The Dragon’s Appraiser: Part Two (5 page)

“I told you before, I am
not
one of your trinkets.”

She hadn’t realized that they were shouting at one another until there was a soft knock at the door. They both froze as they heard the nervous voice of the innkeeper’s daughter.

“Is everything all right in there?”

No, nothing is all right
.

“We’re fine,” Madja said weakly. “Thank you.”

The young woman excused herself, but lingered at the door for another moment. When they could hear the sound of her footsteps heading down the hallway, Sevrrn released Madja’s wrist. Appearing to come back to his senses, he rolled off her.

“We will be returning to the mountain at first light. I have had enough of this town.”

Not willing to start another fight, Madja turned on her side to face away from him. Tears stung her eyes, but she refused to cry. What would be the point?

Never before had she felt so unbearably human.

S
evrrn was already awake
the next morning and Madja sensed that he hadn’t slept. Remarkably, exhaustion had claimed her quickly. But despite a few hours of rest, she felt hollow inside and out.

They ate a quick breakfast and bid the innkeeper goodbye. The pier was littered with garbage and the remains of the fireworks. Fireworks for a dragon who had been sleeping the whole time.

Only the fishermen were awake as they set out, and Madja could still hear them laughing and singing in the distance as she and Sevrrn passed through the town gates. She followed a few paces behind Sevrrn, like a trout on his line.

It was nearly noon when her resentment had simmered down enough to speak with him.

“They lit fireworks for you last night. They were amazing.”

Sevrrn kept his eyes on the forest trail. Raindrops fell steadily from the grey sky, but somehow, he remained dry.

“The Firelight Festival?”

Eyes widening, she picked up the pace to walk alongside of him. “You were there?”

“If I had been awake, I would have to find you,” he said, all but glaring. “I was asleep, but I know of the festival. It used to be every year and it would last a week. It is why I made this human form.”

“To go to the festival?”

“In ancient times, I would bend the light around myself and watch the festival from the sky. But I was curious to know why the humans worshiped me, and so I made this body so that I could walk among them. It is how I learned their languages and some of their customs.”

Madja realized that this was one of the only times he had ever spoken about his past with her, which in turn prompted a question. Why?

She had always known he was old. He was one of the four original dragons—Sevrrn the golden dragon, Valdyra the red, Belphinir the green, and Kael the black. They were living legends and fabled to be as old as the world itself. In the vast expanse of his lifetime, Sevrrn must have seen and experienced so much. Yet for some reason, he seemed to live entirely in the present.

“You never told me that,” she said.

He said again, “It used to be every year, The Firelight Festival. Now it is one night—and that is only when they need me.”

“If you protect Erda, they’ll be talking about it for centuries,” she said in an attempt to appeal to his ego.

Sevrrn made a sound that was almost a laugh. “All it will take is two generations and then they will grow lax in their worship. They will forget about me until they need me again.”

He stopped, and she realized that they had reached the summit of a hill. The trees were thinner, and as she followed the direction of his gaze, Madja could see the town of Bern and the cove.

Under the protection of the dragon, Erda had never built up any sizable military. There was a small militia in each town and two warships in the capital, but they had nowhere near the naval might of the sprawling nations and empires that surrounded them. Without Sevrrn, the people were doomed.

Sevrrn’s smooth voice broke through her thoughts. “You believe that if you had the same power as I, you would use it differently.”

She gave a slight nod and he frowned in response.

“You do not see the world as I do.” He pointed towards the cove, his eyes becoming distant. “For all your knowledge of the world, everything that you have learned in your two decades of life is a single raindrop in the ocean of my existence. I was young when the world was new, the continents were one, and only my kin and the old gods walked the land. I was already ancient when your species was only just climbing down from the trees. I have heard these humans beg for my protection a thousand times and I have saved them a thousand times, and it has all been for nothing.”

As he spoke, Madja could see all of time reflected in his eyes. Primordial deities, land masses torn apart, volcanic explosions, and fire—so much fire. She felt the sheer magnitude of Sevrrn’s existence and it almost overwhelmed her.

Then she blinked, and it was all gone.

For a moment, she felt deeply unsettled. She searched his eyes, looking for some glimmer of the past, but found nothing. Only an expectant look, as though he were waiting for her to understand something. And then, she did.

