“I won’t tell anyone,” Ruan muttered. “For the sake of... Gods, I don’t even know anymore. But I won’t tell anyone.”
Adrissu’s blood had gone to ice in his veins. For one wild moment he was tempted to refuse, to keep Ruan trapped down here all for himself. Hecould—there was no way out for a human without any magical ability. The opening into the cliffs led only to a sheer drop into the ocean, certain death. The tunnel upward was entirely impossible to ascend without flight. If he refused, Ruan would be helpless to his whim. But the rational part of his mind that had always protested against the unbearable emotional pull he’d always had toward the human knew that doing so would only solidify Ruan’s hatred of him.
Ruanhatedhim now. The thought was like poison sticking in his throat.
“Alright,” he said softly, looking down at his feet. “When you get back into town, if anyone asks, tell them the dragon dropped you in the ocean, and you swam to shore. It couldn’t have been Zamnes, because it fled from you.”
Vesper had curled nervously near Ruan’s feet, watching them with obvious distress. Adrissu extended a hand toward her—Ruan eyed him suspiciously, but Vesper recognized the command and uncoiled herself to slither back to him. Ruan’s gaze had softened, eyes lingering on Vesper; but when he looked back up at Adrissu, his eyes were hard and cold once again. Adrissu did his best to ignore the sinking feeling collapsing through his chest.
“Let’s go,” he said, and turned away.
Chapter Eight
AfterAdrissuhadflownRuan back up to his tower, he did not watch the human leave. He remained, tense and waiting, in his home until the morning stretched into the afternoon and into the night. He did not sleep until the sun rose again the next day.
Ruan had promised that he would not tell, but part of him doubted the human’s words. He waited for the sounds of an angry mob, of warriors coming to fight him, or of any telltale sign that Ruan had lied to him. But it never came.
Adrissu did not know if Ruan had made it safely back to the caravan that he was supposed to be guarding, but the human did not return the next day, nor the next week, nor the next month. Time went by at a crawl as Adrissu waited, like a spring tightly coiled and never released, for a finishing blow that never came.
But as part of the council, he had work to keep him busy: meetings and petitions and long walks around the perimeter of the city to determine where and how the borders of Polimnos could continue to expand. All the rumors and gossip that he heard about the dragon sighting died away eventually—after all, it could not have been the Scourge of Polimnos if it had fled in fear from just two fighters. It must have been frightened away, for there were no other sightings.
It was what he had always hoped for—that Ruan would finally extricate himself from whatever tangled mess they had between them, and he could go back to the way his life had been before the human had crossed his path. It was what he had always hoped for, and he hated every moment of it. He hated himself for still pining after the human, missing his presence and remembering the heat of his touch. But he could not bring himself to hate Ruan.
There was something wrong with him. There was no other explanation for how intensely he yearned for the human. Adrissu was a dragon; he should have had no need of such a lesser creature. There was no reason he could not find some other person willing to sate his base desires. Heshouldhave been fine on his own. Heshouldhave never felt the fated connection with a human. Heshouldhave only felt the pull toward another dragon.
These things should have been true, but they were not. He could struggle and rage against them for years on end, but that would not change reality. Hedidyearn for Ruan, and now would never have him. He would have to learn to accept it.
This was the conclusion that he came to after they had been apart for nearly three months. Every time he saw Maya, he was tempted to ask her if Ruan had returned and he was looking for work again. He did not ask, but Maya offered the information to him eventually.
“Ruan tells me he’s not working for you anymore,” she said, almost idly, late one afternoon while reviewing a few proposed road expansions together.
Adrissu stilled, glancing over at her from the corner of his eye. “That’s correct,” he replied simply, waiting to judge her reaction.
“Are you still looking for a guard? I know quite a few recruits who’d be willing to take the job, even at a lower price point if that’s what’s getting you,” she said, still looking down at the parchment spread out before her.
Adrissu hesitated, considering his reply.
“I found that while I... enjoyed the rapport Ruan and I developed, my need for a dedicated guard was perhaps overestimated,” he finally said, still watching her from beneath his eyelashes. Like himself, her head did not move, but he did notice her eyes flicker toward him for a moment.
“I see,” she said, and that was the end of it.
But he knew Ruan was back in Polimnos. He knew that he could not expect Ruan to want to see him, but a small part of him ached that the human hadn’t even let him know of his safe return. Adrissu silenced that part of him as much as he could and shoved it down deep into his chest until he was numb to it. He had wanted this, he reminded himself, no matter how much it hurt. He had wanted this.
He repeated it like a mantra in his head, over and over, every time he thought of Ruan. This was what he wanted. This was what was best.
It had been nearly four months since he had last seen Ruan—when Adrissu finally started to believe it—when he finally saw him again.
The knock on his door, a bit after sunset on a temperate autumn evening, was so unexpected that it did not even occur to him that it could be Ruan as he rose with a frown to answer it. Adrissu thought it might be Benil Branwood coming to bother him again—it might be any one of his fellow councilors with some new and unexpected issue—it might be any citizen seeking his aide. It did not occur to him that it could be Ruan, so when he opened the door and saw his mate standing there, he froze.
The human’s countenance was serious, almost grim, and he was silent as he watched Adrissu collect himself before clearing his throat.
“Hello,” he said, and luckily his voice did not waver or tremble. “Can I help you?”
Ruan looked up at him, brown eyes searching. The man’s expression didn’t change, so Adrissu was unsure if he saw what he was looking for, but after a beat he replied,
“Can I come in?”
Adrissu had barely processed the request before he was stepping aside on instinct, holding the door open so Ruan could step in.
