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"Join me in the dining hall when you're done. If Hywel will dream us a party, we ought to be courteous enough to enjoy it," Conall said.
Laszlo sighed, but Conall didn't wait for an answer, leaving us. Laszlo stepped closer, his arm bracing my waist gently. He stepped and my body followed instinctively, the movements unfamiliar but his leading was elegant and calm in comparison with the storm of dancing Conall had led me through.
"He is…young," Laszlo remarked, turning us, his gaze glancing over Conall.
I laughed at that summation and nodded. "He is." It made me ache, actually. I didn't know how old Conall was, how long he would live, but I knew he was young compared to me, to Laszlo and Hywel and Asterion.
"He exhausts you?" I asked.
Laszlo frowned at that, his stare drifting up and around the room. I didn't know how long it had been since he'd danced, but he did so beautifully. The more I relaxed in his hold, the more graceful I found my own movement.
"He seeks to draw out an energy in me that I find it easier to reserve. He doesn't understand patience the way that I do."
I let my own eyes slip away, thinking over the statement, understanding it. Conall was drawing that energy out of me too, but it was restorative, vital for me. He left me breathless, but also breathing more deeply than I had in decades. But Laszlo was not a creature who needed hedonism and ecstasy to survive. And Hywel, his partner, was asleep. Had been as long as I'd been captive. Longer.
"So many misunderstand immortality," I murmured, drawing Laszlo's eyes back to me. "They think it means time passes faster, that days are minutes and years are days and we rush through our lives. But you cannot change the length of time, or how it stretches around you."
Laszlo's face was slack, yellow gaze bright and open.
"Centuries are long," I said.
"Very," Laszlo said, brow folding in a shared pain.
"Has no one else been here with you?" I asked.
"Visits," Laszlo murmured. "Brief affairs."
You are lonely, I thought, but the words didn't need to be said. Just as Laszlo didn't have to tell me that he understood how long I'd suffered under Birsha.
He took a breath and I stepped closer as his arm banded just a bit tighter, cradled up my spine. His wings pressed to his back, feathers teasing against the back of my hand.
"We will have more years with him awake than I have waited as he slept," Laszlo said, his quiet voice brushing against my hair. "But you're right—it does not change the length of the years."
Of being alone.
Laszlo was the perfect height for me to rest my head on his shoulder as we danced, to hear the slow and steady thump of his heart under my ear. We sighed together, stepped together, spun slowly in the company of shadows together.
CHAPTER11
THE DRAGON'S JAWS
The ball was not a cure for my nightmares.
I dreamt of crowds, wild nights in The Seven Veils, fire burning down the walls. The night I escaped. The night Birsha ran and the house fell, crumbled and torn and burnt to the ground. I dreamt of running through the woods, hiding from the monsters that prowled, that stole the escaping girls for themselves in those strange hours, and instead of the wild living relief I'd felt that night, all I dreamt of was terror.
The ground was hot under my feet, spiraling ash settling in dry grass, but it cooled the deeper into the woods I wandered. The screams at a distance faded, and the air grew heavy. This was not the way I'd run that night. I'd followed the glow of London, hid myself in doorways and gutters until the whores took me in.
This was the woods surrounding the castle, misty and eerie but safe. Up ahead in the dark, a broad and bulky shadow loomed. The castle. Laszlo and Conall, the shadow dreamers. The woods were wet and rich and quiet and the castle waited for me and I was not in London, not running. My steps were heavy, my legs drunk, but there was safety ahead.
And then the shadow shifted. I stilled in the dark as the right side twisted. A bright glow lit, but it was not Laszlo's golden lamp, but a round moon and opal eye, split down the center with a thin pupil.
"Hywel?" I called.
Come here,blodyn bach. You've wandered far enough for one night.
"From London to Wales," I mused.
The dragon rumbled, two eyes now blinking at me in the dark, broad face rising up to stare down at me.Who feeds you nightmares?
