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“I found Chaya four years ago. Her parents died when she was six, and her uncle sold her to pay his bar tab when she was eight.”
My eyes widen as the horror of that punches me in the gut. “That’s horrible.”
“She’s been through a lot,” he agrees. “When I found her, I brought her here and gave her a room. Clothes. Food. It took her two years to talk to me.” He smiles wistfully, remembering.
I can only stare at him, struck by this compassionate, caring side. Who knew the death dragon moonlighted as a philanthropist? Embarrassment flushes my cheeks as I realize I’d assumed he forced her to serve him here, and all along she’d been here willingly.
“So, you keep the rooms stocked for others like her?” I ask.
He shrugs. “We help anyone we can. None of the others have stayed. Well, besides Brigita. The cook,” he adds at my confusion.
“She was a rescue?”
His mouth quirks. “Sure, if we’re calling it that. And I wouldn’t use that term to her face. Anyway, it’s something I can do for those who need it, so I do.”
The way he says it is so simple, so matter-of-fact. And my heart melts.
It’s not something I saw coming, and I’m not prepared for the way my walls crumble.
“How long have you lived at the Keep?” I ask, suddenly interested in filling in more of the backstory for the man I’d assumed was a monster.
“Four thousand years,” he says.
I blink, a little overwhelmed at trying to imagine being stuck here for that long. Or anywhere, for that matter.
“That’s a long time to be imprisoned,” I say.
“Prison is made in the mind,” he says, frowning. “And I was in prison long before I was cast into Tartarus.”
“I see.”
I don’t, really, but he doesn’t elaborate.
“And the first thousand years,” I say. “What was that like? Where did you live then?”
“I didn’t live anywhere. Putting down roots would have meant accepting my fate, and I didn’t want to do that for a long time.”
“What changed your mind?”
“Friendship.”
Whatever I’m expecting him to say, it’s not that. The death dragon being won over by friendship—in a prison world, no less—shatters another layer of judgment and stereotype I’ve been carrying.
“You’re not what I expected,” I say finally.
“Neither are you.”
The way he looks at me reminds me of the way he watched me touch myself. The moon fever clearly wasn’t the only reason for that night. I lick my lips, remembering what it felt like to know how much power I held over him.
To know how much he wanted me.
The silence between us stretches, but it’s charged now. Full of a tension that’s less hostile than the other times before.
Whatever shift happened last night, an even larger one has just happened today. In this moment. I don’t know what to do with that. Or if he senses it too. But I need to find my way back to solid ground. Fast.
I’m not here to fall for him. I’m here to survive. Except that, the more time I spend with him, the more intertwined those two things become.
“Can we talk?” I ask, nerves dancing in my belly. “Somewhere more private?”
