“Can he?”
“Who knows? Outlanders are used to dirt and chaos. Offer them luxuries and they might lose sight of their previous goals,” I said as I took another bite.
“So you’re attending like he wanted?”
“I don’t see why not. If I’m there, things might go smoother. Aren’t you the one that always stresses that peace with humans is the top priority?”
“Peace,” Lukan said. “This doesn’t feel like peace. This seems...odd. Why are you really going?”
Lukan knew me well. I narrowed my eyes at him, swallowing the apple in my mouth.
“I have questions,” I exhaled. “I’ve got a feeling Rikard can answer some of them.”
“Questions about Valerio? Are you really planning to perform a torture interrogation at a gala?”
“Me? Never,” I grinned. “No, I’m just planning to apply a little pressure. And if I’m there and things get messy, I’ll just have to make things more messy for the Falcons. It might buy us a couple more decades of them running around with their tails between their legs.”
“You know,” Lukan leaned on the edge of the table, narrowing his eyes with thought. “Rikard has never been an honorable man. This whole thing could be his idea of getting inside to enact something big.”
“Which is why you and I have to be vigilant. Ares is too busy being a host. He’s never fought wars. Not really. He can’t read men like we can. If I can get close to Rikard, I might be able to fish around in his head a bit.”
“You’d break Draak rules?”
“I wasn’t planning on going deep, but if I had to I would. If it meant keeping scum out of our sectors,” I shrugged. “Besides, those were more Valerio’s rules than mine.”
“Of course,” Lukan said, rubbing his brow. He paused for a moment, taking another sip of his coffee. “So? Have you spoken to Everly yet?”
Her name ignited sparks in my blood, but I kept them from the surface. “About what?” I said.
“About the gala. Ares seemed adamant about her coming.”
“No,” I answered.
“Keera also told me she had a few drinks last night and was going on about a lot of confusing things.”
“What kinds of things?”
Lukan frowned. “Keera was the witness, not me. I just thought with the way you antagonize her you might have tried to rile her up.”
“No,” I shook my head, taking another bite of the apple. “I slept all through the night.”
I finished my apple and stood, patting Lukan on the shoulder before I walked out of the dining room. I grabbed another apple on the way, but kept the core of the finished one for the animals as I made my way outside.
The day was somewhat overcast with heavenly looking rays bleeding from the clouds in warm columns. I took a breath of the fresh, cool air and turned to the pens to see that Everly was still there, watching Ronan play with the young foal from where she sat up high on the wooden fence overlooking both enclosures, her silver hair blowing to one side and exposing her bare neck. Her white sweater was loose, the neckline wide enough to hang slightly off her shoulder as if to torture me. I was almost hard just looking at her, the captivating scars and tattoos peeking from the fabric of her clothes and creeping just slightly up the back of her slender neck. I began walking her way, the breeze carrying her scent to my nose long before I reached her.
As if her awareness of me was as strong as mine was of her, she turned as soon as I was within ten steps of the fence. When her eyes hit mine it felt like a wave of water washing over the otherwise roaring flame that danced inside of me. She looked at me with such an absence of emotion that I wondered if she really had forgotten the previous night, so I played along.
I approached the fence and leaned forward on the highest, wooden beam. Jericho noticed my company from across the vast pen and began walking our way. His mane had been braided all down his neck and when he arrived I could smell Everly’s touch on him. I smiled inside, but kept the expression subtle as I stroked his long muzzle. Feeding him the core of my apple, I looked up at Everly, whose hand was on Jericho’s neck. Something about her was comfortable as if she wasn’t afraid. As if she didn’t want to scratch out my eyes for once, or stab me in the gut. For the first time, I was entirely at a loss when it came to trying to interpret her. The idea of delving into her thoughts was tempting, but I refrained.
“He’s walking,” I commented, watching Ronan run the foal around the opposite fence with a bottle of milk.
Everly looked out across the pen and nodded.
“Took him a while, but he eventually did it,” she said.
