“It’s nonsense, but I forgive you.”
This seems to placate her. Lifting my hand from her hair, I pat the bed beside me. Still looking miserable, she begins crawling that way but stops.
“Do you want to see your face?” she asks hesitantly.
“Is it that bad?”
She winces.
“I suppose so then.”
She fetches a hand mirror and returns, wriggling under the blankets next to me before gingerly handing over the mirror. My eyes widen on my reflection.
“This is from awing?”
She twists a bit of blanket in her hands. “Well, dragon wings are large.”
“I didn’t think I was that close to him.”
A stripe of bruising the color of a ripe plum runs down the left side of my face. From the way my body aches, I suspect the bruising continues beneath the nightgown I’m in.
“Who changed my clothing?” I ask suddenly.
“The maids. Why?”
The relief is almost as welcome as finding out I didn’t have an arrow lodged in my chest. I hand the mirror back. “Just curious.”
The room is brightening, and I notice with a smile that my cat friend lies at my feet.
“He stayed here all night, too,” Tilly says, following my gaze.
He needs a name, though I feel I haven’t known him long enough to say what would fit best. After all, it sometimes takes me weeks to name a goat.
That line of thought leads me back to the more pleasurable events of last night.
“You barely know me.”
That’s what I told the king when he looked at me like I was a lone ship and he the storm bent on claiming me.
“My first form is not so easily controlled…especially when it comes to my mate.”
Does he truly believe that’s who I am? I breathe out the sudden fluttering in my belly.
“How is Sor—I mean, the king?”
Tilly begins fidgeting again. “He was here.”
Her tone immediately has me studying her. “And?”
She wrings her hands together. “He transformed, Serah.”
Transformed? “Into a dragon?”
She nods.
“Is that…bad?”
Her head tilts back and forth. “Let’s just say it ended the party.”
