Dragon Rose(22)

I sat up in bed, and realized that wash of bright light was only the sun, now pouring in through the window. But hadn’t I pulled the curtains the night before?

At the moment I couldn’t quite recall what I had done in the depths of my terror. And even now, my thoughts seemed less consumed by my discovery that the lord of the castle was, in fact, a dragon than the vision even now fading from my mind’s eye.

I pushed the covers aside and fairly leapt from the bed, intent on the pens and pencils scattered across the worktable in the alcove. A pencil came to hand first, and so I grasped it and found a clean piece of paper, then began to sketch. A few quick strokes to get down those clean features, although even as the pencil moved across the paper I wondered whether I was getting it right, whether his nose was not quite that aquiline, and whether the longish hair touched the top of his collar or brushed past it. And as I sat there the image was gone again, and I was left only with those hasty pencil marks to prove I hadn’t conjured him completely from my imagination.

From the other room I heard the sound of footsteps. Melynne with my breakfast tray, most likely.

At once I was overcome by the impulse to hide what I had been doing. I shoved the half-finished sketch between a few sheets of blank paper and turned to face the doorway. My greeting to Melynne died on my lips, for it was not she who faced me, but Sar, looking grimmer than I had ever seen her.

She carried a breakfast tray, but all it held was a bowl of hot wheat cereal, and not even some of the raspberries that grew wild along the mountain roads. This time she did not bother to disguise her sniff as she took in my posture at the worktable, the pencil still clutched in my right hand.

“At it already, my lady?” she inquired in acid tones.

It did not take a good deal of perception to realize she was angry with me, and I knew the probable reason why. It must be an unsettling thing to have one’s lord and master take to the skies in the form of a dragon, even if that sort of thing had happened before.

“Just some scribbling.”

Another sniff, and she set down the tray in the single empty space on my table. Even so, one edge of the tray nudged a paintbrush, which fell onto the floor and rolled off into a corner. She did not bother to retrieve it.

Perhaps it would have been better to bear her anger in silence, thank her, and have her leave, but I felt a little flare of irritation myself. After all, how was I to know that a few unguarded words would be enough to raise such an ire in Theran Blackmoor that he would apparently be forced into his dragon form?

Beyond the annoyance, though, was worry over what I had said to him, and his reaction to it. With the return of the bright morning light, the terrors of the night before seemed to pale somewhat. He had not attacked me, although it certainly had been within his means to do so.

“Was he—was he very angry?”

This time her dark eyes narrowed, but then she seemed to pause and truly look at me. I thought I saw her mouth soften just the slightest bit, although she said nothing.

“I didn’t mean to upset him,” I went on, my words rushed, spilling over themselves. “Truly I didn’t. It’s only—well, too many times the words come out before I have time to think of them. I should learn to guard my tongue. The gods know my mother has told me that often enough.”

Somehow the image of my mother chiding me for some long-forgotten transgression, and the memory of the disappointment in her voice, brought a choking sensation to my throat. Hot tears caught at my eyes, and I blinked. I did not want to break down now, not here in front of Sar, but thinking of my mother only brought to mind the understanding that I would never see her again, never hear one of her exasperated sighs or her warm, rueful laughs. And with that realization came a flood of sorrow I didn’t even realize had been pent up inside me until I let it go.

I bent my head and wept, bringing my hands to my face in a childish attempt to conceal my misery. But then I felt Sar’s arms go around me, and one hand stroke my loose, tangled hair.

“There, there, child,” she said. “I won’t say not to weep, because I know it’s hard, to be torn from everything you’ve known and brought to a strange place.”

“I didn’t—didn’t mean to hurt him.” I brought up a hand to wipe away the tears, and from somewhere within her voluminous sleeves Sar extracted a handkerchief and pushed it into my damp palm. After I had wiped my eyes and blotted my nose, she said,

“I don’t suppose you did.” Arms crossed, she surveyed me for a moment, and again her expression softened, as if she truly saw me for the first time. “He thinks very highly of you.”

“He—he does?”

“Indeed. And I don’t say that lightly, for it is not his way to praise others.”

The hurt I had caused him must have been all the worse for that. Oh, why did I not stop my foolish tongue before it uttered things I would only wish later unsaid? The fears of the previous night seemed very far away. At the moment I could only think of how he must have felt when I had so lightly broken the fragile regard that had begun to grow between us.

“I want to apologize,” I said. “Will he see me, do you think?”

She hesitated. “I will have to see. He is always weary…the morning after. Perhaps later today.”

“Of course.” What must it take from him, to have his body rent asunder and turned into something so alien? Weary? I would think he’d wish to sleep for a hundred years after such a cataclysm.