She had wondered why Sevrrn never spoke about the past, why he seemed to live only in the whims of the present. It was to protect himself. His lifetime, it was too much, maybe even for a dragon.

She placed her cold, wet hand inside his warm, dry one and squeezed. “My mother’s family has lived on this island for centuries. If it weren’t for you protecting my ancestors, I probably would have never existed. So…it wasn’t for nothing. I’m here because of you.”

Sevrrn’s expression was blank, but with his free arm, he drew her into his warm embrace. She nuzzled her head into his chest, breathing in his rich scent. For a few moments, she let herself be lulled by the sound of his heart and the rise and fall of his chest.

“I will take this into consideration, Madja O’aer.”

F
or the rest
of the journey, Sevrrn appeared to be in deep thought. Madja hoped that he was truly considering the defense of the island. As she’d already made so much progress that day, she decided not to prod him. It would probably be weeks before the island was in any real danger and she would have plenty of time to subtly steer him towards protecting it. As much as she wanted to see the Kavesh family—and the whole government in general—suffer for what they did to her, her own grievances weren’t worth the thousands of innocent men, women, and children that inhabited Erda.

Madja felt surprisingly giddy when they stepped into the lair. All-too eagerly, she flung her shoes off and dashed towards the lake, running at full speed. She had missed the feeling of coins beneath her feet and was excited at the prospect of sleeping in fine silks again.

More than anything, she was happy to be back in her bubble with Sevrrn. She couldn’t undo the night before and she didn’t want to. But she knew that their fight had stemmed from not understanding one another and she couldn’t give up on him. She couldn’t change Sevrrn’s past, but she was very much a part of his future.

When she reached the lake, Madja stripped away the layers of her clothes. Sevrrn caught up to her as she was removing her inner-slip, his garnet eyes making a detached assessment of her body. Since the first time they’d had sex, they’d never gone two full days without doing something, and so she was curious as to why he wasn’t trying to make a move. She wanted to believe that he was being considerate about her feelings, which were still a little raw.

“What’s on your mind?” she asked. As a general rule, she anticipated even the most bizarre responses from the dragon, but this one caught her totally off-guard.

“I was thinking of the prostitute we encountered at the marketplace.”

Madja froze, allowing the slip to fall back in place over her body. Telling herself not to overreact, she straightened her spine and folded her arms under her breasts.

“What about her?” she asked in an even tone.

“There is something I cannot make sense of,” he said, appearing rather perplexed. “I cannot figure out why she would think that I would pay for the use of her body. Is she particularly skilled at mating? Does she know how to do things that you do not? And if so, what sorts of things?”

He looked at Madja as though she would answer these questions. Madja was too busy trying not to scream. Her hands fisted and her jaw clenched and unclenched several times before she could find adequate words.

In a deceptively calm voice, she replied, “If you’re so curious, why don’t you go and ask her yourself?”

To her horror, he considered this, but then said, “That is impractical. We only just arrived back at the lair.”

No longer interested in bathing, Madja bent to gather her clothes. While she did so, Sevrrn continued to speak.

“I do not think I would want to mate with her anyway. I found her scent distasteful. She has lain with many males.”

Ignoring him, Madja stood and set out for her bed. He followed.

As if the thought had just occurred to him, he asked, “Have you been with many males?”

Coming to an abrupt halt, Madja spun around on one heel to face him. “No, I told you before that you were my first.”

“Ah, yes.”

It wasn’t like him to forget anything, and looking past the haze of her own anger, she could see that Sevrrn looked extremely discontent.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked.

It was at least a minute before he answered, and she could see the dragon’s mind working overtime to process whatever foreign emotions he was dealing with.

“When you say that I am your ‘first’, it implies that there will a second,” he said. “There will
not
be.”

He’s jealous
, she realized. As a dragon, Sevrrn was naturally possessive of everything he owned, Madja included. But jealousy, that must have been an entirely new experience for him. It implied resentment, which in turn implied a sense of injury, real or imagined. The night before, Sevrrn hadn’t been being his normal possessive self. When he’d smelled the other men on her, he’d been jealous. How had she not realized that?

Had Madja been a slightly better woman, she would have sat him down and had a long talk about the new feeling he was experiencing. She would help him better understand jealousy, teach him how to cope with it, and even offer him reassurance that she was his and his alone.

