Page 31 of Deven and the Dragon
“I thought I might,” Fiora managed. Deven was soclose, looming over him in the semi-darkness in the best possible way. “Do you have some other plan?”
Deven hesitated and then smiled, the kind of smile Fiora would have hoarded along with his books, if it were possible to preserve and store away. “I was hoping you might let me stay on the top of the turret while you fly,” he said softly. “And watch you up there. It’s amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Fiora couldn’t possibly say no to that; he spent two hours that night wheeling through the sky, making sure to be at his most regally draconic-looking when he passed across the moon. It was a waning quarter, and so not as dramatic a backdrop as a full moon — but Fiora made the most of it, spreading his wings and lifting his head at an appealing angle. The wind cooperated that night, blowing steadily and without too much force, so that gusts didn’t push him off course.
Deven was smiling, his eyes wide with delight, when Fiora landed. It was difficult to go to bed alone.
But he did, that night and all the others. Andrei’s sour reminders of Deven’s likely ulterior motives, issued every day like clockwork, had faded into the back of Fiora’s mind. It was possible, after all, that Deven had agreed to the town council’s nonsensical plan out of a desire for variety and adventure — or simply to make himself agreeable. Fiora hadn’t seen any evidence to the contrary, and Andrei’s pessimism began to sound like the croaking of an old raven: constant, rasping, and ultimately possible to simply ignore.
But Fiora couldn’t forget the curse: that bloody blight on his life that he couldn’t escape, and that weighed him down every night and every day. Each time Deven leaned in a little closer than he needed to, each time he smiled down at Fiora with that wicked gleam in his eyes, Fiora found it harder to pull away, to pretend not to notice, to invent some bit of conversation that wouldn’t lead where Deven seemed willing to let it lead.
If he gave in to temptation, Deven would die.
It was as simple as that.
The simplicity of it had no bearing on Fiora’s dreams, though, either the ones that came to him in sleep or the ones he couldn’t resist while still lying awake in his bed late at night. There were large, strong hands on his skin, and whispered endearments, and the terrible, nearly unbearable delight of giving himself over, of letting go. None of it was real.
Fiorawanted, that was the truth of it, and he wanted what he couldn’t have.
After-dinner strollswere a luxury Deven had never known before coming to the castle. His meals at the inn were usually taken in haste and followed by an immediate return to a never-ending list of chores.
Wandering through the rose garden, replete with an excellent roast, new potatoes, and Fiora’s fine wine — well, a man could get used to it. But thoughts of Peter, and the council, and the scale all forced themselves into his mind, shattering the peace and calm of the summer night.
Deven couldn’t afford to get used to it, and it made him ache in a bone-deep way he knew wasn’t physical at all.
Not for the first time, he imagined simply asking Fiora for the scale outright. Fiora wouldn’t want a child to suffer and die if he could prevent it. Deven knew that like he knew the sun would rise in the east. And telling him the truth would clear Deven’s conscience.
But even though he’d grown to like Fiora for his own sake — more than like, if he were being honest, which he couldn’t bear to be — Fiora would never believe it once Deven told him he’d had an ulterior motive at the beginning. Fiora would be shocked, and hurt, and he might give Deven the scale anyway — but he’d never trust Deven again. And all Deven’s promises to himself, that he’d make sure Fiora wasn’t hurt, would be broken. The thought of what Fiora’s face might look like as he learned the truth, with disbelief in those beautiful eyes and his lips turned down in misery, made Deven want to sink through the ground and disappear.
No, Deven had dug the hole far too deep to simply climb out of it now. A simple seduction, taking Fiora to bed and then using post-coital goodwill to beg the scale from him, would have been a much better plan in retrospect than actually getting to know him.
Not that Deven had had much choice, given Fiora’s stubborn avoidance of any situation that could lead to going to bed. Fiora was as elusive as a plume of his own smoke, slipping out of Deven’s metaphorical grasp every time Deven thought it might be the right moment to steal a kiss.
So digging the hole even deeper was the only viable option. He’d need to casually mention Peter, perhaps after receiving a note from his aunt. Tell Fiora that she’d told him that the little boy who used to follow Deven around while he cared for the horses was gravely ill. No hope, doctors in despair, and so on. Surely Fiora knew what his own scales could do. Perhaps he’d volunteer one of them. Deven would compound his dishonesty with manipulation and trickery, and be damned for it. But at least Fiora would never know he’d been used, which was a cold, nauseating comfort at best.
As nauseating as imagining Fiora actually doing it — wrenching one of those gleaming, polished scales from its place, leaving an ugly gap in his fluid, shining armor. Marring his own perfection for Deven’s sake.
The roast and potatoes threatened to make a reappearance, and Deven swallowed hard, wiping the sweat off his forehead with his sleeve. Fiora would be joining him in the garden for a stroll any moment, having gone after dinner to write a letter with Andrei. Deven needed to be normal when he arrived.
Normal, so that he could smile and laugh and put Fiora at his ease, and hate himself more and more with every moment of it. He needed to get this over with. The sooner he did, the sooner Peter would be well, and the sooner Deven could — he shied away from thinking of what he could do with Fiora, if Deven were free to be entirely himself. Fiora was a dragon, and a wealthy lord besides. And Deven had never been in love, never even kept to one lover for more than the time it took to get them both off, fasten up his trousers, and say something complimentary.
They could be friends, on an honest footing — once Deven’s need for dishonesty was dispensed with, at least. That would be enough, wouldn’t it?
Deven looked up from his thoughts to find his feet had carried him all the way to the bottom of the rose garden, down the hill where some of the wilder climbing roses grew over a crumbling brick retaining wall. They spilled over in a waterfall of tiny pink blooms, a riotous counterpoint to the carefully pruned bushes throughout the rest of the garden.
He circled around, following a curved path that would take him back toward the statuary garden.
A pale gleam caught his eye, and he stopped, peering into the gloom. The new moon didn’t offer much by way of visibility. But that — rose, yes, it was a rose — picked up every bit of light there was, almost looking like a piece of the moonlight itself. It wasn’t white, Deven saw as he leaned down. It was blue, the most delicate possible shade — a familiar shade, because it was a perfect match for the fine skin of Fiora’s throat. The bush only had one flower, and it glowed against the darkness of the foliage.
Deven’s heart clenched, and he reached out and carefully touched a fingertip to a petal, the way he wished he could touch Fiora. It was as soft as silk velvet.
The rose was past its prime. A few petals had fallen. It wouldn’t last too much longer, anyway. It could live out its remaining life in a vase. And one single rose, that matched Fiora’s beauty so perfectly — did Fiora even know there were roses like this in his garden?
Before he could talk himself out of it, Deven fished out his pocketknife and cut the stem with exacting care. It wouldn’t do to have a ragged stem or injure the bush by pulling the flower off too roughly.
With the rose in hand, Deven turned back toward the top of the garden.
As he came out of the hollow at the bottom of it, he saw Fiora, standing still and quiet and inhaling the fragrance of a particularly lush crimson rose that jutted out into the pathway. He was in his shirtsleeves, his hair tousled from the light breeze. Deven’s hand tightened around the stem of the rose so hard that the thorns pricked his palm and drew blood, but he hardly felt it.
