Page 38 of The Dragon's Captured Heart
“Where?”
“At the front lines,” I said. “Fighting for your life. Trying not to kill them but to just stop them for long enough so more people could get out of their way. Seeing your comrades sacrifice their lives just so some other civilians could make it to safety. Over and over again. No, they aren’t majestic, Laura.”
Laura opened her mouth to protest, but I stopped her with a single hand. “It doesn’t matter who started it. Not anymore. They’re horrifying murder machines. That’s it.”
“Is that how you truly feel about them?” she asked a few minutes later as we dragon-watched together. “Even now?”
My initial response died as she added the extra question.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “A part of me does, absolutely. I’ve seen what they can do. I was nearly cooked alive by one of them.”
The same one I nearly let fuck my brains out yesterday. Someone make it make sense!
Laura would just tell me it was fate, which was why I didn’t mention it.
“Then why are you up here watching them?” Laura pushed. “There must be a reason, and I don’t think it’s to torture yourself.”
She was right. WhywasI up there?
“I guess,” I said slowly as the answer coalesced, “I’m trying to see them in a different light. Callum has shown me that, despite him having fought in the war, he’s no casual murderer. If he can be like that, why not more? And if he can leave the war behind, then I should be able to as well. They’re people. I need to try to understand that.”
Laura nodded slowly. “How’s that going? Is it working for you at all?”
“I have no idea,” I said.
We both laughed at my frankness. Laura dropped off first, glancing across the roof where a particular guard stood on duty. One whom I carefully did not look at when I was up there.
“And how are things going with Callum?” she pushed.
I gave her a look, the tone of her question betraying her. Pieces of the puzzle fell into place. Laura wasn’t up there on her own accord.
I looked back out over the roof. “You can tell the sovereign that if she wants to ask me questions, she can come do so on her own. I’m not going to be used through an intermediary.”
Laura grimaced. “I’m sorry, Madison. I didn’t mean—”
“It’s fine,” I said, cutting her off. Then I looked at her, letting her see my face. “Honestly, it’s okay. I get it. You’re in love with her son. She’s also the ruler of all this. Either of those would beenough for you to ask me, a person you barely know, to see what I would say. No harm done.”
“You’re positive?” she asked, looking unhappy. “To be honest with you, I didn’t really want to. I would rather have you as a friend. There are things you get that the others won’t. Being another human and all.”
“I’m not sure how much I get since you’re here by choice and I’m not,” I pointed out.
She pursed her lips. “So, things with you twoaren’tgoing well? That’s me asking, by the way, not anyone else.”
“I don’t know. It’s weird,” I said, throwing her a bone, regardless of who the question was from. “Complicated.”
Laura nodded, both of our eyes following a young dragon as it leaped from the rooftop and into the sky, the white of its scales fading into the ice at the very top of the mountain as it receded in the distance.
“Have you slept with him yet?”
If I’d been drinking, it would’ve sprayed everywhere at the forwardness of her question.
“I’m not sure we’re good enough friends to talk about such things,” I said to cover my surprise.
“So, that’s a no,” Laura said, answering the question for me. “Do you not feel any pull toward it? That call on a level you can’t explain and can’t stop? To be wrapped in his arms, skin on skin, with nothing left between the two of you?”
Her voice dropped an octave as she spoke, clearly retreating to a happy place in her own mind.
“It’s unlike anything else,” she added after a moment. “If it’s happened between you two, you know what I mean.”
