Page 27 of Dragon's Flame
“There,” he said, after he’d made quite a pile. He made a show of turning his back to her, before lighting it, same as he had the fireplace in the rustic lobby, and it flared up at once. “We should be safe here for a time. Long enough for me to feed you and the dog. And I spotted a spring nearby.”
Kenna took two steps nearer the fire’s heat, holding out her hands. “You know, it’s clear you know some kind of magic. You can stop pretending.”
He glanced over at her, his eyes glittering in the firelight. “Hmm. I don’t know. Maybe in your Realm, they hunt centaurs for sport.” And then he yanked off another piece of the tree, and gave it to her, so that she could sit down.
She arranged her skirt carefully so she wouldn’t get splinters in any bad places, while he watched her, seemingly waiting for something.
“What are you, really?” she asked, because even if she was 99.99 percent sure he was a dragon, she still wanted to hear him say it first.
He took a seat across from her, on the ground—which made their heights just about even—and he stared into the fire for a long moment before asking back, “What do you see?” half cast in shadows by the firelight.
“Someone . . . who stole me from the life I thought I had.”
“For your own—” he started to defend himself. She raised her hand, and it silenced him immediately.
“Even if you had good reasons—it still hurts.”
He gave her a solemn nod. “Given a choice, I would never choose to hurt you. I am sorry, Kenna.”
“Thanks. Some,” she said, before staring into the fire herself. After getting injured, she’d always been afraid of open flames. She never once let Sarah light a candle in their apartment,didn’t go camping because she didn’t want any pressure to roast weenies or melt s’mores.
But with fire, around him, she felt safe.
Even though he didn’t feel that way with her.
“I also see someone who’s hiding his own skin,” she said, and Tarian looked up at once. “I told you—I know you do magic. Or something. I’m not stupid.”
It was his turn to raise a hand, and so she stopped. “I never implied you were.”
“Then—stop pretending. Please.”
His gaze searched anywhere but hers for a long moment, and then he sighed, releasing whatever control it was he had on the appearance of his body—and his chest and arms and even his face, went from smooth perfection to being covered with scars at once.
“Oh,” she said softly. It’d been one thing to see bits of him, greased with green, by the lobby firelight, and another to see him here, clean, and alive.
“Things have not been easy on me since I saw you last,” he said, hanging his head, and Kenna felt trapped. He was hurting; it radiated from him just as strongly as the heat from the fire, but she didn’t want him to misinterpret any kindness from her now.
All she could really do was try to meet him halfway.
“Yeah? Me too,” she said, tilting her hip and showing him a dangerous amount of leg—so that he could see the lighter scars she had where they’d taken skin from her to put it other places, and the hash-marked grid of where they’d done just that, spreading her harvested skin over her to cover her injuries up.
There were parts of her that looked like lost continents on a map no one else had ever seen.
And when she looked over and found him trying to read it—he crawled over to her, hands and knees. She should’ve beenfrightened and skittered back, but there was no time before he wrapped his arms around her knees and sobbed into her lap.
She stared down at him, her hands hovering, unsure if she should touch him when he was already clinging to her. His chest heaved and his breath came through the thin fabric of her dress, hot against her legs, as she held her hands over his head and shoulders, completely unsure what she should do.
“Tarian? Why are you crying?”
She felt him regathering himself slowly, before looking up at her with dark eyes. “That I was not there to save you.”
Then he waited.
For her.
Whatever this was between them now, things were...too real. Too raw. And whoever it was he wanted from her, she still wasn’t that person inside.
“Thank you for showing me your true self,” she said, moving to push him away, even as she felt guilty for doing so—but he took the hint before she could touch him, gliding backwards on his own.
