“I am feeling rather unwell, actually,” Adrissu muttered before Benil could get too far into his increasingly nervous rambling. Every instinct in him was desperate to look back at the guild hall, to catch sight of the man again, to drink him in and never look away—but he forced himself to keep his focus on Benil Branwood’s dark, beady eyes, his patchy goatee, and his slicked-back black hair. “I beg your pardon, Benil, but I think we may have to discuss this some other time.”
“Of course, of course,” Benil said quickly, lifting his hands in a placating gesture even as he took a fearful step away from Adrissu, as if he were somehow contagious. If he could focus, Adrissu would have hated him all the more; but as it was, everything felt so far away that he couldn’t bring himself to care.
Against his better judgment, he risked a glance back toward the training yard. As if sensing his attention, the man glanced in his direction—their eyes met, and Adrissu could have wept. The man blinked, a hint of a smile on his face. It was an expression he had seen a hundred times over written on the face of those who did not know him, but recognized who he was all the same. Whatever pull Adrissu felt toward him, it was clearly not reciprocated. He looked away quickly, before his crumbling resolve failed him, and he marched up to the man to—to do what? Introduce himself? The very notion was absurd.
“Goodbye,” he said abruptly, spinning on his heel to walk back the way they came without waiting for a response from Benil. His pace was rapid, eyes downcast, and he was sure that he must have been a sight nearly running out of town. But he didn’t care,couldn’tcare, about anything but getting away. His heart was still pounding, and his breath came out hard, by the time he arrived back at his tower, flinging the heavy wooden door open and stumbling inside to safety.
As Adrissu slumped down to the floor, he heard Vesper stir from her usual spot, sunning herself underneath a window. He felt her gaze find him, partly curious and partly concerned.
“Come here,” he breathed, and when he held out his hand, Adrissu could see that his fingers were trembling. He scowled down at the sight of them. Vesper approached, her jet black body a stark contrast to the pale stone floor beneath them. Though familiars were not able to utilize spoken language, the magic that had summoned her to his service allowed for some rudimentary communication between them. As she pressed her cool head into his hand, before slithering up the length of his arm to settle within the sleeve of his robe, he had the distinct feeling that she was trying to comfort him.
Absently, Adrissu folded his hands into his sleeves so he could feel the cold weight of her, grounding him. He was unsure of what had happened in town—even now the thought of it made his vision start to swim, remembering the warmed bronze of the man’s skin, the way his hair was cast with a reddish glow in the light, his teeth flashing as he smiled—
He shook his head, stamping down the part of him that yearned to go find him. What was happening? What sort of trick was this? Had a spell been cast upon him without his knowledge?
“We’ll get to the bottom of this,” he murmured as he got to his feet, more to himself than to Vesper. While his own library was nothing impressive as of yet, still he was bound to find something—anything similar to what had happened to him today. Whatever the man had done to him, he would find out.
Chapter Two
Adrissuhadnevertrulybelieved in the existence of fated mates.
They were said to exist to help further the lineage of dragonkind. As beings that were effectively immortal, that did not die due to the passage of time, but who could be killed by outside forces, dragons were naturally leery of each other and often would avoid the company of other dragons unless absolutely necessary. After all, every dragon knew through base instinct that another dragon was one of the few things in the world capable of ending its life.
Even dragons that held to the belief in fated pairs acknowledged that they were rare. It was true that some dragons did live in pairs, but it was more common that two dragons of relatively nearby territories would come together just long enough to procreate and raise their hatchling until it could survive on its own, as had been the case with his own parents. Adrissu did not know any dragons firsthand who believed themselves to be part of a fated pair or had constant companionship with another dragon.
The idea of fated mates had always seemed absurd to him—the idea of fate itself was entirely debatable, so the existence of some magical connection between two beings that had been written in the stars long before either had even been born... It was laughable.
And yet, despite his disbelief, what Adrissu had felt that day could only be the pull of the fated bond, unmistakable and irresistible.
It made nosense.He kept turning the idea over and over in his head as he sequestered himself for days in his tower. Fated mates should not exist; but if they did, it certainly should not apply to a human. Their tiny lifespans, their weak innate magic, their fragile, breakable bodies—he hated the very idea of it, but there was no other sufficient answer. The more he resisted, the more some small part deep within him knew it was the truth.
