Page 27 of Deven and the Dragon
Fiora’s hoard was better adapted to be appreciated in his human shape, though. Shelves lined the walls, each shelf filled with the books Fiora loved the most. He approached the nearest shelf and trailed his fingers over the spines. This shelf held fourteen different copies ofThe Blue Company, the story of a young scholar who went to war and returned a hardened soldier, nearly losing his lady-love in the process. All of them, save the one Fiora had bought brand-new to read for the first time, had been discarded: left on rubbish-heaps or in the backs of second-hand shops, dropped in the bath and water-stained past repair, torn or covered in spilled ink or chewed by a hound.
Fiora had saved them all, bringing them here. They had the same words within them, didn’t they? The same wonder, the same suspense, the same craft that had gone into their creation.
He loved them all equally.
Wandering on, Fiora said hello toSanguine Captain(eleven copies, all but two missing their covers),A Concise Dictionary of Scientific Properties(in nine volumes, and he had seven different partial sets), andThe Three Swordsmen(a perennial favorite; Fiora had read each of his copies more than once).
It soothed him, as it always did, calming the beating of his heart and easing the remains of his headache.
And then he heard a noise. He tensed, ready to lash out with his claws at a moment’s notice.
Footsteps, coming from his bedroom. And then a loud, almost panicked, “Fiora?” That was Deven’s voice.
Fiora rushed to the door and back into his dressing room, the door vanishing behind him. He snatched a coat off a hook — oh, sod it, not that coat, it made him look boxy. He flung it to the floor and grabbed a better one.
Swallowing hard, Fiora went to the dressing-room door to face his shame.
Waiting untila reasonable hour to go in search of Fiora caused nearly physical pain. Was Fiora brooding over his coffee, hating Deven’s guts? Was he preparing to throw Deven out of the castle? Did he think Deven had taken advantage of him, as Andrei had suspected the night before?
Had Deven put his burgeoning desire to make Fiora happy over his chance to save Peter’s life?
It was that last that tortured Deven the most, as he wandered through the castle grounds for most of the morning. The roses were in full, glorious bloom, with bees and butterflies darting from flower to flower in buzzing ecstasy. Birds sang; the sun shone.
Deven scowled at all of it.
He detoured past the temple statue, climbing up to retrieve his coat and the bottles. It was tempting to open one of the two remaining ales and drink it straight down, but it had been sitting in the sun for hours. That would be simply begging for a headache, and he needed every bit of clarity he could cling to if he meant to face Fiora.
It was midday before Deven returned to the castle. He caught Fred in the hall and begged him to slip into the kitchen and fetch Deven a bit of bread and cheese; he thought it wise to heed Fiora’s warning about Mrs. Pittel’s anger, and avoid his regularly-served meals for a day or two. Once she’d cooled down, Deven would find a way to talk her round and win her forgiveness — provided he was still in the castle, anyway.
He took his food up to his bedroom and ate while gazing out the window. The last crumbs brushed off his shirt, he didn’t have any further way to stall. Fiora was surely as recovered from the night before as he was going to get. Deven had to face the music.
Carefully dressed, because Fiora cared about such things and Deven needed any advantage he could get, he made his way to the tower. He passed two housemaids about their dusting and polishing, but there was no sign of Andrei, neither on the way nor when Deven climbed the stairs.
Fiora’s study was empty.
Frowning, Deven slowly took the next flight of stairs, feeling even more like an interloper than he had the night before when he put Fiora to bed. The tower was silent. A faint shushing of wind echoed down the stairs from the rooftop; perhaps the door up there had been left open.
Fiora’s bedroom was also empty. Had he gone flying? Deven’s frown deepened. He trusted a dragon to know his draconic business, but was it safe for Fiora to take flight, as hung over as he likely was? Would he wobble about and crash into a tree?
Could even a dragon survive a fall from the heights Fiora usually reached when he flew?
Deven strode into the room, caution lost to worry. “Fiora?” he called out, too loudly in the silence of the tower.
There was a thump and a rustle from his left: Fiora’s dressing room, perhaps? And then Fiora appeared in the doorway, lavender-cheeked and breathless, his coat unfastened, with slippers on his feet and no cravat. The little vee of bare skin at the top of Fiora’s shirt drew Deven’s eyes like a magnet to a lodestone.
Deven forced his eyes up. “You’re all right,” he said. “Thank God.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Fiora sounded more confused than angry, which was something of a relief, but…oh, fuck, Deven hoped he hadn’t lost what little ground he’d gained.
“I was afraid you wouldn’t be feeling so well today. And I was afraid you’d gone out flying, and maybe you weren’t feeling up to it.” Which sounded unbearably stupid, said aloud and outside the turmoil of his anxious thoughts. A dragon wouldn’t be put off soaring through the sky by a few bottles of ale, and imagining otherwise was idiotic. Deven swallowed the lump in his throat. “I was worried about you.”
“I’m fine,” Fiora said, lifting his chin and drawing Deven’s attention right back to the hollow of his slender throat. “I wasn’t feeling quite myself this morning. But I’m better now. I was just getting dressed. In my dressing room. Where I keep my clothes.”
“That sounds reasonable,” Deven said after a moment, at a loss for the proper response to that. “I mean, that’s where I’d keep mine, if I had a dressing room.”
Fiora blinked at him owlishly. “Oh.” He let out a soft, embarrassed-sounding laugh. “Yes.”
They stood in silence for a moment, and finally Deven dared to step closer. He stopped only a few feet away, near enough that he could see the jump of the nervous pulse in Fiora’s throat. He wanted to taste it.
