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“I…” He sighed. “It’s going to sound as if I’m criticizing your kind, and I—”
“Say it.”
“It might be a biased, prejudiced opinion. I heard human men are really bad at…loving stuff. So they want to make sure women are ignorant about it, so they don’t realize how terrible they are. “
“That doesn’t make sense. They’re so competitive. Wouldn’t they want to be good at something?”
“Maybe they just want the perception that they are good.” River shrugged. “If there’s no competition, then they’re the best. Then again, this is a biased opinion from someone who once saw humans as the enemy, but I’m trying to be respectful of your kind.”
“So respectful. You think I like to be an ignorant fool who doesn’t even know what happens when a couple gets married? Who has some ideas but can’t say for sure how exactly a baby is made? I don’t even know what you have in there.” She pointed to his pants. “I know it lets you pee standing, but I don’t know what it is. I feel like a clueless child, and the worst is that you treat me like a clueless child.”
“What do you expect me to do? If you decide you don’t want me, and if you end up finding a human husband, he’ll expect you to be clueless and ignorant.”
“Do you really think I’d be interested in someone like that?”
River shrugged. “If he’s human, yes. That’s what he’s going to be like.”
Naia couldn’t really believe he thought she would pick someone like that, unless… “You really expect to leave me, don’t you?”
“I don’t. I told you what our magic says about us. I declared my love for you in front of my father, in front of the king. They were one and the same, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing can be more serious than that for an Ancient.”
She was still sitting on his lap and ran her hand over his chest, down to his stomach. “Then don’t treat me like a fragile flower who needs to be kept intact for some snotty human. If you keep doing that, then maybe Iwillend up getting annoyed and picking a human, but you know that’s not what I want.”
He kissed her ear and whispered, “And what do you want?”
Naia closed her eyes. “Can I want what I can’t name? Or am I just something to be wanted?”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
She shrugged. “I’m whole. Need no healing.”
He caressed her face and she ended up looking at him. River was beautiful, and even his strange kind of beauty was becoming familiar to Naia.
He glanced at her lips, then looked her in the eyes. “You have no idea how much I want you. All of you. How much I’ve wanted you from the moment I first saw you, back in the dragon lair, so powerful, confident and mysterious, and yet, looking at me with so much sweetness and… I don’t even know. You haven’t been away from my thoughts since then. I want your heart, your mind, your soul. I want your body too, and you have no idea how much, no idea what so much wanting is like.”
Naia chuckled, but it was a wrong chuckle, all bitter, which wasn’t quite right after all these words. “River, have you considered that maybe, just maybe, Idoknow what it’s like?”
He caught a breath. “I was trying to be good, and I was doing it all wrong.” He kissed the corner of her lips and held her close, then whispered, “There is a line we still can’t cross—but there are many others we can.”
Their lips met. This time there was no odd smell and no anger. Naia realized that this was a decision. For someone who’d been wondering if she should trust him or not, this was a clear sign of where she really stood. Perhaps she should just listen to her magic, and in a way she could feel how their powers blended, how they were stronger together. At the same time, she was curious about those lines they would cross, her heart thumping with exhilaration and excitement.
And still, all they were doing was kissing, while she touched the soft skin on his back, that pleasant feeling of being close.
Slowly, he moved his hands down to her legs, then under her nightgown. He caressed her thigh with the tips of the nails of one hand, those strange nails that gave her goosebumps now. His other hand was lifting her nightgown. Would he know she had nothing underneath it? Would he be surprised? Would he like what he saw?
* * *
Death.A bitter price for Fel’s moment of distraction.
Falling from a great height, still startled, stunned, he foolishly tried to beat his arms as if they were wings. How he wished theywerewings. If the First Mage’s goal had been to make a point about the fragility of the human form, he had definitely succeeded. Pity that Fel wouldn’t be around to appreciate that harshly imparted wisdom.
“Help!” The yell felt pointless and pathetic.
But it wasn’t a yell, but a thought—he hadn’t spoken it. And for some reason, his beating arms were slowing his fall.
Not arms, wings.
He’d gotten his dragon form back—almost too late to stop him from hitting the ground with a tremendous force, but not too late. Perhaps this was the perk of having failed the challenge. Perhaps… he didn’t even know what else to think anymore.