“So? What’s his name?”
She looked at me, unsure of my meaning. Raising my brows, I handed her the other apple.
“You’re the one that didn’t give up on him,” I said. “What’s his name?”
Everly hesitated, glancing at the apple like she thought it might be poisoned. After a while, she took it and inclined her head as if in thought.
“Stormcloud,” she said, cupping the apple in her hands as she lowered it in her lap and looked out once more at the foal.
“Stormcloud?” I asked.
“He came into this world covered in blood, being pounded by the rain and cold,” she said, biting into her apple. “Stormcloud is a strong name. He’ll probably be bigger than Jericho,” she smirked.
I smiled lightly, staring at the young horse. He would be big. I could see it like I saw it in Jericho.
“My name was Draek’vehn on Draakon. I was born on a stormy night, just like him,” I gestured toward the foal. I watched Stormcloud run, getting stronger with each stride. “Draek’vehn means ‘horrible storm.’ On Kumir, they couldn’t pronounce Draak names, so they recreated them in their language. They called me Yurah. It’s Kumirian for ‘storm.’ Eventually, they started calling me Draavfen Yurah when our two races became better acquainted. When we came here I became Draven Tempest.”
“Tempest,” Everly said. “Are you trying to make me regret naming the foal Stormcloud?”
“No,” I grinned. “It’s a good name and he’ll live up to it.”
“Did you?” she said, staring at me intently.
“In some ways,” I answered. “I certainly am very good at destroying things. I always have been. I always will be.”
There was a long stretch of silence that swelled between us as we watched Ronan finally stop and allow the foal to feed. I was entranced by my own thoughts and the sight of the premature little horse on its feet. I let my hand slide down Jericho’s cheek blindly and when I felt the warm, velvety flesh of Everly’s fingers under mine, we both turned. She pulled away quickly from Jericho’s neck and took a breath, filling her mouth with another bite of her apple.
“How’d you sleep last night?” I asked, internally chuckling at how uncomfortable the question might make her.
“Like shit,” she said. “I had a lot to drink. I was tossing and turning.”
“Is that all?” I teased.
She turned, eyes narrow with aggravation. Her irritation was like a lighter sparking. She twisted her body, throwing the half eaten apple at me. I reached up and grabbed hold of her wrist. It was just a teasing gesture, but I noticed a thin, white strip of cotton wrapped around her palm. Quickly analyzing her shirt, I saw that the strip had been torn from the hem and cocked my head with interest. I smelled blood now. Not much, but it was there. She tried to pull away, but her lack of strength reminded me how human she was. I held firm, reaching with my other hand to take off the cotton wrappings.
“Let me go, Draven,” she demanded, her voice taking on that feisty tone that first drew me to her, though now I found it appealing in a much different way.
Everly pulled harder, standing on the fence as if to leap down and escape me, but as soon as she was about to jump forward I tugged on her, sending her tumbling back over the top railing and right into my arms. She sucked in a startled gasp, instinctively grabbing hold of my shoulders as I care
fully lowered her feet to the ground, my arms caging her against the fence.
Her eyes glistened when a ray of gold sunlight fell over her face and suddenly I felt as if I was the tormented one. Her muscles were tense. A strand of silver hair blew across her cheeks. Her lips were parted just enough to make her look concerned, but that look baited something in me that wouldn’t stop reminding me how much I thirsted for her.
“The game is over,” I said to her with a faint smile.
“No it’s not,” she denied.
I reached down, taking her wrist again in my hand and turning her palm up to unwrap it. Beneath were two cuts that had stopped bleeding, but one looked to have been pretty serious only moments before I came outside. I sighed, looking at Everly like she was a child who was costing me too much money on medical bills.
“I’ve only known you for a short time and yet you’ve been bleeding almost every day,” I pointed out. “What’s this?”
“There was a nail on one of the stable beams,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I had a hangover. I got a headache. I grabbed the beam. The nail cut me.” She tried to pull away, but my grip made her hiss with pain. “Dammit, Draven.”
