“Ah,” he responded, looking straight ahead. “Then you were asking how many women I’ve loved? Married? What?”
“I don’t know,” she offered softly.
“Yes, you do,” he said with an all-knowing chuckle. “And the answer is once. I’ve been in love once after Leandra.”
Maeve recalled the beautiful Immortal women he’d brought to Sinclair Estates and Castle Morana. Their glowing skin and long legs.
Maeve glanced up and over at him. “And what happened then?”
Reeve looked down at her. “She forgot about me.”
Maeve couldn’t resist a light tease. “How could anyone forget abouttheReeve of Aterna?”
Reeve smiled down at her, but it didn’t match his eyes. “I failed,” he said plainly. “I didn’t fight for her.”
The way you fight for Mal, she felt like he meant.
“The things you said to Mal, to me. About me. About us.” She rambled on, “And you said you haven’t been happy since that Summer Solstice party.”
Her words plunged them into dangerous territory.
“Are you asking me if I desire you?”
Heat smeared across her cheeks, blushing them. Reeve’s lips pulled back, revealing the way the tip of his tongue played with his sharpened canine.
“You’re insufferable,” she stated with a shake of her head, annoyed by his carefree satisfaction, but all the while fighting her own smile.
“If you’re hoping my words were solely an act to shake Malachite, I’ll give you a chance to retract this particular line of questioning.”
Maeve bit her lip, completely aware that was an answer in and of itself.
“Stop that,” he ordered, his eyes on her lips.
They turned a corner, and Maeve stilled, a whisper of a gasp on her lips as she took in the view before her. Above the smooth crystal floors, towering high into the magnificent ceiling, was a mural painted with vibrant colors of violet fire, surging high above black rock and ash. It performed in drastic juxtaposition to the bright crystal architecture surrounding it. At the center was a monster she’d seen only a handful of times. But he was depicted in a grotesque light, an image she disagreed with. The dragon she’d seen undulated with glittering, holy scales. The markings, which mirrored the very ones scarred onto the side of Reeve’s face, jet across its oversized body in jagged lines. Its eyes blazed with violet fury.
So many questions burned at the tip of her tongue, but she halted them all. They felt too personal. Too raw. Too intimate to ask. How? When?Why?
“The last dragon,” she said softly, noting the reality that although he wasn’t fully dragon, he was the last of the kind. “Is this how you picture yourself?”
Reeve stood still as she walked the length of the massive mural.
“I did at a time, yes.”
She continued pacing the mural. “You want to know something that makes me feel sick?” Without waiting for his approval to continue, she confessed, “I used to brag at Vaukore how my Uncle killed the last dragon. How he traveled all the way to the Dark Planet and slew the final beast. ‘The last Ironclad’.” She halted. “I was so stupid. Content believing the things I was told were right and good weren’t worth comparing to my own instincts. A perfect contradiction sitting in my own home. The skull of a dragon, claimed like a trophy, while judging the ones who killed my brother for being part wolf.” She looked back at him, shame present on her face. “Not just judged. I had them killed. Their entire family. And by that logic, if any dragons remained who loved the one my uncle killed, they should kill me.”
Reeve crossed towards her until he stood before her, their shoulders squared with one another. “An endless cycle of death and destruction,” said Reeve softly. “Which benefits no one.”
Maeve looked away from him, as he was suddenly too good, too pure, and too holy for her stained and dirty attention. Reeve’s hand moved in her periphery, brushing her hair off her shoulder and exposing the side of her neck. His fingers trailed up to the side of her jaw, tucking beneath it and drawing her attention back to him.
Their eyes met, and that thread of Magic between them pulled her one step closer.
“You’re not responsible for the sins of those who came before you,” said Reeve. “Your own will suffice when your judgment time comes,” he added, his voice lighthearted. “And your list is long, kitten.”
“And who will deliver my judgment?”
“A god, of course,” he purred, sin alive and raging through his voice and his half-lidded eyes.
“I hope you aren’t referring to yourself,” she challenged as his fingers slid up, running through her hair and across her scalp.
