Page 33 of Davoren
"Let him try." Davoren's voice carried the confidence of someone who'd faced centuries of challenges and survived them all. "He can gather all the intelligence he wants. None of it matters. He's human, thinking in human terms. He doesn't understand what he's actually challenging."
"What's that?"
"A mated dragon." His hand came up to cup my face, turning me so our eyes met. "There's nothing more dangerous in all creation than a dragon whose mate is threatened. He could bring an army, and they'd all burn before they got within a hundred yards of you."
The fierce protectiveness in his voice made my chest tight with emotion. This was what I'd traded my humanity for—not just pleasure or power or extended life, but this. Being treasured by something ancient and terrible and wonderful, being the center of a universe that had been empty for millennia.
"I love you," I said, the words inadequate but necessary.
His smile transformed his face, and for a moment I saw him as he might have been when the world was young—joyful, unmarked by loneliness, full of wonder at what existence could offer.
"And I love you, my fierce little mate. More than fire loves air, more than stone loves mountain, more than dragon loves gold." He pressed a kiss to my forehead, gentle and claiming simultaneously. "Now rest. Tomorrow brings whatever it brings. Tonight, you're mine and I'm yours and nothing else exists."
I settled against his chest, our bodies still joined, the solidified dragon flame continuing to cradle us in warmth and light. Above us, the stars kept their silent vigil, and below us, the mountain breathed its slow, ancient rhythm. Everything else—Solmar's threats, the Western Council, the human world I'd left behind—felt impossibly distant, unable to touch this perfect moment of completion.
Chapter 8
Three Weeks Later
Thecrystallizedflamecrayonwarmed between my fingers as I traced another vein of rubies through the mountain's cross-section, the color bleeding across parchment with a life of its own. I'd finally found the rhythm of this new existence—days spent testing the limits of my transformed body, evenings lost in the gentle haze of the Nursery where I could set aside the weight of being the Dragon Lord's mate and simply be his little one.
The Nursery wrapped around me like a warm blanked. Unlike the obsidian grandeur that dominated the rest of the keep, this space breathed with softer intentions. Specialized magma veins threaded through the walls here, their heat tempered to cast amber light that pooled rather than blazed. The volcanic glass had been treated somehow—sandblasted maybe, or kissed by specific flames—until it held warmth without reflecting, creating walls that cocooned rather than displayed.
I lay on my stomach across a rug woven from what Davoren called cloud-silk, harvested from the sky serpents that nested in the peaks above the false summit. It was impossibly soft against my bare legs where my dress—a confection of pink silk with white ribbons that would have scandalized my merchant father—had ridden up. The position should have felt childish. Instead, it felt freeing.
My coloring wasn't random today. The map spread before me showed the mountain's interior in cross-section, and I was carefully marking each gemstone vein in its proper color—rubies in deep red that sparked when the light hit them, sapphires in blue so dark it almost looked black, diamonds in silver that seemed to shift and move on the page. It was a real map, one Scarlet had provided when I'd asked about the mountain's structure, but the act of coloring it transformed information into meditation.
This space had become necessary in ways I hadn't expected. The transformation that had remade me at cellular levels came with a price—every sensation amplified, every emotion magnified, every day requiring me to navigate a world that my new senses interpreted in overwhelming detail. I could hear conversations three floors down, smell the emotional states of everyone in the keep, feel the mountain's slow breathing through the soles of my feet. It was glorious and exhausting in equal measure.
But here, surrounded by stuffed dragons that watched with gemstone eyes, working on simple tasks with my box of magical crayons, I could let my mind rest. The pressure to be the Dragon Lord's equal, to match his millennia of experience with my weeks of transformation, dissolved into nothing. Here, I could be young. Not pretending or playing at youth, but actually accessing that part of myself that had been crushed under merchant negotiations and survival mathematics.
I selected an emerald green crayon, this one cool to the touch with an inner light that pulsed like a heartbeat. The eastern vein needed marking, the one that produced those massive emeralds Davoren had shown me last week. My hand moved in careful strokes, staying within the lines with the focused determination of someone for whom precision had become a form of prayer.
The door opened without warning—he never knocked at the Nursery, said it would break the spell of the space—and I felt him enter more than heard him. The bond between us thrummed with his presence, warm contentment flowing from his end that told me his day had been satisfactory. No threats to handle, no diplomatic disasters to navigate, just the steady work of being a Dragon Lord in peacetime.
"And what is my little one creating today?" His voice had already shifted, the formal tones of the Dragon Lord replaced by something warmer, more indulgent. This was Daddy's voice, reserved for these moments when the world narrowed to just us and the safety of this room.
I didn't look up, too focused on getting the emerald vein's curve exactly right. "It's the mountain's gemstone map. See? This is where the fire opals grow, and here's where you found that cluster of diamonds last season, and this whole section is all rubies because they like the heat from the main magma chamber."
I felt rather than saw him move closer, the air displacing around his body carrying that smoky scent that made my mark pulse with recognition. He lowered himself to the floor beside me—a concession that still amazed me, the ancient Dragon Lord sitting on a rug to be closer to my level. His hand found my hair, fingers carding through the strands with absent affection.
"Very precise work," he murmured, and the approval in his voice made something in my chest go warm and soft. "You'veeven marked the depth variations correctly. This could be a functional map."
"Scarlet helped with the measurements." I selected a deep purple for the amethyst deposits in the mountain's cooler regions. "She said understanding the mountain's structure would help me understand you better. Since you're connected and all."
His hand stilled for a moment, and through the bond I felt a flash of something complex—surprise, pleasure, a deep satisfaction that I was taking my role seriously enough to study such things. Then his fingers resumed their gentle path through my hair, occasionally catching on the small braids I'd woven with ribbons that matched my dress.
"My clever little one," he said softly. "Always learning, always growing." He was quiet for a moment, watching me work, and I felt the shift in his emotional state through the bond—a gathering of purpose, a decision being made. "Finish that section, then put your crayons away. We need to talk."
The words sent a ripple of anxiety through me that he must have felt, because his hand moved to the back of my neck, thumb stroking the skin just above my collar in that way that never failed to calm me.
"Nothing bad, little one. Nothing to fear. Just . . . a change of plans for tonight."
I finished the amethyst vein with careful strokes, then began putting my crayons back in their crystalline box, each one nestled in its proper slot. The ritual of it helped ground me as I transitioned out of the soft headspace I'd been floating in. When I sat up, crossing my legs and smoothing my dress down to something approaching modest, I was mostly back to myself—though the ribbons in my hair and the pink silk I wore kept me tethered to the gentler parts of what we shared here.
Davoren watched the transition with those ember eyes that missed nothing, and when he spoke, his voice had shifted too—still warm, still caring, but more partner than caretaker now.
"The Cinderbloom Festival begins tonight," he said, and the weight he gave the words told me this was significant. "It celebrates the flowers that bloom in the ash fields—beauty from destruction, life from what seems like death. The city has celebrated it for three centuries, but I haven't attended in the last fifty years."
