by Zoe Chant
"This entire village is like something that time forgot," Jess murmured to Reive. "I wonder if it's like this at least partly because of Mace."
She expected Reive to ask her what she meant, but instead he nodded. "Dragon clans sometimes take local human villages under their protection. My clan doesn't have one, but I've visited them. They're often like this, a little bit old-fashioned and unique."
"That's just what I was thinking. Like the entire place has wrapped itself around Mace, a little bit. Does that make any sense?"
"It does." Reive smiled slightly.
Reive was rubbing his stone arm again through his jacket sleeve.
"Are you hurting?" Jess asked gently. "Here ... let me."
She laid a hand on his arm. Beneath the sleeve, his arm was hard and unyielding, but the rest of his body relaxed somewhat.
"Does this help?" she asked.
"It does, but ..." He took a breath, strangely shallow, and she wondered with a stab of worry if the stone was affecting his lungs now. "I can't just ask you to walk around holding my arm."
"How about if I hold your hand instead?" Jess slid her hand down to clasp the stiff fingers covered with the glove. "There, now people will just think we're one of those insufferable PDA couples who can't resist holding hands all the time. No problem."
She was smiling as she said it, but then her eyes prickled with tears and she had to blink rapidly to fight them back.
This was going to work. She refused to think otherwise. She couldn't find him and then lose him immediately. She wouldn't.
A strange feeling stirred inside her, a kind of core-deep agreement. For an instant she almost thought she could hear the grinding rustle of great stone wings.
"Are you all right?" Reive asked.
Jess blinked at him. "Do I not look all right?"
"You just got the strangest look on your face."
"Oh. I ... um. You told me once that shifters can talk to the instinctive part of yourself. I don't, not really, but ..." She hesitated, not wanting to offend him if it was something private. But he looked alert and attentive, listening to her, so she went on. "Do you actually hear them? Is it words?"
"Sort of. It's hard to explain. It's not that we hear our animals with our ears, exactly. It's more that—"
"You just know what they're saying," she said.
"Exactly."
"I think I do actually have that, now that I'm listening for it. Just maybe not quite in the same way you do."
Reive smiled, and put his good hand over the one she was holding. "Something else we have in common."
Jess smiled, but deep down inside, in that same hidden part of her soul, uneasiness stirred.
She had come all this way hoping to find a cure for her condition. Even if Mace didn't know how, there might be someone else who could.
But if a shifter's animal side was really just the instinctive side of themselves, then the gargoyle part of her was still her. Even if she somehow found a way to undo it ... wouldn't it be like getting rid of half her soul?
Who would she even be without it?
Reive
Reive felt that he could have stayed here forever with Jess's hands wrapped in his own, her presence a soothing balm to the aches in his body. But the tightness in his chest made it clear that, however much he appreciated having her with him, Jess could only add so much extra time to Reive's personal clock.
"We should probably be getting back," Jess said before Reive could say anything, and he nodded.
She set a pace up the hill that he could easily keep up with, even with his breath coming short. He was grateful and also frustrated with himself; if not for Jess, he probably would have pushed himself up the hill anyway. But that would have meant striding off ahead of her ... and then probably collapsing to catch his breath on the first steep stretch of hill that he came to.
So he told himself it wasn't that it was necessary, exactly. It was just that it was a very nice day and he couldn't think of a nicer way to spend it than strolling up the hill, hand in hand with his mate.
It was a far more pleasant thing to dwell on than the hitch in his breathing, and an even more worrying ache somewhere deep in his chest, that even the painkilling effects of Jess's touch couldn't quite sooth. He wondered how much longer he had.
We will beat this. For our mate.
But his dragon's voice seemed strangely muted again, more like it had been in the early stages of this illness, when he had first begun to have trouble making contact with it. Jess's presence had brought his dragon out, but now even that effect seemed to be wearing off.
"You know, it occurs to me that we hardly know anything about each other," Jess said. Her voice was soft, but it suited the quiet calm of the hillside. "I can't believe I've only known you for a few days. It seems like so much longer. What kinds of things do you like, Reive? What's your favorite food?"
"Cheeseburgers," he said promptly, and she giggled. "Why? Is that an odd answer?"
"It's just that I would have expected something more exotic from a dragon, I guess."
"Hey, keep in mind I'm a dragon who grew up on a mountain in the middle of nowhere," Reive pointed out. "Cheeseburgers are exotic, for me at least. I hardly ever got to have them. Also, most shifters like meat. Especially dragons. What about you?"
"My favorite food, or do I like meat?"
"Either."
"Hmm. I do like meat, though I don't know if I like it more than most people do. And my favorite food is macaroni and cheese. But not the box kind. The gooey kind with crunchy toppings, made in the oven."
She closed her eyes in almost orgasmic bliss, making him miss a step.
"Sounds amazing," he said.
Jess opened her eyes. She was still holding his stone hand, but when she squeezed it, he could tell by the tug on his glove and sleeve. "Okay, that was my answer, so do you want to pick the next question?"
"Is that how this works?"
"Is that your question?" Jess asked playfully.
