Page 44 of Deven and the Dragon
“We are significantly larger,” Lord Luca said blandly, baring his teeth. He raised his eyebrows, looking at Deven speculatively. “I may grow to tolerate you, I think, if you live long enough.”
With that, he turned and proceeded up the stairs.
“Let’s get him to bed,” Andrei said. He sighed deeply and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “And then I’ll tell you about the curse.”
“About bloody time,” Deven muttered in response to both, and set off for the tower.
Chapter Twenty
Warm, cozy…it was warm. Fiora hadn’t been warm for what felt like years. Nothing hurt.Nothing hurt.
Fiora’s eyes popped open. That was the ceiling of his own bedroom. He turned his head on the pillow, carefully, in casethathurt. It didn’t.
Deven sat by his side in a chair pulled right up to the edge of the bed. He was so close that he had his knees apart in a way that had to be uncomfortable, but that pulled his trousers tight over his groin in a very distracting way.
Deven sat by his bedside, and he was staring at Fiora with a look in his eyes that made Fiora’s breath catch.
And his breathing didn’t make him cough. He smiled, the truth breaking through the fog of sleep and the fading effects of the curse.
The effects were fading. Fiora’s smile widened, and he gazed up at Deven, savoring his broad shoulders and the stubble on his cheeks and chin, his very presence, and wishing he could hide how he felt. Beloved or not, he was still hurt, and it would be hard to trust Deven again. Deven had lied to him, and betrayed him, even if he’d come to love Fiora later…had Fiora dreamed hearing him say it?
“Fi,” Deven breathed, bending to kiss Fiora’s hand, which he held clutched in both of his bigger ones. “Finally.”
The touch of Deven’s lips nearly undid all of his efforts to appear less than desperately, madly in love.
“Oh,” Fiora said. “Yes. Did I sleep long?”
“Too long.” Deven lifted his head, and Fiora saw that his eyes were bloodshot and the skin beneath them was nearly black. “All night, and then all morning too. It’s almost noon.” Deven, clearly, hadn’t slept a moment of it.
It was indeed daylight, now that Fiora noticed — and by the quality of the light it was a beautiful day outside, sunny and clear.
“You found me last night.” It was the closest he could bring himself to saying,Please repeat the part where you told me you were in love with me and were never going to leave me. He cleared his dry throat, and Deven went sheet-white. “What’s the matter?”
“You — are you coughing again? Does it hurt?” Deven sounded on the edge of panic, and he gripped Fiora’s hand so hard itdidhurt a little.
Fiora melted a little more. “I’m just thirsty.”
Deven released his hand and reached for the glass and pitcher on the nightstand. Fiora graciously allowed him to slip his hand under his head and help him sit up enough to drink, and then flopped back down. Deven’s hand lingered in his hair, his fingers caressing the nape of Fiora’s neck. He slid it free at last and sat down in the chair; his hand twitched toward Fiora’s and then was quickly withdrawn to rest on his own knee.
“You found me, last night?” Fiora prompted again. How many hints would it take to make his idiot lover declare himself properly? Fiora couldn’t possibly forgive him until he’d done at least that, and probably groveled extensively too. He would never be able to look himself in the mirror otherwise. And until he’d heard it, there was still the lingering fear that Deven had changed his mind, and that the curse would come rushing back, twice as deadly as before.
“I found you,” Deven said slowly, staring down at his hands in his lap. “I found you nearly dead, Fiora.” He looked up, and to Fiora’s shock, that wasn’t longing or guilt he saw in Deven’s eyes: it was anger. “Andrei and your father told me about the curse last —”
“My father?” Fiora squeaked, aghast. “Myfatheris here? And that must mean my mother — oh, bother, no,” he groaned, covering his face with his hands. Oh, he was going to kill Andrei for summoning them. And possibly himself, if he couldn’t escape any other way. He’d missed them terribly, but not in the mood they’d be in after Fiora’s brush with death. “They’re here. You met them.” He pulled his hands away, looking around him wildly as if his parents might be hiding behind the wall hangings. “Where are they?”
“They’re downstairs having tea with Mrs. Pittel, who for some reason seems to be immune to the horrors they inflict on everyone else, and don’t change the bloody subject,” Deven said sternly. “They told me about the curse. We’re talking about the curse, Fiora.”
“She’s immune because there’s no one else in the world who can make these lemon scones my mother craves once a month,” Fiora said. “I’m not changing the subject.” He couldn’t meet Deven’s eyes, because he absolutely was changing the subject.
“Yes, you are,” Deven went on implacably. Dammit. “You were cursed — nearly five years ago, was it? And the terms were that if you fucked anyone you didn’t love, he’d die. So far so good, Fiora, and I understand now why you didn’t fall into bed with me, even though I think we both wanted it. But — the second part. If you fucked someone you did love,youwould die. Right? That was the curse. Correct me if I’m wrong.”
Fiora despised sarcasm, particularly directed at him. “Umph,” he said grouchily.
“Right,” Deven said, and now he just sounded unhappier than Fiora had ever known him to be. “Fiora, you used me to kill yourself, and I didn’t even know it. How the fuck could you do that to someone? To me? Do you have any idea how I would’ve felt when I found out? Do you think,” and now his voice had risen almost to a shout, “that maybe I wouldn’t have wanted to take you to bed at all and would have fucking said no, whether or not I loved you, if I knewit was going to fucking kill you?”
Fiora froze, feeling the blood draining out of his face, leaving him lightheaded.
No, he hadn’t thought. He hadn’t ever considered it in those terms at all. He’d thought of how it would makehimfeel to die without being loved, and weighed the risks to himself — but it had never once crossed his mind that taking Deven to his bed, with Deven not knowing what would happen, was — his brain stopped abruptly.
