Lord's Fall (Elder Races #5)(13)

She stirred, murmuring, “I’ll take—”

He clenched her tight and said sharply, “No, don’t!”

She froze, looking at him with eyebrows raised.

“Two reasons,” he said to her unspoken question. “The shift of your magic might break the dream. And even if it didn’t, if you take the dampening spell off here, you might actually remove it from your physical body too. You never know if one of the guards might have to wake you up for any reason. Remember—you told me when you woke up in the motel room the first time, the spell had slipped and you had to recast it.”

She scowled, intensely disliking the idea of anyone walking into her bedroom when she was asleep, or possibly breaking the dream without warning. “Okay. Makes sense.”

Now that he mentioned it, the whole thing did feel a little dreamy. His arms were around her, and yes, they felt strong and sure, but somehow they did not seem quite as solid as they should. Deep down her bones knew the difference because she had experienced the real thing. She buried her face in him and held on tightly.

He tapped her forehead with a finger. “You’re thinking too hard again.”

“What, are you afraid I might wake myself up?” she said, muffled against his T-shirt.

“You might. Mostly I don’t want you to get so tangled up in details that you mull and stew the night away. The time we have is limited. We need to make the most of it.”

“Whose genius idea was this again?” Her mutter was truculent. “Oh yeah, it was mine.”

He laughed quietly, took hold of her hand and played with her fingers. “Tell me, how was your day?”

Freaking miserable. “We drove a lot. Then we got here.”

She debated whether she would tell him about her sort-of confrontation with Eva then decided against it for now. She had no idea if he would be calmly pragmatic, or if he would go all evil alpha and threaten to ruin Eva’s army career, or something else equally over the top and disastrous.

And there would be no point to any of that, especially when she suspected the issue had been resolved enough as it was. Eva was no Aryal—thank God. Pia and Aryal might have reached a balance so that they could spar together, but Pia knew Aryal had never forgiven her for the mistakes she had made last spring, and it was likely Aryal never would.

Argh, harpies. Look them up under the definition of trouble.

She glanced at Dragos. He had tilted his head and was watching her closely. “What are you glossing over?”

She sighed. “Anything else I might have to say would be a complaint.”

“Tell me,” he said.

She could tell by his expression that he meant it. “I got carsick and couldn’t eat all day. It was awful. The house is magnificent, but you’re not here. That’s awful too. I’m trying to spare you a long, boring litany of whine.”

He frowned. “Were you able to eat supper?”

“Yes, I stuffed myself.” She paused. “Actually there’s nothing to whine about that supper. It was just damn good.” She peeked at him. “Except you weren’t here to eat with me.”

“And there it is,” he said. “I knew you could get there if you really wanted to.”

She pulled her hand from his and touched his lips. He had such a severe mouth. Like the rest of his hard, rough-edged features, it was stamped with temper and the force of his personality.

Only she knew how tender and gentle that hard-looking mouth could be. It wasn’t fair, to love someone this much and to have it returned in such a fierce, undying tidal wave of passion and devotion. It was completely unfair, that fortune should lavish upon her such an extravagant, rare gift.

“How was your day?” she whispered.

“It went as expected,” he said. “Mostly. No one died. All of the sentinels went through to the next round, but then nobody believed anything different would occur. Graydon—” His gold eyes danced suddenly. “You know what a big motherf*cker Graydon is. He turned into a gryphon, and then he just sat down and looked at his opponent, who forfeited. It was the fastest bout of the day.”

She giggled. Mostly she was relieved to be away from the Games, and they had deliberately arranged for her trip to occur on the same week. She knew it would tie her into wretched knots to watch people she cared about going through the bouts of combat, even though they chose to go through it, and the fighting was in a good cause.

But she didn’t think she could resist watching and fretting if she was in town. At least this way she occupied herself with something that really mattered, and Dragos would stay busy while she was gone.

She said, “I would have liked to have seen that.”

“I’m sure many, many people in the Tower are DVRing the Games. I’ll get somebody to edit that segment out for you.”

“Thank you.” She tilted her head. “And how did Quentin do?”

Dragos said simply, “He’s an elegant fighter. He put his opponent down quickly, and neither one got hurt. But it may not always go so neatly for him. The bouts will get messier and harder as the week progresses.”

She asked, “Was that the unexpected bit of the day?”

The laughter in his eyes died, and his face grew edged and dangerous. For a moment he looked like what he was, a natural-born killer, and she could see the dragon moving at the back of his gaze. Before she could say something the dragon eased back, and then there were other things in his expression, a frown of pain or regret, his mouth tightening in frustration or anger.