Страница 2 из 15
There was something off about the snags in his white-gold hair, which was usually groomed with meticulous precision. She also noticed that his scaled robe was slightly uneven, exposing a large section of his muscular chest. Madja was glad that she wasn’t feeling well, thus making it easier to keep up the pretense that she wasn’t impossibly attracted to him.
“You shouldn’t have let me sleep so late,” she said, coming to sit beside him.
Sevrrn’s gaze swept over her, his mouth curling with evident disapproval. “I tried to wake you. Twice. The second time, you slapped me.”
He pointed to his cheek, presumably where she had struck him, but any evidence that would implicate her had long since faded. Madja pressed her lips together so as not to grin.
“I don’t remember that at all.” Her words were quickly followed by a sneeze that sent a bolt of discomfort racing up her skull.
“Are you ill?” he asked.
“It’s nothing,” Madja said with a small wave of her hand. “Just a little cold. I must have picked it up when we went to town.”
His eyes widened. “Where? Why?”
This time, she couldn’t suppress her grin. “There’s no way to say where exactly, and I didn’t get sick on purpose. It just happens to us humans sometimes.”
“Do you become sick often?”
“I did when I was a kid,” she said. “Now, I suppose I get sick as often as the next person. Do dragons ever get sick?”
“Never,” he told her. “What will happen to you?”
Madja could tell that he was worried, and she’d be lying if she said it didn’t make her a little happy. Thankfully for Sevrrn, she wasn’t feeling particularly vindictive, and so she tried to reassure him.
“Nothing much. My nose will be ru
He didn’t seem convinced. “When Erda began trading by sea, foreigners brought sickness to the island. The humans developed lesions on their skin. They filled with black pus, and then burst. The lesions oozed for a week, until they became infected. Then, the humans would begin to vomit bile and—”
“That sounds like the Rat Plague,” Madja said, wanting to cut him off more than anything else. Bile was rising in her own throat and she couldn’t stomach another moment of his grisly account. “I read about that once. It happened almost a thousand years ago.”
“One thousand twenty-four human years ago,” he said. “I went to the festival that year. There were dead rotting in the streets and not enough living to bury them.” His eyes narrowed. “But, they still had fireworks that year.”
The fireworks were how the islanders honored Sevrrn, their patron god and protector. To Sevrrn, it may have seemed like the people of the island were exceptionally devout. Even when they were dying en masse, they still took the time to pay tribute to him.
It had probably never occurred to him that it was then that they needed him more than ever.
It had probably never occurred to the islanders that their god was no more capable of saving them than they were of saving themselves.
If only they had saved their money on festivities and bought medicine instead.
“That was a long time ago, and it was a plague, which is a lot different than a seasonal cold.” She rolled up the sleeves of her robe, baring her arms to Sevrrn. “Look: no pus-filled lesions.”
Sevrrn took her arm by the wrist. Her skin seemed coarse and ruddy in comparison to his smooth, pearlescent texture. He pulled her arm up to his face for what she thought was a thorough examination. Sevrrn surprised her by placing a kiss on her palm.
The uncharacteristically tender gesture made her throat constrict. She gave him a tight smile and pulled her arm back.
“Well,” she said, awkwardly gesturing at the objects on the floor. “Shall we get started?”
Sevrrn was visibly disgruntled as she began appraising, and Madja could hardly blame him. She wasn’t sure how long she could stay angry with him, or why she had even bothered being angry in the first place. After all, Sevrrn had been completely honest with her.
Would you die for me?
As soon as she’d said it, Madja realized how stupid the question was. They’d only been together a few months and she was the first lover he had ever taken. He was still muddling through a quagmire of foreign emotions and could barely even articulate his feelings for her. If that wasn’t enough, she’d asked him an absurdly ridiculous and unrealistic question. Would he give up his entire existence for her?
Even now, Madja wanted to roll her eyes. Under what circumstances would Sevrrn’s life even be in jeopardy? How could her life even hang in the balance of his sacrifice? It was downright stupid of her to ask him such a question.
But…
It wasn’t so much his answer that had hurt her. It was how he answered.
No.
Firm, decisive, absolute, and requiring zero consideration. He hadn’t needed to think about it for a second. Wasn’t she worth even a second’s thought?
And it hurt all the more because Madja knew that if he had posed the same, ridiculous question to her, she wouldn’t have hesitated either.
Yes.
Even knowing that he wouldn’t do the same, Madja would still die for him. Of course, there were many factors that went into that. Like, how she was just an unimportant, mortal woman and he was an ancient dragon and the guardian of an entire civilization. What was her life compared to that?
But there was also that great and terrible fact: the fact that she was in love with him.
Madja wasn’t sure when she had started having feelings for him. Probably sometime around the first time they’d made love. Sex had a way of forging an artificial bond between two people. A bond that, if given time and adequate emotional investment, could grow into something substantive and powerful.
And in Madja’s case, it had. Over the two months that they’d lived together, shared meals together, and talked about the world, she had fallen in love with the dragon. It was partly his remarkable beauty, which never ceased to captivate her. It was also his fascination with history, something she’d never encountered in any man aside from her father. It was even his intelligence, which in matters of logic was astoundingly keen, but hilariously and endearingly inept in most other things. And after every day of being drawn deeper and more inexorably close to him, they would share what had to be the most amazing and passionate lovemaking. Then, he would hold her in his arms, and she felt as though a part of him was slowly seeping into her skin, down into the very marrow of her bones.
Yes, Madja undoubtedly loved him.
And therein lay the disparity.
Would you die for me?
Absurd as it was, that question highlighted the fundamental truth of their relationship. Sevrrn meant more to her, than she meant to him. It would probably always be that way, and there was little she could ever do to change it.
And it hurt.
“What?”
Madja looked up from the votive statue in her hands. Sevrrn was staring at her intently, his elegant brows creased.
“Huh?” she asked.
“Your words, you slurred them.”
Madja blushed. She’d been appraising on autopilot and had barely been aware that she was even speaking. “Oh, sorry. What was I saying?”
Sevrrn ignored the question. “You’re sweating.”
She reached up to swipe at her forehead, finding that there was in fact a sheen of sweat covering it.
“I must have a fever,” she said. “Can you feel my forehead?”
For once, he seemed intimidated. “Feel for what?”
“If I have a fever, my body temperature will be elevated and I won’t be able to tell if my forehead is hot. I’ll need you to check for me.”
Appearing to understand, Sevrrn placed a hand on her forehead. His pressed into a thin line.