Page 6 of The Dragon’s Good Girl

My rooms are on the third floor in the east wing, far enough from the session spaces that very little noise reaches them. The hallway warms as I walk, the temperature climbing until I reach my door. Most of the others complain about it. Kiran considers it the only civilized part of the house.

I open the door and warmth settles over me.

My nest takes up most of the bedroom.

The bed sits at its center beneath layers of quilts, throws, and blankets collected over more years than I care to count. Bookshelves cover two walls and overflow onto every available surface, paperbacks wedged sideways wherever I could make them fit. The reading chair sits beside the window in the exact patch of afternoon sun that reaches the room for two hours each day, with a worn velvet ottoman in front of it that I liberated from a hotel lobby in 1987.

They were renovating.

It was going in a dumpster.

I maintain that this means I rescued it.

A blanket hangs over the chair. Cashmere throws cover the bed. There are enough pillows to make Mikael complain every time he comes up here, although that has never stopped him from trying to steal one.

Other dragons collect gold, jewels, artifacts, land. Things with obvious value.

I've never seen the appeal.

Gold is cold.

I toe off my shoes and sink into the reading chair, stretching my legs across the ottoman as the last of the afternoon sun catches my shoulders. Heat gathers beneath my skin in response, and somewhere deep in my chest my dragon settles with me.

This is my hoard.

Every blanket has the right weight. Every chair has been worn soft. The books are ones I loved enough to keep, even when newer editions came along and the bindings started to crack. There's a ridiculous cloud-shaped pillow on the bed that I ordered at three in the morning and will defend if questioned.

The room has taken decades to get exactly right.

I should be content.

And most days, I am.

Downstairs, someone laughs loud enough for the sound to carry faintly through the floor. A moment later comes a crash, followed by Grath shouting something I can't make out.

I wait.

No one calls my name.

Not my problem, then.

I reach for the book on the table beside me, but my attention drifts across the room instead. The afternoon light has almost left the windows, stretching shadows over the nest and the bed at its center. It's unnecessarily large, even for me, although I've always justified the size on the grounds that a dragon should be allowed to take up as much space as he damn well pleases.

Tonight, the excuse feels thinner than usual.

I open the book and try to read, but after making it through the same paragraph three times without retaining a word, I give up and set it aside.

The house below me is full. My calendar is full. My work matters to me, and the people downstairs are as close to family as I've had in centuries. I built this life deliberately, piece by piece, until there was very little left in it I would change.

Still, some evenings I come up here and the nest feels too large for one person.

I pull the weighted blanket over myself and close my eyes.

Tomorrow, it probably won't bother me.

But tonight, it does.

Chapter Two