"Is that your next one?" He grinned. "I can keep this going all day." It was impossible to stay mired in gloom with Jess around. She lifted his heart ... his soul.
Jess kissed him quickly, a brush of her lips on his. "Fine, you lost your opportunity. I get to ask another. Favorite kind of music?"
"Uh ... rock and roll, I guess. What's yours?"
"Folk and country, probably."
"You listen to country?"
"No judging my answers, now."
"It wasn't judging," he promised. "Just interested. It's not what I would have expected."
"Rock music is exactly what I would have expected for you, though. It's nice to find out that you conform to expectation in one way, at least."
"I think it's your turn to ask a question now."
"Oh, you get a free one," she said. "I've lost track anyway."
The sun painted her face gold. Her hair was curling in the ocean humidity, and it floated around her head and down her back like a fluffy brown cloud. It was hard to remember how to speak, he was so captivated by her beauty.
"Reive?"
"Uh, right." Questions. The thing was, there wasn't anything specific that he felt that he really needed to know about her. He wanted to know anything she chose to tell him, but he already knew the most important thing.
She was his mate.
And she was beautiful, and shockingly smart, and so brave it took his breath away, and by far the most fascinating person he'd ever met, male or female, young or old.
What could he possibly need to know, other than that?
But she was still looking at him expectantly, so he scrambled to come up with something. "Uh ... favorite book."
"Oh, ask an impossible question, why don't you. How can I possibly choose one?"
"If it's hard, I could—"
"No no, fair is fair, I'll just have to figure something out. Um, Pride and Prejudice, maybe? I've certainly read it enough. And for comfort reads, Watership Down, the one about
the talking rabbits."
"Rabbit shifters?"
Jess laughed, light and happy. He could have listened to that laugh for the rest of his life. "No, just ordinary rabbits. Are there rabbit shifters?"
"Probably. But I don't know any. I haven't met very many shifters other than dragons." He nudged her. "Your turn. I asked you a hard one; now you get to ask me a hard one back."
"Oh, hmm. I don't want to waste this opportunity." She smiled. "What do you most want out of life, Reive?"
"What?"
"I'm sorry. I—"
"No, you just threw me for a minute," he said. "I was expecting a question about ice cream flavors or my favorite kind of sports car."
Jess bit her lip. "I can change my question. I should change my question. I didn't mean—"
"No, no, don't." He reached over to clasp his flesh-and-blood hand over hers. "I don't want you to walk on eggshells around me. I never want that. You didn't upset or offend me. It's actually a different problem. I don't think anyone's ever asked me that. I'm not sure if I've ever asked myself that."
"Really? No one's ever asked? Not even your family?"
"I guess they just assumed," Reive said slowly. "I mean, the closeness of a dragon clan is great. Don't get me wrong. You always feel like you belong somewhere. But there's not a lot of choice. And especially for me ..."
He trailed off. The idea that she might hate or fear him if she knew everything he'd done was unbearable.
But not quite as unbearable as the idea of being less than perfectly honest with his mate.
"Reive?" She leaned into his side, wrapping her arm around his waist. "You don't have to talk about it. Really. It's just a stupid game. I'd like to know more about you, but you don't have to talk about anything you aren't comfortable with."
He hugged her back. "I know. But I want to. I haven't talked to anyone about this, not really. Outside the clan, no one would understand. Inside ..."
Everyone already knew, was the problem. Everyone knew, and nobody wanted to talk about it, because they were all still dealing with the fallout from those dark years themselves. It wasn't like Reive could expect special consideration when his great-uncle had spent twenty years in hiding after receiving a near-lethal injury, and so many others in the clan had died. His pain wasn't special, and that was part of what made it so hard to deal with.
"When I was a teenager, my clan was taken over. Our old clanlord was forced out, we all thought he was dead, and the new clanlord ruled us with a hand of iron. We had little freedom and next to no contact with outsiders."
He paused, and Jess waited with a quiet sense of expectation about her—listening, but not judging. They had continued on up the lane while they talked, and their slow, wandering progress had brought them to the bottom of Mace's garden, just outside the garden wall. Reive paused here; he was reluctant to talk about his past inside Mace's stronghold.
"The new clanlord was my grandfather," he said, tearing the admission from a still-raw place inside him. "Because of that, I was hand-picked to be one of his enforcers when I was still a teenager."
Jess leaned against his side, a warm and gentle presence. "What does an enforcer do?" she asked.
He tried to laugh. "Pretty much whatever he's ordered to do. It wasn't nice, Jess. My job was basically dealing with threats to the clan, whether from inside or outside. Sometimes humans, sometimes other dragons, sometimes rogue members of our own clan. On the bright side, it meant I got to leave and spend time in the outside world. I'm better able to deal with the human world than most of my clan because of that. Part of my job was blending in with humans, so I had to learn about human things to an extent that most of us don't. But it was all in the service of tracking down our enemies. And as time went on, my grandfather saw enemies everywhere."
"It wasn't your fault," Jess said quietly, and a shudder went through him, working its way outward from his core.
No one had ever said that to him.
After a moment, he said, "Some of it wasn't. Not at first. But after a while, I wasn't a kid anymore. I had a choice."
