Page 15 of Earth Dragon
And to top it all off, he was wearing a smile.
Was she foolish to hope?
“Good morning,” he greeted.
“I suppose,” she murmured. “I still need a bath.”
“Oh,” he said. “Well, perhaps if you come ride with me, you’ll work up a sweat that will require yet another bath tonight. So… you might as well leave it until then?”
“Please, do not smile at me,” she said, feeling the hope drain out of her even as her eyes rested on him. Of course, he would never love her. Of course, she would never feel safe. “You may do it in front of your father but not when we are alone. It’s… disconcerting.”
He tried to kill it but didn’t quite manage to.
“Did you sleep well?” he asked. “I slept well for the first time in a very long time, and I have you to thank for that. If I’m smiling, then it is simply me showing my deep… gratitude.”
She glared at him for using her word from the night prior. He was reminding her that this was meant to be a mutually beneficial arrangement, but he seemed to be willfully overlooking how it could never be mutual. She was still the prisoner here, was she not?
“As it was no scheme of mine, I couldn’t possibly accept that gratitude,” she said. “You should direct it at yourself instead. And smile on the inside.”
That made him chuckle in such an outrageous manner, making her nerves tingle with such soft exhilaration, that she pointed at the door. “If I’m to be denied a bath, I still need to dress.” She raised her eyebrows when he wouldn’t move.
“Come ride with me,” he simply said. “We begin our ‘falling in love’ today, and we’ll be mated within the month. After that you only have to see me for functions.”
“You have a lot of those here, do you?”
“Too many,” he said earnestly. “But they are necessary to keep the highborn feeling seen and heard and lauded. And the food is excellent.”
“You don’t think very much of your court, do you?” she asked. “It’s the second time I’ve heard you deride the highborn.”
“I feel many of them are deserving of my derision,” he admitted freely. “They live off of fortunes made many centuries ago, let others tend their lands without lifting a finger themselves, and though my father has made certain that every class of citizen is able to put food on their table, the highborn are allowed more freedoms than perhaps most of them should have.”
“That sounds like jealousy, my lord,” she remarked.
He smiled then. “Perhaps,” he said. “But not a single one of them would invest their freedom in something truly productive.”
“I beg to differ,” she said. “The highborn are industrious in their own right. They invest in knowledge and furthering the education of the masses. They travel and discover and bring their findings back with them. Our maps would not look as they do without those who can afford to go beyond the edges and explore what lies there. Is there not a purpose to the divide between the lower and higher classes? Are the lower classes not happy with what they have because it’s all they’ve ever known?”
“That is precisely the issue,” Ewan countered. “How can you long for that which you have never been offered? Settling for what you have because there’s no other recourse is not happiness, my lady. It is circumstance only.”
“And how would you remedy it? Would you have your farmers and herders, and anyone invested in the daily toil that keeps your kingdom running, venture out across all borders? They might not return, and then where will you be?” she pointed out.
He paused, as though wanting to say something else, but ended up refraining. She must have hit a nerve.
“I plan to close the borders,” he said.
That was the last thing she would have expected to hear. “Rogoros has always been open to all,” she remarked.
“Indeed,” he said, but when he didn’t elaborate, she took his meaning to be that being open to all had far from served them.
How fitting then, for him to choose a mate who was so beholden to him that she knew she could not move outside the castle walls. Would she even be allowed to walk into the citadel, or was she to stay confined to her rooms at all times?
Two sides to her fought within her. The side to her that longed to be out from under the thumb of any other benefactor—especially a male one, and the side that would rather confine herself and wait for the inevitable moment when a shadow entered with weapon poised. The side that yearned to make choices of her own, the side that would stand up and fight that shadow no matter what shape it arrived in, that side to her was beginning to question her choice to agree to this arrangement at all.
Whatwasshe getting herself into?
“You wear it well,” she said.
“What’s that?”
