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“…you are. Yes, you are. Who’s the prettiest scaly girl in the land?”
Amelia bit her lip to keep from laughing and tried to approach as quietly as possible. The crunch of dead, brown grass gave her way. The child, crouched down to poke at something on the ground with a stick, sprang up and whirled to face her. She recognized Liam’s cute, perpetually smudged face in the glow of the brazier. “Lia!”
She braced herself and had her arms open to receive his tackling hug before he reached her. “Oof!” she said, playing it up as his arms crushed around her waist. “You’re getting too strong for this.” He smelled of grass, and mud, and sweaty little boy; like the wild thing he was, a wriggling forest creature lured out into civilization by the promise of a warm fire and a sweet held out on a flat palm.
He giggled and twisted away from her, attention returning to the man who’d turned away from Valencia, and who was trying to quickly school his features from caught-out shock into something haughtier.
“We were feeding Lenny treats,” Liam said. “She likes ham.”
Reginald scowled at the boy as he smoothed his golden hair back. “Traitor,” he hissed.
Unbothered, Liam flitted around them and went to greet Alpha, whose rumbling purr Amelia could both hear and feel, like a welcome massage at the back of her mind.
“It’s ‘Lenny,’ is it?” she asked, no longer able to suppress her grin.
“Well, no, obviously it’s Valencia, the boy’s only–”
“Lord Reginald,” she drawled, “have you given my dragon a nickname?”
Despite the gathering shadows, the firelight lay full on his face, a rippling spotlight that revealed the way he flushed. “No.”
“Will you deny giving her treats, then, too?”
“I–” A muscle leaped in his jaw as he cut himself off.
“Gracious,” she said, in a rather good imitation of her mother that Tessa and Oliver would have loved. “The great bachelor Reginald L’Espoir minding children and dragons. Whatwillall the randy footmen think?”
She knew the words were a mistake the moment they left her lips. His gaze shuttered, but not before she saw the brief flare of something wild and terrified in its blue depths.
Firelight licked over the shadow of the scar around his throat, exposed by the loosened neck of his tunic, and she recalled the haunted look in his eyes on the balcony in Drakewell, that first night she’d glimpsed Reginald the man, separate from the fop she’d called Lord Prance.
Shit. Her sister, she thought, would have gone soft and said something polite and appealing that would have cracked those emotional shutters open a fraction; would have coaxed him back toward good humor with skill and aplomb.
But Amelia wasn’t her sister, so she said, “What’s going on with you?” Blunt, yes, unfeeling also, but it left him rocking physically back on his heels in a way she hadn’t expected.
“Nothing,” he said, tersely, but could no longer pretend to be unaffected.
She thought of what Leda had insinuated, before, and wasn’t sure she could see Connor wanting anything to do with Reginald in an amorous way. All they did was snipe with one another.
Then again, that was foreplay for certain couples.
She didn’t knowwhatthey were, and it wasn’t her business, so she said, “Don’t be so defensive.”
He folded his arms, defensively.
“I don’t have the slightest interest in mucking about in your personal, private business. But this is a war – and not one I’m sure we can win.”
His brows jumped in surprise.
“Yes, I have my doubts, no need to look shocked about it,” she grumbled. “My point stands: I’m not some gossip at a ball looking for a scandal. I’m concerned about your concentration and your head.”
“My head?”
“Yes. About your ability to pull it out of your ass and focus on the tasks at hand.”
He snorted and shook said head, glanced out across the ever-darkening pasture. The shadows were already deep here beneath the shaggy hemlocks. Stars were beginning to appear, bright pinpricks in a periwinkle sky.
Valencia shifted, her breath a regular, soothing bellows sound, and rested her chin on Reginald’s shoulder. He reached, immediately and absently, to stroke the smooth, dark skin of her muzzle, the touch familiar and automatic, as if he’d done it dozens of times before. Because he had, Amelia realized with a start. She’d missed this, somehow: Reginald developing a special bond with one of the drakes, when she’d thought him the last person likely to do so.
