“I couldn’t move,” Joralf responds with a deprecatory laugh. “Even if I’d been brave enough to stand and walk across the room, my knees wouldn’t have carried me there.” He laughs again, a snort of pure joy. “He’s the most stunning male I’ve ever seen. He held everyone around him in the palm of his hand. Yet he somehow belongs to me.”
“Bjorn came to you?”
“He didn’t say a word to anyone at his table. Just stood, holding my gaze the entire time, and strode toward me. When he extended his hand, I took it. We spent the night in his room, just talking at first. And then we explored each other in different ways.” Now Joralf is definitely smiling. I have no idea what he looks like, but I almost can see the wicked grin on his face.
“How long did it take to commit to each other?”
“How long does it take a mother to love her child? A bird to treasure its eggs? The sun to share its light with the world? It was not a choice. It merely was. As he crossed the room to me, I knew I belonged to him. At our first touch, I realized he was mine as well. Bjorn and I did not ‘commit’ to each other. We simply were, because we always had been. We just didn’t know it yet.”
Joralf is quiet for a long time after that and I wait for him, letting him enjoy his memories without my interruption. When he speaks, his tone holds hints of sadness, but joy dominates. “I didn’t yet live in Revalle, but nothing bound me to my home. Bjorn had a job he couldn’t leave. I moved to him. We spent nearly two centuries together. The happiest of my life. And his, I’m sure.”
“Can you tell me what he did?”
“What can I share without risking his freedom?” Joralf muses. “Nothing,” he says at last. “Revalle, despite its size, is too small. I would risk Bjorn if I told you more.”
“Thank you for sharing with me what you did. It’s nice to hear a love story.”
“Have you no love?”
My traitorous mind pulls up an image of Fhord.
Oh, fuck no.
“Nope,” I announce, perhaps a bit too quickly. “I’ve never been in love.”
“Ah.” Joralf’s response hangs between us, heavy and thick.
“Not ‘ah.’” Gods, I wish my voice wasn’t so shrill. “There’s no ‘ah’ here,” I add in a more measured tone.
“Do you know why the Dróttning imprisons elves?”
I shake my head, surprised by the change in topics. “A bit,” I say after a moment.
“What do you know?”
“It has to do with dragons, and the connection between dragons and elves. The Dróttning coveted that kind of bond and found a way to do it. She imprisons the elves so they can’t threaten her control of the dragons.”
“You understand more than most.”
“Which is hardly anything.”
“Do you know why elves and dragons bond so readily?”
“I don’t.” Pondering his question for a few seconds, I add, “I’ve never thought about it.”
“It’s because we have mates. The ties between dragons and riders are much like mating bonds.”
“And you’re telling me this, why?”
“I don’t know who you love,” Joralf tells me in a voice full of emotion, “or whether that person is your mate. And I don’t know why you’re denying your love. But I do know that things in this world rarely are simple. Dragons sometimes are forced to kill the riders the fates intend for them so the Dróttning may bind them to another. Because she controls all they do.”
Joralf pauses, perhaps choosing his next words carefully. “Things are not always as they seem in this place. The Dróttning’s command skews everything. Even the ties the fates intend. Do not dismiss your love so readily. It’s a rare gift that few may experience in this cruel place.”
My silly heart responds to his words, a glimmer of desire spiraling from deep in my gut to fill me, for a moment, with hope. But I’d be a fool to wish for anything from Fhord. I know where his allegiance lies. It’s not with me.
“How does she do it?” I ask, eager for a change of subjects. “Control the dragons, I mean.”
Joralf’s laugh floats through the cold air. “I saw my dragon once,” he tells me. “From a distance, but we both knew. It was so much like when I met Bjorn, it couldn’t be anything but the bond the fates intended.”