But, she was only human and still a little mad and a little jealous herself. And so, she screwed up. Royally.

“Who knows?” she said, casually tossing a lock of hair over her shoulder. “Maybe there won’t be a second man and maybe there will. Maybe I’m also curious to find out what other men have to offer.”

For a split second, Madja felt supremely smug. After everything he’d put her through in the past two days, those words were exactly what he deserved to hear.

Then, she felt bad. Sevrrn genuinely didn’t know the effect his words could have on others, but she did and she had deliberately tried to hurt him during a rare moment when he was vulnerable.

Then, she felt frightened. Much like jealousy, hurt and sadness were two things Sevrrn had yet to understand and he handled them the same way he handled any other offense. He got angry.

Face contorting with rage, Sevrrn’s hand shot out. He grabbed the front of her slip and gave it a hard jerk, pulling her in close so that he could glare down at her. His pupils had narrowed to thin slits.

“There is nothing another male can do for you that I cannot,” said the dragon. “If you ever let another male touch you again, I will kill him.”

For a moment they stood like that, both trembling. Madja could hear nothing except her own shallow breaths and the sound of her heartbeat hammering in her ears.

When she got over her own shock, she saw that Sevrrn was just as alarmed as she was. Eyes wide, he released her and took a step back. He stared at his hand and then at her slip, which he had torn. Her gaze moved to his face and Madja recognized another new emotion in them.

Regret.

She knew that it was something he needed to feel, but her first instinct was to soothe him. Taking a step forward, she placed her hands on his face. For the first time, his skin felt cool to the touch.

“I don’t want any other man. I only want you.”

She pulled him down for a slow and gentle kiss. He allowed her to set the pace for a few seconds.

Then, something within him snapped.

Her delicate sense of equilibrium was overturned as he gave her a forceful shove. Too startled to react quickly enough, she went falling fast. Her back hit the floor with a hard thud and all of the breath left her body. Vision blurring, everything temporarily became a haze of gold.

She drew in a breath—to cry?

To scream?

To whimper?

She wasn’t sure, because no sooner were her lungs full of air, Sevrrn was on top of her, kissing her savagely. Sound erupted from within her in the form of a prolonged moan. The noise only incited him further.

His sharp fangs cut her bottom lip, drawing blood. It wasn’t the first time he had done this in a fever of passion, but this time it felt deliberate. While his tongue thrust into her mouth, drowning out protests that weren’t there, his claws raked up her thighs, leaving a trail of burning flesh.

Knowing there was no fighting against him, she did everything she could to calm him. When his canines sunk into her neck, she caressed his face with shaking fingers. When he shoved her thighs apart, she wrapped her arms around his neck. When he shoved her thighs apart and positioned his massive body between them, she whispered soothing words to him.

“It’s okay.”

“I’m here
.”

She had every reason to be angry, to feel violated, but she could see beyond his barbaric handling of her body. Chaotic emotions swarmed in the depths of his eyes.

One of his large hands wrapped around her neck. It wasn’t tight, but it didn’t need to be.

Madja remembered the night before, when she had wanted to hurt him. She had wanted to cause him physical pain because she had believed there was nothing she could possibly say that would hurt his heart the way that he was hurting hers.

She wasn’t afraid of him. Sevrrn didn’t want to hurt her. He wanted to show her how she made him feel. She had spent her whole life learning to cope with her humanity, but Sevrrn was drowning in it.

“You are mine.” His beautiful, elegant voice was gone, replaced by the harsh rasp of the dragon.

She placed her hands over his. “You don’t need to do this. You already have every part of me. I’m yours.”

With a low growl of satisfaction, Sevrrn released her neck. His arms moved behind her back to cradle her torso. Then, he thrust himself deep inside of her.

In a startling juxtaposition, he held her in almost tender embrace as his cock thrust in and out of her with a fervor that bordered on violence. Hopelessly overwhelmed, Madja latched onto Sevrrn as tightly as she could, not thinking, only feeling.

The raw energy that usually coursed beneath the surface of his skin came alive. It crackled around him, seeping into her pores and down her throat with each shallow breath she managed to take in. His power amplified the pressure building within her, taking her to a height she had not known existed.