I leaned in, brows raised. “I can heal it.”
“I’d rather you didn’t. I don’t want to get used to it.”
“Stubborn woman,” I said. “Then let me dress it properly.”
“I can do it myself.”
“If this is any testament to your skills in dressing a wound.” I held up the bloodied fabric. “Then no.”
I led Everly back inside, passing Keera on the way. I kept hold of Everly’s wrist the whole way, suspicious she’d run off if I didn’t drag her along.
Walking to a wash room just inside, I grabbed a small bag of clean gauze, cloth, and some disinfectants before taking her back out into the sitting room. Forcing her into the leather chair, I pulled up the step stool and sat down in front of her. She leaned forward, elbows on her knees, as I poured some mild disinfectant onto the cloth. When the urge to care for her started to identify itself as such, I began to wonder if this was a step forward or a step backward from the man I was. Perhaps my feelings would change in the next couple days. Perhaps they wouldn’t. The problem was in admitting that I didn’t know what I was feeling at all.
28
Everly
. . .
Dammit, I cursed myself.
Every time Draven touched me it got harder to avoid thinking of what had happened between us the previous night. I pretended it was a dream, telling myself over and over that I hadn’t gone into his room and practically thrown myself under him like an offering. Gods, it was taking everything I had not to turn bright red with shame and disappointment. I wanted to scream every time I recalled our bodies conjoined in that way.
I let him take me. I let him be the first. Without any fight whatsoever. I practically asked him to. No, I demanded he take me and he did. I remembered the pain, but more than that, I remembered the pleasures. I remembered wanting to kiss him. Wanting to feel him inside me. I couldn’t even explain the desires to myself because I’d never felt them before. Even now I was doing everything in my power not to fall forward into his lap and kiss him again. What was wrong with me?
Draven took my hand in his and gently cleaned the dried blood from my latest wound. I didn’t get it from being hungover, but of course I couldn’t tell him that. I’d gotten it from knocking over a pile of supplies in the stables while I was enraged over my poor choices. To top it off, I was enraged that I enjoyed my poor choices.
Draven was honest about one thing at least. He did show me pleasures I’d never felt before and I did feel guilty for it. All of it. This man sitting in front of me killed my mentor. The only person to ever show me kindness after Crescent Cove was ashes. I wanted so badly to hate him and the fact that I didn’t anymore was making me hate myself. He’d won his stupid game and now I half expected him to throw me to the wolves just to finish me off. Still, he handled my newest injury with a kind of tenderness that I never would have expected when I first laid eyes on him.
I watched his hands tend to my cuts with precision, my heart betraying my secrets when it began to beat faster in my chest. I knew he’d noticed. He knew everything that was going on with my body and I knew he didn’t believe me for one second when I’d hidden the fact that I remembered our night together. Even if I’d forgotten, the soreness between my legs gave it away. What about this man was the least bit redeemable? I needed to find something, if only to make myself feel less horrible about surrendering to him, even if just for one, poorly thought out night of indulgence.
“Who was Valerio to you?” I asked, unable to think of anything else to say as Draven began rubbing some kind of ointment on the cuts with gentle fingers. He didn’t answer for a while as if he doubted I’d asked. “I mean he couldn’t have just been a Draakir member. Your anger outdoes everyone else’s put together.”
His eyes rose up, his motions pausing when he heard my question like he hadn’t expected it. When the query had processed, he continued what he was doing.
“He was my brother,” he answered, his voice a much softer tone than I’d ever heard from him before.
“That doesn’t tell me much,” I pointed out.
“No,” he shook his head, taking the fresh gauze out of the bag. “I mean he was my blood brother. We were twins. Born only minutes apart.”
I was a bit taken aback by the idea and inclined my head with curiosity. “Twins? I heard about a pair of Draak twins in the sectors when I was little. You’re not going to tell me that was you, are you? People talked about you two like you really were gods.”
