She motions the guards to let her pass out of the temple, and she beckons to me. “Please come this way, dragonmaster. I have questions to ask you.”
I take one last look into the temple, but I see no trace of Zenevieve, and so I follow the Temple Mother to a nearby courtyard. She sits primly on a bench and indicates the oneopposite. I glare at it for a moment before dropping heavily onto it.
“What’s wrong with Zenevieve?” I demand.
“Dragonmaster, have you spent a rut with Zenevieve?”
A wave of shame hits me, and I grit my teeth. “Why are you asking?”
“Not for my own pleasure, I assure you. This is to help Zenevieve. How many ruts have you spent with her?”
I thought I was going to talk about this with Zenevieve. I wasn’t prepared for anyone else to be involved. Through clenched teeth, I mutter, “One.”
“Are you are telling me the truth? Your former ward has never spent three or four or more ruts with you?”
“You doubt my word?”
“Please curtail your pride, dragonmaster.” She glares at me until I answer.
“It was one rut.Thisrut. I’m still fucking in it. We were trapped together on a mountain, but I am not making excuses. I know it was a mistake.”
“You told her it was a mistake?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know. I offered to take her as my mate because it was the right thing to do.”
Mother Linnea casts her eyes to the heavens as though she is asking the gods for strength. “Does your ward treasure feelings for you? Do you know that you are first in her heart?”
I want to grind the heels of my hands into my eyes. Storm away. Do anything to avoid answering that question. “Yes,” I mutter. “I have long known it.”
“But it was just one rut you spent together?”
“Yes.”
“It’s strange that she should develop lavish sickness after just one rut spent with you.”
“Lavish sickness?” I exclaim, looking up in horror. “That is Zenevieve’s ailment? But that’s impossible. I have not spoken to her in two years. She’s been living in the dragonriders’ barracks.”
“I am puzzled by this as well. Before then, she was living with you when you were rutting?”
“Yes, but I spent my ruts apart from her. Every single time. Always.”
“Lavish sickness is caused by a tender heart and repeated doses of an Alpha’s rutting scent. Does she have much contact with your scent?”
My heart sinks. Scent is all it takes? Not the act itself? “I often scented blankets for her because she couldn’t sleep. Zenevieve lost her parents when she was fifteen, and she needed comfort. She slept in my bed whenever I was away at the ruthouse.”
“And in the past two years?”
I hesitate. I knew Zenevieve was stealing my clothes and returning them. I didn’t want to confront her about it. I liked knowing that even though she didn’t wish to speak to me, I was with her still. “She stole my clothes. Cloaks. Shirts. I didn’t stop her.”
My rutting scent must have been all over many of them.
Mother Linnea looks at me as if I’m a worm she’s uncovered in her dinner. “Well, it seems we have our answer. You’ve been very stupid, dragonmaster.”
I pass a hand over my face with a groan. Lavish sickness, one of the worst illnesses known to Maledinni, and I’ve given it to Zenevieve. I knew how Zenevieve felt about me, and I didn’t do enough to keep my distance from her. I’m no better than Dandro, leading her on and then rejecting her.
“Will she be all right?”
“How am I meant to answer that? Zenevieve’s lungs are threatening to drown her from the inside. She’s exhausted, and she’s coughing up a great deal of blood. She’s coughing so hardthat I am having trouble getting the medication into her to keep her alive.”