"Did you know that?"
He didn't have an answer for her.
There was another silence, broken only by the distant ocean sounds, before Jess went on, "And it's over now, isn't it? You don't do that anymore."
"No, I don't, not anymore. I'd like to say it ended when Heikon, the old clanlord, toppled his brother and took over the clan again, a few years ago. But I went on doing the same kind of work for Heikon, for a while. It wasn't as cruel and arbitrary as it used to be, but it was still rough work."
"But you stopped. What changed?" Jess asked, her words breathed out on the salt-scented, flower-perfumed late afternoon air.
"I don't know. Me, maybe. I was sent on a ... a job. There was a woman."
Tessa, the human Heart of Heikon's hoard, who was believed to be a traitor and part of the original ring of conspirators. He had been sent to bring her back if possible, or kill her if not.
He hadn't realized, at first, that she was so young. He kept forgetting humans were not as long-lived as dragons. No one told him that she had been just a child when his old clanlord was ousted.
And once he understood, what difference should it have made? Honor was everything to dragons. His clan had been betrayed. Those who had betrayed it should pay.
But Tessa was innocent.
"Did you have to ..." Jess whispered.
"No, no. We found another way. She's fine. She's on good terms with my clan these days, even. But that was the last job I went on. After that, I found reasons to stay at home. Guarding the nursery from enemies was much more my speed. I really enjoyed taking care of the kids."
And he missed them, suddenly and fiercely, the tickling claws of baby dragons and their chubby-armed hugs when they shifted back to human kids.
He rested his cheek against her hair.
"You asked what I want out of life," he said into the lightly perfumed cloud of her soft brown curls. "I think what I want is a home. I don't want to fight any more, unless I have to, to defend the place and the people that are mine. I honestly think I'd love nothing in the world more than being a stay-at-home dad, with at least two or three kids. Does that sound completely insane?"
"Not at all," Jess murmured back. Her body was warm against his, and with her arms around him, he felt like he could breathe a little more easily. "I think it makes all the sense in the world, after what you've been through."
"What about you?" He managed a little laugh, and found that he actually felt warmer and lighter. It felt like he had opened up a wound and purged a toxin that had been leaking poison into his bloodstream for years. It hurt, in a very different way than the stone poisoning, but it also felt good to have it out. "I've been dominating the conversation here. What do you want out of life?"
"A nice little library or bookstore to manage," Jess said promptly. "As for a family, I—I always sort of thought ..." She hesitated. "I never really wanted to want it that much. I figured there was a good chance that whatever's wrong with me is hereditary, and—"
"There's nothing at all wrong with you, Jess."
"You know what I mean," she said into his neck. "The gargoyle thing. It's not just that I didn't want to pass it to my kids, but I also figured it would make it impossible to have a serious long-term relationship. Now I just feel like maybe some part of me knew I was waiting for the right one."
The right one. His dragon nestled into that idea as if it was hoarding the words, curling around them and keeping them safe.
Reive had never found the one right thing to hoard, the thing that would make his dragon want to acquire everything in the world of that one thing and curl up in it. But now he thought that if he'd ever hoarded anything, Jess's love could be that thing. He would like to gather up every word, every glance, every stray touch, and store them all safely in his heart.
"I think that's exactly it," he said into her hair. "Some part of you just knows." He took a deep breath, b
reathing in her scent. "And ... about a family, about not wanting kids ... do you still feel that way?" he ventured.
"It's not that I don't want kids," she said, and there was an undercurrent of frustration in her voice. "I always wanted kids. I just couldn't let myself want kids. Now, I—" She broke off. "Reive?"
There was a note of alarm in her voice.
Reive was alarmed too; he just couldn't get the breath to say anything. The growing shortness of breath that had been worsening all day was suddenly acute. His heart felt like it was trying to batter its way out of his chest.
"Reive!" Jess sounded outright panicked now.
There was darkness creeping into the edges of his vision. No, he thought, not now! He was so close, they were so close to finding a cure.
He groped for Jess with his good hand, and felt her hand close around his, the fingers lacing through his and holding on tight as she pulled him against her.
"Reive—Reive, no, hang on. Reive!"
Her desperate voice crying his name was the last thing he heard.
Jess
"Reive!"
The word was torn from her throat in a despairing cry. Jess clutched at him wildly, bearing him down to the ground in a semi-controlled fall.
They were just talking—about kids, about the future—when he started gasping, went pale, and passed out. For a terrible moment it seemed to her that he stopped breathing entirely. Then he sucked in a breath, and kept breathing, but it was shallow and labored.
"Help!" she shouted. "Someone! Mace! Anyone! Help me!"
She was too high above the village for anyone to hear her. The only answers were the lonely cries of gulls overhead.
"Reive, no," she muttered. "Not like this. We're going to fix you. Your job is to hold on and give us a chance."
She pulled his shirt back, exposing his torso, and choked in shock and horror. The creeping petrification had covered nearly his entire chest and rib cage now. No wonder he was having trouble breathing. When she pressed her hand to it, trying to feel his heartbeat, it was cool and hard to the touch. It must feel like having your entire torso encased in a body cast.