The man he had seen in the mercenary guild’s courtyard was his fated mate.
When he could finally bring himself to accept the idea as the truth, he hated it all the more. He raged against this fate, digging through his hoard for the few draconic tomes that he did own, desperately searching for some way to sever this unwanted, intolerable connection. But the draconic texts did not speak of breaking a fated bond, only of the suffering and grief one dragon might face if their mate were to meet their demise.
“I am cursed,” he muttered under his breath, late in the night after days spent secluded in his lair deep within the cliffside of Polimnos. Vesper was coiled on his desk; her black, beady eyes peeked through the folds of her body and fixed on him as she tilted her head in curiosity.
“There is no record of a dragon and a human ever being a fated pair,” he spat, gesturing toward the pile of papers that he had been rifling through. “As far as I can tell, I am cursed, either to suffer intolerably while apart from this man, or to put off my suffering until he dies in a few short years. This is a curse.”
Vesper’s narrow tongue darted out briefly, and he felt an inkling of sympathy from the spot in his chest where his awareness of her was centered.
With a groan, he gathered her in one arm and brought her with him into his sleeping chamber. It had been dug in his dragon form—the perfect size to curl up snugly and be surrounded by his wealth—in this moment, it felt expansive and hollow. He was tempted, briefly, to drop his disguise and indulge in the primal part of him that wanted to lounge amidst his spoils; but the longer he thought on it, the more he did not want to be a dragon. At that moment, he didn’t want to be anything at all. He only wanted to forget.
After three days of seclusion, Adrissu ventured back out into town again. It was not unusual for him to remain in his tower for long stretches of time, yet he felt as self-conscious in the streets of Polimnos as if he had been away for months and every eye was watching him with the utmost curiosity. In truth he knew that the townsfolk took little notice of his comings and goings, and they went about their business like it was any other day. Still, he could not bring himself to make his usual rounds to the grocer, the butcher, and the apothecary. Instead, he found himself standing in front of the mercenary hall once more, cursing himself for having walked here.
This time the front courtyard was empty, but he could hear the sounds of sparring echoing from the yard behind the building. There was a low stone fence surrounding the property, but the gate that guarded the entrance was unlocked and propped open.
Adrissu glanced around. Though still on the main avenue, the sprawling compound was far from the central part of Polimnos. As such, there were a few passers-by, and foot traffic was quite leisurely here. The buildings opposite the mercenary hall were largely residential homes, though a little ways away was a forge that had been abandoned for nearly a decade, but that the mercenary guild was currently in the process of refurbishing. All in all, there were few here to see him, and none that might question him.
Against his better judgment, he stepped through the gate and onto the grounds. He had promised himself that he would avoid this man, but already his resolution had given way to raw want. The urge to see him again was entirely instinct. Adrissu hated that he could not ignore it, no matter his best efforts; but still that did not stop him from continuing up to the wide double doors of the guild hall and testing the handle. It too was unlocked, so he strode inside.
The entry hall was sparse, its wooden walls unadorned, but it opened almost immediately to a larger room into which he peered. The room seemed to be a central meeting area: it held several benches and tables throughout with a clear spot toward the far wall where an instructor might stand and give a lecture to the gathered students. As it was, the room was largely empty save for a young human man who looked to be no more than eighteen, who was pushing chairs out of his way as he swept the floor. He had glanced up briefly when the doors swung open, and Adrissu watched his head whip up in a double-take, as he stepped into the meeting room.
“Oh,” the boy said, straightening. “You’re, ah, Lord Adrissu, correct?”
“You flatter me,” Adrissu answered quickly, his eyes flickering across the room and barely lingering on the boy. The room was filled with the scent of fresh wood—the building was new enough that much of it had a similar bright, herbal smell—and was as sparsely decorated as the entryway, aside from the various chairs and benches. “I am no lord. But I am called Adrissu, yes.”
“My mistake,” the boy stammered. He was not the man Adrissu was looking for, but he gave the human an appraising look all the same. He was too young to truly be a fighter; and if he was here cleaning when the rest were sparring, Adrissu guessed he was perhaps the younger relative of a recruit, or maybe the son of one of the instructors or guild attendants. “Is, um, is there some way I can help you? Are you perhaps looking for the guildmaster?”
