Page 39 of Dragon Lord
Draknart did not have to strain to hear the husband’s response, his dragon hearing as sharp as ever.“Fae they are for certain.”
“Aye,” the wife agreed, reverence in her tone.“The elders say they are the very same lord and lady who rebuilt the castle from a ruin at the time of our great-grandfathers.”
“We can all see with our own eyes that neither Lord Draknart nor Lady Einin has aged any, even as we’ve grown older.Certainly, they are beyond mere mortal.”
“Who else but a pair of Fae could have a dragon as a friend?”
“Bless him for coming and going at night.Gives me a fright, he does, when I catch sight of the great dark shadow.I think I’d be too frightened to see all of him, out in the day.”
“Bless him for not bothering the livestock.He hunts far afield.”
“Bless him for protecting the village.”
Draknart allowed himself a smile.When the fire bell fell from its tower in the dark of the night, he had lifted it back in its place.When snow had buried the village in the middle of this past winter, he melted the ice off the roofs at night with a couple of well-aimed puffs of fire.He was right proud of himself for not setting a single thatched roof aflame.He’d even brought two of the deer he killed toward dawn and left them at the village square, knowing the men would not be able to go into the woods to hunt.He helped where he could.It gave his night flights purpose.
As dawn reached the horizon, he walked down the wide staircase built to fit him.He pushed open the heavy oak double doors to his bedchamber and stopped to take in the lovely view of his lady wife in bed.
The scraping of the door woke her.She murmured, “Enjoy your flight?”
Some nights she went with him.Other times, when she was tired from supervising the herb harvest or the bottling of elderberry wine or helping a woman in the village through labor, she stayed home for a full night’s sleep.
The first light of dawn reached through the window, and Draknart’s dragon body transformed into the body of a man.For the past century, he’d been dragon from midnight to dawn, and man for the rest of the day.There’d been a time he would have considered having to spend even more time in man’s skin the worst possible curse.But in truth, his new circumstances allowed him a better life with Einin.
She was happy, so he was happy.
He slid naked under the furs and pulled her into his arms.
“You’re wet,” she grumbled against his chest.
“Swam in the river.”He pulled back a little.“Do I make you cold?”
She pressed herself against him.“Nay.Never.”
He reached a hand under her chin and raised her head to kiss her lips.She was sweeter than honeycomb, his Einin.
“More people are coming up the southern road.Camped for the night.An old woman and her daughter, and the daughter’s children.”
“Accused of witchery?”
“They’ll tell us when they reach us.”
After Draknart had flown his hoard to Castle Blackstone on a moonless night and then had the castle rebuilt in the following years, he had offered free land to the tradesmen in addition to their pay.For a while, there were many more men than women.Then two sisters accused of witchcraft escaped a mob who’d chased them in the night with torches.
Einin had offered them safety in the castle.Somehow, word spread, and the following year, another woman arrived, two more the year after, then more the year after that.People said the lord and lady of the castle would not turn any unfortunates away.
Draknart kissed his Einin again and again.
“The baker and his wife think we’re fae,” he said a long time later, pulling Einin against him, her head on his shoulder as he lay on his back.
He looked at their shield carved into the stone above the doorway as it was carved above every threshold in the castle.A shield with a dragon in the middle, on a background of two crossed swords, and the family motto on a pennant below: Wild and Free.
Einin sighed, her breast pressing into Draknart’s side in the most distracting way.“I should be an old crone by now, for certain.Do you think I am unnatural?The priest in my village used to say—”
He growled.“Never unnatural.”
“What keeps me young, then?The love of a dragon?”Her tone said she meant it as a joke.
“Aye.The love of a dragon, for certain.You should love your dragon with all your heart.”
