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Madja stood on the balcony, taking in the fresh air while she could. In a few days, she’d be back in Sevrrn’s lair. The prospect of being in a sea of gold had never been so dreary.
“You are angry.”
She wasn’t startled when Sevrrn appeared beside her. Over the past few weeks, she had developed a sort of sixth sense when it came to detecting his presence. It probably wasn’t as impressive as it sounded, because the air around him was always charged with an invisible energy.
“I’m not sure how I feel,” she said in all honesty. “Hey, have I ever told you how I ended up in your lair? Why they chose me over everyone else?”
“I never asked,” he said, perturbed by the realization.
“Remember I told you about the family in charge of your tributes, the Kavesh? They’ve had close ties to the royal family for five generations. They hold a lot of influence with the prince, but what a lot of people don’t know is that they’re broke. They have a lot of debt overseas and they used to owe my father a great deal of money. Conveniently, they benefited a lot from his death.
“A year ago, Jerl, the head of the family, wanted me to marry his son. His son wasn’t really a bad man, but I couldn’t possibly marry into that family after what they did to my father. Not to mention, they had their eyes on my mother’s fortune. You see, my father built his own wealth, but my mother was an heiress. Right now, my aunt controls the estate, but she’s really old. When she dies, it all goes to me. Or at least, it would have.”
“I see,” Sevrrn said. “So when you refused, they arranged for you to be sacrificed out of spite?”
“Maybe in part, but more likely it was because of my cousin. I have a younger cousin who’s third in line for the estate. I’d bet anything that Jerl’s son is already pla
“This Jerl sounds like a clever man,” Sevrrn remarked.
Madja didn’t bother arguing. She was begi
“To be honest, I wasn’t too scared about being sacrificed,” Madja said, her mind drifting back in time. “I mean, I cried some, but the more I thought about it, the more I convinced myself that you weren’t real. I imagined that I would find a great big hoard of abandoned treasures. I’d take whatever I could carry, make for the nearest port, and stow away on a ship bound for a far-off continent. Maybe Manduria. Women have equal rights there. I could work as an appraiser and make my own fortune.”
A wistful grin claimed her lips. “I had this crazy fantasy about buying a huge trading vessel. I’d travel back to the island and I’d use my money and influence to undercut all of the Kavesh’s goods.”
Sevrrn did not appear impressed. “You have an odd notion of vengeance. I would simply kill them all.”
Madja couldn’t help but laugh. “You think I should kill the Kavesh?”
His expression perfectly blank, he said, “I could leave for the lair right now, get my scales and fly to the capital. They will all be dead before the night falls.”
To her eternal shame, Madja hesitated.
“No, that wouldn’t be right,” she said, trying to convince herself just as much as him. “Just like it wouldn’t be right to let the island fall to Allona. So many people could die, Sevrrn. You have the power to protect them all.”
“Just as I have the power to aid the Allonans. Then, they would be beholden to me and would pay me proper tribute.”
Madja glared at him. “You already have more treasures than you even know what to do with.”
“I know full well what to do with my treasures,” he replied with a snort.
She felt her shoulders sag. This wasn’t an argument she could win. Over the past few weeks, she had thought she’d seen a change in him. But although he had become better at acting human, it really was just a façade. Underneath the man’s skin, he was nothing more than a dragon.
Was he even capable of compassion?
Would he ever be capable of love?
Or had Madja only been seeing what she wanted to see?
5
Madja was fairly certain that Sevrrn had never felt vulnerable a day in his life. That was the only explanation she could come up with for why he slept like the dead.
Sevrrn could fall asleep on a whim. Literally. He had once explained that he had a near-mastery of all of his biological processes. Apparently, it was one of the prerequisites for being able to take human form, and why only the long-lived and powerful dragons could do so.
After an hour of tossing and turning in bed, Madja finally gave up. She made no effort to be quiet as she wrapped a dress robe around her bed shift, stepped into her slippers, and left the room. By now, she knew that even if the land quaked and split open beneath him, Sevrrn wasn’t climbing out of the hole until sunrise.
There were no lights on in the i
She took a walk along the shore. The last time she had seen the cove at night, Madja had been five-years-old and the myriad ships had looked like shadowed giants, blotting out the horizon. She remembered how big they had seemed and how small they had made her feel. But now, as she looked over the empty cove and out into the vast expanse of ocean, she felt smaller and more insignificant than ever before.
There was nothing that belonged to her. She didn’t even belong to her. She was just another object in an ancient dragon’s sea of possessions. While she didn’t doubt that she fascinated him, she knew deep down that it was only a matter of time before that fascination subsided.
The year before her father died, Madja had fallen head over heels for the handsome son of a Mandurian trader. She had spied him standing at the bow of his father’s ship, bare-chested and gloriously ta
Rather than laugh at how irrational his daughter was being, he had asked why it was she thought she was in love. She had told him how her palms had sweat and how her heart had pounded. She had told him how she had wanted to stand by his side more than she had ever wanted anything in her entire life. Much to her despair, her father had told her that what she was feeling wasn’t unique and it most certainly wasn’t love.
“Love is not a pounding heart or a burning desire,” he had told her. “Those are purely the forces that pull two people together and while they are powerful forces, they can often fade as abruptly as they appeared. Love is what is left once they’re gone. It’s the quiet comfort in knowing that there is someone in the world who values you above all other things.”
How long would it be, how many new and fascinating treasures would it take before Sevrrn lost interest in her? Would she be no different than one of the coins that made up his floor?
Her morbid thoughts remained wrapped around her like a black cloak as she stepped onto the pier. It was busier there. Barrel-chested laborers hauled crates up and down the wooden street, making half-hearted attempts to ignore the giggles and croons of low-level prostitutes.
There was a time when Madja would have been anxious about walking the docks alone at night. After three months of living with a dragon, her threshold for fear had drastically increased. Even so, she couldn’t help but be startled as something slammed into her from behind.