Page 19 of Dragon Slayer

She put her hands on her hips. “You’re trying to scare me off,” she accused.

His smile stayed fixed, but he blinked. “Am I?”

“You’re doing a shitty job of it too, by the way.”

He took a few huffing breaths, obviously offended.

Mia rolled her eyes. “Oh my God, don’t be stupid, Val.”

“I’ll have you know that I–”

“You asked yourself if I was lonely. You noticed I have zero social life. It’s just me, and the horses, and my books. You,” she faltered a second, chest tightening, afraid that admitting this would make her too vulnerable; would make the cramping of her stomach when she thought of him locked up in an actualdungeonsomehow worse. She swallowed and pressed on. The time for cowardice had come and gone weeks ago. “You make every single day brighter. Every evening, when I unlock the door, I worry that it’ll be the night that you’re not here. And then you show up, and I…” She felt a furious blush stain her face. “And it feels like this amazing, secret, wonderful thing that I don’t have to share with anyone. That’s all mine.”You feel like you’re all mine, she didn’t say.

Throughout her speech, his expression had slowly blanked over…and then begun to warm, touched with wonder. He licked his lips. “I…”

“I’m sorry that you’re in a cell. In a dungeon. In cuffs.” Her voice cracked, the pain in her stomach spiking. What he’d said horrified her. “And I wish you’d let me help. That I could do something. But you won’t, so…” She shrugged. “Do you really want to scare me off? Or do you want to keep doing this?”

Whatever it was. As impossible as it seemed.

He swallowed. “I don’t…I don’t want to scare you away.”

“Good. ‘Cause like I said, you were doing a real shitty job of it,” she tried to tease.

But his smile bloomed sweet and pleased. “Alright.”

~*~

Her next USDF Regional qualifying show was two weeks away, and Donna had reduced her lesson workload so she could concentrate on getting Brando and herself ready for the competition.

Brando was having a stiff day – it happened, same as with human athletes – and so they’d worked on stretching, elasticity, and some simple gymnastics over cavaletti poles. Now, Brando stood clipped in crossties while Mia cold-hosed his front legs, freshly-showered body drying in the breeze of a box fan.

“I think he’s starting to recognize me,” Val said. He stood at Brando’s head, smiling softly as the gelding stretched his neck and reached toward him with his nose, nostrils flared. Val held up his hand for a sniff, and though that wasn’t possible, Brando tested the air anyway, bobbing his head in approving fashion. Val smiled, bright as the afternoon sun.

“He likes you,” Mia said, feeling soft and warm and hopeless.

“Hmm,” Val hummed, eyes sliding over. “Hopefully that’s mistress-approved.” He called her Brando’s mistress, which she found helplessly charming. She had been thinking for a while now that whoever taught him English had been British, the very proper way he referred to things and composed his sentences.

“Mistress-approved,” she confirmed.

Val lowered his hand. He and the horse regarded one another, quiet and affectionate on both sides. It was quiet save the droning of the fan and the splashing of the water on the rubber floor mat.

“This show’s local, you know,” she said after a moment, after she’d worked up the courage – which was stupid, because they were together all the time, and they couldn’t even touch, so how was asking him to come to a show anything out of their strange ordinary? “If you wanted to come watch–”

She shouldn’t have been nervous, because before the words were even out of her mouth, Val was beaming at her. “Yes! I won’t be any trouble at all.”

“I know.” She smiled back.

~*~

Somewhere between reading aloud to him, and describing the taste of ice cream; between falling asleep on her sofa to the sound of his story about the time he and his brother got stuck on a parapet during a rousing game of medieval hide-and-seek, and the almost-crippling fear that one day he’d disappear, Mia realized that she had fallen in love with him. It was stupid, and painful, but unavoidable. She promised herself she wouldn’t let it wreck her.

But that was a pretty lie.

~*~

“Will your family be there?” he asked the night before the show, when she was lint-rolling her black wool coat.

She paused, lint-roller suspended against the coat’s shoulder, and let her eyes flick up and over the ironing board she’d unfolded, and to Val, where he sat cross-legged in her squishy old reading chair, chin cupped in his linked hands. His gaze was curious, imploring. She glanced away from it, smoothing the roller down the left sleeve again, lips pressed together against her initial, knee-jerk question:You haven’t ever met my father, have you?

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