer to him and laid a hand on his arm.

He felt her touch in his heart. The dim pull of connection sharpened between them. It pulsed and skipped. He ran his fingers through his hair again, this time mussing what he’d fixed before. “I made a lot of choices during the first war that I wish had been different. Lives I should have saved and couldn’t.”

Those were words he’d never spoken aloud to anyone, but with that connection pumping though him, he felt like he could tell her anything.

No, that wasn’t all of it. It was her sweetness too. She was so kind he could tell her anything.

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