“Draak siblings are rare. Most females can’t give birth to more than one let alone two at once. Ash Bringers, however, were mothered by a particularly aggressive race of women.”
“Red witches,” I said. “I heard about them once or twice.”
Draven nodded to confirm my information was correct before he continued.
“Valerio was wiser and more rational.”
“Hmf. That’s not hard to believe.”
“I’ll never deny it. Valerio was level-headed. He was the part of us that avoided violence and sought resolution. He negotiated well and he had a knack for getting people to agree with him. I, on the other hand, was violent. I prefered blood over words. The two traits together did a lot of great things. We were stronger as one.” He paused for a moment, slowly wrapping the new bandages around my cleaned cuts. “He disappeared for a year or so, wandering the world trying to make alliances with human settlements in the outer territories. I thought it was pointless.”
“Let me guess. You’ve never had enough faith in humanity to think he was doing the right thing.”
“Humanity barely has faith in itself. Valerio did, however. He saw the potential in everything and everyone. In his search for humanity's potential, he died. I felt it. I felt the pain and desperation as he slipped away from me. We’re incredibly hard to kill and yet someone stole him from the world quicker than I could stop them.”
Tying off the bandage, he took a deep breath and stared at me, the red and gold embers in his eyes pulsing subtly with life. They were so captivating that I felt like a fish on a hook as I gazed into them. For once, they weren’t raging with disdain. For once, they looked deeper than one, violent emotion. Layers of warm colors gave them a complexity that I couldn’t turn away from.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured.
I blinked with surprise, uncertain what I’d just heard. “What?”
He didn’t elaborate, but even so, I knew exactly what he was apologizing for and it twisted my heart to hear it. My eyes warmed as tears fought to escape, but I held them firmly back. Draven lowered his eyes, showing only an instant of guilt in his posture before he took a deep breath and buried that emotion deep inside himself again.
I looked down at our hands. His was cupped beneath mine, his other sliding softly over my newly wrapped palm. Just before his
fingers left mine, I gripped them lightly and held his gaze for a moment longer, my mind feeling more vulnerable than it had ever been in my life. There was a lock on the box that was my thoughts and I was the only one with the key until now.
“I came to you last night,” I confessed, almost inaudibly. “Like you wanted. Did you even plan past that? What will you do with me now?”
My heartbeat thumped loudly in my ears and I was so tense I was scarcely breathing. When he shifted, leaning forward a bit more, I could smell the vetiver on him and it made my cheeks hot with desire.
“Ares is holding a gala in a few days,” Draven said. “Come with me.”
“A gala?” I said, unsure exactly what that had to do with me.
“A rebel leader and some of his men will be there. Rikard Selik. He’s associated with the Falcons. If either of us are going to get real answers about what happened between Taurus and Valerio, the gala might be a place to start.”
He wanted my help? “What can I do at an event like that?”
“You’re human,” Draven said with a smirk. “Appeal to his human side.”
“His other side being...?”
“A twisted monster in a human skin. He was a slave trader decades ago. Pikes, humans, and young Draak alike. Now he’s calling himself a rebel, but the only person he’s fighting for is himself.”
“So I’m a spy?” I asked.
Draven hesitated again, his eyes falling to my lips. Dammit, just knowing he was thinking of kissing me made my breath stop.
“If you want to be,” he whispered.
I could barely think of anything else when he was that close. I wondered if that was his intention. Either way, if there was a way to find out what happened between Taurus and Valerio by going to the gala, a large part of me was more than willing.
“I want to find the truth,” I said.
Once we’d parted, I didn’t see much more of Draven until night began to darken the property again. I ate, dressed in my night clothes, and found myself alone in my room staring out the window at the darkened yard. The sky was filled with stars that night, like someone had thrown glitter across a black sheet. The moon was an unfinished orb and the night was quiet with a soft breeze that blew in from my cracked window to cool my hot skin.
Ash Bringer (A Storm of Fire: Paranormal Dragonshifter Romance Book 1) Page 21