Page 49 of Earth Dragon
The doorknob turned. Of course, she hadn’t locked the door as there was no key to get the job done and soon his head poked inside the room, his eyes finding her.
“You don’t… have to,” she got out, tears wetting her cheeks, back pressed against the wall to keep herself standing. “I will be… fine… in a minute.”
He stepped inside, closing the door behind him.
She didn’t want him to touch her. It would only make it worse. There would be no containing the emotions threatening to drown her in wave after crashing wave.
He seemed to understand as he put the bowl of soup down on top of a dresser and then had a seat on a chair by the work bench. But instead of his closeness making those waves crash, the ease with which he stubbornly stayed served to make the crash of emotions even worse than that.
How could he understand her like no other person, and still not want to listen?
“Please… go,” she said, trying to muster a glare.
She would rather be left alone than catered to.
“Why won’t you speak of your mother?” he asked.
She shook her head, first slowly, then more violently and he held his hands up.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay, we shall not speak of her. I’m sorry. Let us simply… breathe.”
She closed her eyes tight, focusing on her breathing. It came in stops and starts, the pain squeezing her hearts as her refusal to remember made her entire body tense. She drew a shaky breath, held it, let it out in a trembling exhale. Did it again. And again, until she began to feel the knot within loosen somewhat.
She opened her eyes again.
He wasn’t wearing that look she had worried about. The look of pity, face all scrunched up. Instead, he was observing her with soft interest.
“I should not be here,” she said. “Send me back to the castle.”
“No,” he replied simply. “Are you calm?”
“I’m calming,” she said, swiping at her tears again, relaxing away from the wall.
“Would you have some soup?”
“Would you feed it to me?” she asked, daring to add a small smile to underline her teasing.
He shook his head. “No, because you are not a child,” he replied with one eyebrow cocked. Her smile lingered.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That I did not come to you about my father. Especially after the morning we had. There were many reasons for why I could not.”
“Really? Why don’t you tell them to me?”
“This reaction, for one,” she said. “I knew you would turn away from me the second you learned what my father has done.”
“What has he done, exactly?”
She drew a slow breath.
This was the moment. This was the real choice before her. Either she could rely on Ewan to keep her away from her father’s wrath, or she kept her mouth shut and ran as far as the winds would take her once she could get herself to a place where she could shift.
“He founded the society that wishes to topple the old ways,” she said. “Together with a handful of other prominent dragons. Most of them lords.”
Ewan’s eyebrows rose.
“How long ago?” he asked.
“Before I was born,” she replied. “Three hundred years before I was born. Give or take a decade.”
