Page 12 of Deven and the Dragon
Bother, bother, he had toget it together. “It references my destiny,” he said as loftily as possible, with a wave of his hand he hoped appeared suitably mystical. “My destiny lies in darkness. Now, if you will walk with me —”
“No, hold up a moment, I’m sorry, but were you born in darkness or meant to go into darkness, somehow?” What? What was wrong with this man? He sounded honestly curious and perfectly calm, as if he were discussing the weather! “How’s it a destiny if you started there?”
“You’d have to ask my mother! Which you won’t do. Ever,” he added hastily, panic bubbling up in his throat at the thought. “It doesn’t matter. My name is of no importance, only that my destiny is…is dark. You don’t need to know any more than that. And anyway, I’d rather not talk about it.” That, at least, came out sounding sincerely gloomy.
Deven peered down at him, his smile fading. “All right,” he said gently. “Whatever you’d like. You may as well call me Deven, by the way. The only people who call me Mr. Clifton don’t like me very much.”
There were people who didn’t like Deven? Fiora found that hard to believe. Even Fiora’s parents probably would have liked Deven…and that was more than enough about his bloody parents. He’d gone over a mountain range and across several kingdoms to escape their nagging, and now here they were in his head all the time.
“Very well, Deven.” Did he sound like an idiot saying it aloud? Oh, God. “We ought to walk and discuss…things. That we need to discuss.” Well, no need to doubt whether he sounded like an idiot now.
“Whatever you like, Lord Fiora,” Deven said, with a ripple of suppressed laughter. Fiora’s face went hot enough to start a fire on its own, without any need for his breath. “This way? Along the hedge?”
That way led crosswise to the path of the moon, so Fiora could still be in shadow. He nodded, remembering too late how silly the gesture had looked in his mirror, and set off, Deven falling into step beside him.
Chapter Six
Fiora. What an oddname it was, tasting like foreign wine as it passed over his tongue.
LordFiora, of course, to the likes of him. But the addition of a title didn’t change how interesting the name was, or how much Deven enjoyed saying it.
And his own name in Lord Fiora’s lovely, musical voice, the V turned almost into an F by the man’s soft accent. If only he could see the fellow, damn it. What on earth did he mean by swanning about in a hood and cloak like that on a balmy summer evening?
Well, Lord Fiora hadn’t offered any conversation himself, despite apparently wanting to discussthings, so Deven might as well ask. He had to get to know the man — dragon — somehow. That was why he was here, after all.
Though it was hard to put this little gloomy cloaked fellow together in his head with the massive scaled beast who’d landed on the lawn that morning and startled all the council like a flock of sparrows.
“Aren’t you a little too warm?” he ventured, when Lord Fiora remained stubbornly silent at his side. “It’s really a gorgeous night. Are you feeling ill? A cold in the head?” Although Lord Fiora hadn’t sounded congested at all, and he was neither coughing nor sneezing. Could dragons even catch colds, with all that flame and whatnot?
“I am not fit to be seen,” Lord Fiora said, sounding as miserable and put-upon as he had before. Except when he’d lost his temper. Deven almost wanted more of that, though he knew it was counterproductive. Lord Fiora was supposed tolikehim. “I am — a creature of darkness, Deven.”
Oh, that soft V again. Somehow it went straight to Deven’s cock. And what did ‘not fit to be seen’ mean, exactly?
“Boils?” he suggested, and then leaned down a little, furrowing his brow. Was Lord Fiora choking? That had been an odd sound. “I had a lot of them as a teenager. My aunt called me Spot. You should just toss off the hood and not worry about it, Lord Fiora. I certainly won’t care, and no one else is around. And I’m sure you look wonderful and you’re worrying about nothing, anyway.”
Lord Fiora stopped suddenly and whirled to glare at Deven, his hands on his hips.
At least, Deven was entirely certain he was being glared at, though he couldn’t see more than the tips of a pointy nose and a pointy little chin under that absurd hood. The air between them vibrated with Lord Fiora’s anger.
“I,” Lord Fiora gritted, “Do not, have,boils. Or colds in the head. Or anything so — so mundane!”
With that, Lord Fiora stalked off again, tossing his head in indignation. It made his hood bob, and it was one of the silliest things Deven had ever seen. Deven blinked to keep his eyes from rolling all the way around, and kept his mouth straight with an effort.
Ah. He knew the type. Vain, and proud, and terribly sensitive. It had nothing to do with rank, either. Deven had dallied for a while with a dressmaker’s assistant who’d flown into screaming rages when she thought someone hadn’t paid her beauty the proper attention in the last five minutes, and had spent an entire week sulking when she tried to color her hair and turned the ends of it orange.
Was Lord Fiora a beauty? Maybe, maybe not. But clearly he needed coddling. And if Deven could persuade him to take the cloak off with a combination of sympathy and flattery, he might find out.
All of that aside, though — was Lord Fiora having trouble with his digestion, perhaps? He’d been absent at lunch and dinner, with Andrei making his excuses. That might account for his nonsensical proclamations about darkness and destiny and all that. A sour stomach could make a man, and probably also a dragon, cranky as hell. And pale and peaky, too — which might account for the cloak?
“You know,” he said, walking a little more quickly to keep up with Lord Fiora, who moved incredibly fast for someone so damn short, “if you still want to discuss…whatever it was, we could move indoors. Have some soothing tea. No doubt everything would look a bit rosier then, hmm?”
“I’m in a bloodyrose garden,” Lord Fiora snarled, picking up his pace even more until he was all but jogging, and the gravel was flying from under his boots. “How much rosier do you want things to be?”
Oh, God, they’d reached the sarcasm portion of the evening of doom. Deven knew how this went. If Lord Fiora was anything like the high-strung dressmaker, shouting would follow quickly, and Deven wasn’t in the mood.
In two long strides, Deven overtook him, jumped past him, and stopped right in his path.
“Lord Fiora. No — wait — come on,” he cried in exasperation, throwing himself back in front of Lord Fiora as the man dodged and weaved, attempting to get around him. “Look, no more mentions of tea. Or boils.” A low growl came from the depths of Lord Fiora’s hood, and Deven quickly added, “Sorry, sorry, really, won’t say that word again. Ever.”
