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“How the hell can you say that to me?” she demanded. “No secrets, no shame? You won't tell me what happened here.” She spread her arm, encompassing the prison. “I can tell you're ashamed.”
My jaw worked. The words came out crisp. “Because it was my job to protect you, and I failed.”
“You were just a kid too!” she reminded me.
She was trying to make me feel better, so what did that feel like such a slap in the face? “I wasn't just a kid too. I was older than you, years older than you...”
“You make that very clear all the time.” she cut me off. “It makes me wonder what else you're ashamed of. What you're scared of.”
I returned her gaze steadily. “Care to elaborate on that accusation?”
Honor’s cheeks colored. She was the one to drop her gaze first.
“That's what I thought,” I said.
It was cruel to pretend I didn't desire her, but I couldn't handle the thought of having those feelings out in the open. It was better if we both ignored her inappropriate interest. Eventually, she would marry her Royals, as she should. They loved her, they were loyal to her—despite their faults—and they would help her rule. But I was just a dragon knight. I could never hope to be one of her princes.
“It was a long time ago,” I said, hoping to ease things between us.
“That doesn't mean it doesn't matter,” she said quietly. “If you don't deal with things, they don't ever get better. People are such liars when they say the time heals all wounds.”
“Half the time, when people give you advice, they’re telling you things that they wish were true.”
“Is that what you're doing?” she asked me, and the mischievous tilt to her lips and the light in her gaze both warmed my heart.
“Of course not.”
I moved to the small guard chamber behind the cell room and opened the armory doors. They were empty.
“Damyn,” she said carefully. “The Scourge curse. It’s tied to the magic that makes us all dragons.”
“Yes.” I stayed where I was, with my hands on the armory doors, facing away from her. There was an uncertain note in her voice that made me think she needed to say this to my back.
“What if taking the Scourge curse away destroys the dragons?”
I turned. “Then that’s the price we pay to fix this kingdom.”
“But your whole life has been spent being a dragon knight…”
I scoffed at that, and she looked hurt, but she didn’t understand. My whole life had been spent protectingher.Or trying to. And hating myself for failing her so often. “It doesn’t matter.”
She chewed her lower lip. “I just want everyone to know what we might lose. I want to be honest.”
“Even though you’re going to do whatever you must anyway?”
“You told me I should be.” She turned and swept out of the small room, the usual steel in her spine, and it made me smile.
Then she stopped in front of me, so abruptly I had to rest my hands on her shoulders to steady myself so I wouldn’t knock into her.
“I kind of remember some of the guards, and I remember someone who helped me,” Honor stared around the room as if she were seeing the past. “I always wonder what happened to him.”
“He was killed,” I said stiffly.
“Was he a friend of yours?” Honor twisted and looked at me with wide eyes.
We were standing far too close together; when she looked up at me like this, my heartbeat quickened. And it doubled now because she had brushed uncomfortably close to the truth.
He hadn't been my friend, but he had thought he was. I'd gotten close to him so I could have the chance to look after her.
