by Lori Dillon
"Be that as it may, 'tis not a thing I will soon forget, my friend."
Baelin stilled at the sincerity in the other knight's words. It was the first time Kendale had called him friend and he knew without a doubt the man meant it sincerely.
Kendale turned his attention to the boar, tendrils of steam rising from the warm rivers of blood seeping from its wounds. "It did seem to come after you first. 'Tis not the rutting season. Why do you think it would attack us like that?"
Baelin wiped his bloodied sword clean on the boar's bristly hide. "I do not know."
Unless it did not take kindly to a dragon trespassing in its territory.
As the men neared the camp, an arrow flew through the woods to embed with a thunk in a tree just over Baelin's head.
Alarmed, the two knights dropped the gutted boar they carried strapped to a sapling between them and drew their swords. They broke through the trees only to find Lady Jill pulling back on Owen's small bow, a sharp arrow cocked and pointed straight at them.
"Hold!" Baelin shouted, but it was too late. Both knights dodged out of the way as the arrow went flying, missing its intended target of an old stump at the edge of the clearing by at least six paces.
"Oh, you're back. Owen was teaching me to-" Lady Jill's smile vanished and her face paled when she caught sight of them, the boy's weapon slipping from her fingers. "Oh, God. Who tried to kill who?"
He glanced at Kendale. Dried blood covered him from neck to thigh, while leaves and twigs matted his sweat-dampened hair. After dressing the boar in the forest, Baelin knew he probably looked no better.
"Neither of us tried to kill the other. 'Twas a wild boar that tried to kill us."
Her eyes widened in horror as she approached them. "Are you both all right?"
"Fear not," Baelin said. "The boar lost the battle and lies yonder in the forest, awaiting the spit for our supper for tonight."
"A boar!" Owen shouted. "How big?" The boy did not wait for the knights to answer but dashed off through the trees.
Lady Jill looked doubtful. "But there's so much blood. Are you sure neither of you are hurt?"
"'Tis naught but a few cuts and bruises." Kendale made a show of rubbing his shoulder. "I am certain your gentle ministrations will go far in healing them."
"You have a page to tend to your wounds," Baelin grumbled.
"Lady Jill!" Owen called. "You must come see the boar they brought down. 'Tis the biggest I have ever seen."
The three adults made their way toward where Owen stood under the trees, pride showing on his young face as if it was he who'd killed the beast. Baelin noted Lady Jill's frown as she eyed the gutted carcass lying on the ground.
"Let me guess, it reminds you of an animal from one of your childhood stories."
She appeared to study it a bit more, then shook her head. "Lose the tusks and shave the hair and it might pass for Wilbur. But somehow I don't think that kind of makeover is enough to make him cute, pink, and cuddly."
"Wilbur? Who is Wilbur?" Owen asked.
"Owen, Owen, Owen." Jill rested her arm around the boy's shoulders and started leading him back to the camp, leaving the two knights with their bloody prize standing in the trees. "You poor, deprived child. Have I got a story for you."
As she walked slowly away, her head bent slightly toward Owen's upturned face, Baelin strained to hear the softly spoken words she uttered to the boy.
"Once upon a time, there was a little pig who lived on a farm. His name was Wilbur. And his best friend was a spider named Charlotte…"
"…and so, with true love's first kiss, the spell was broken and Snow White awoke in the arms of her prince."
Jill looked away from Owen's spellbound face to find two other listeners hanging on her every word. She fought back a smile. Guess you were never too old—or too macho—to be enchanted by fairy tales.
As they sat around the campfire eating roasted Wilbur, she'd regaled them with an encore presentation of Charlotte's Web at Owen's insistence, which led to Bambi, Cinderella, and last but not least, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Tonight she wasn't surrounded by bold, brave knights, but three little boys enthralled by stories about talking animals, glass slippers, and coal-mining midgets.
She purposefully steered clear of Sleeping Beauty because, as she recalled, things didn't end well for the dragon in that one. And while she wouldn't classify herself as a beauty and Baelin wasn't a furry lion-prince, she gave a wide berth to Beauty and the Beast, too. That particular tale seemed to hit a little too close to home.
"What happened next?" Owen asked.
"The same thing that happens in all fairy tales—they fell in love and lived happily ever after."
Owen snickered before his grin morphed into a wide yawn that he tried to hide behind his hand. He rallied quickly and pleaded with a child's delight. "Please tell us another, Lady Jill."
"No more for you tonight, young man. It's way past your bedtime."
Owen looked as if he were about to protest when Roderick stood and stretched. "Off with you lad. The sun shall rise early for us all."
As Roderick made his way to the privacy of the trees, Jill walked over to where Owen curled up by the fire and knelt to brush the hair from his brow. "Sleep tight. Don't let the bed bugs bite."
"They would not dare, for I am too full of spit and vinegar even for their tastes."
Jill grinned. The silly exchange of words had become a regular routine for them each night as she tucked him into his blankets. Owen's eyes drifted shut, but they flew back open as she started to stand.
"Thank you, my lady."
"For what?"
"For the stories. Will you tell us some more tomorrow?"
"You betcha."
"I would like that," Owen whispered as his eyes drifted shut once more.
She tucked the frayed blanket around his shoulders, then turned to find Baelin staring at her with those fathomless brown eyes of his. There was no hint of the beast within tonight. But she did see something else—a trace of the boy he once was before he was cursed to be a dragon.
She walked over and sat beside him on a log they'd pulled near the campfire.
"It's sad."
"What is, my lady?"
"Owen. He's so young, still just a little boy in so many ways, and yet he has the worries and responsibilities of an adult." She looked back at Baelin. From what little he'd told her when they first met, his life had probably not been much different than Owen's, and the thought of any child not being able to laugh and play broke her heart. "I guess you never had much of a childhood either. Kids in your time are required to grow up too fast. Where I come from, boys play with plastic toy swords. They don't spend their childhood training with real ones because they'll have to kill someone with it some day."
"My youth 'twas not so bad." Baelin shrugged and stretched his legs out to the fire. "Each morn I went to Mass, then I received schooling from the chaplain with the other boys. When not training, we had duties to perform, from cleaning the stables to serving at table. Once all was done, we were free to seek out our amusement as long as we stayed out of trouble. Is it not so with the children of your time?"
Jill thought about it. "I suppose it is. Kids start going to school when they're five or six and most have chores to do once they get home. But taking out the trash or cleaning their room isn't nearly so hard as polishing a whole suit of armor or mucking stables every day. Plus, they do it in their own homes, with their own families. They're not shipped off to a stranger's house or dragged all over tarnation by a man who isn't their father."
"Owen has had a better childhood than most, I would wager. Kendale is a good man. The lad could have fared much worse."
Jill arched a brow. "My, my. It sounds like you and Roderick kissed and made up out there in the woods."
Baelin bristled. "He is a man. 'Twas no kissing betwixt us."
"Relax." She laughed at his offended expression. "It's just a saying. It means you're not fighting anymore. Yo
u're friends now."
He glanced to where Roderick had disappeared into the trees. "Aye, I suppose we are. 'Tis been a long time since I have called another man such."
"Well, I think it's a good thing. Everyone needs friends."
He returned his gaze to her. "Do you miss them, your friends?"
"Of course, I do. I miss my friends, my family. I know they're all worried sick about me. I'm sure I've lost my boring-but-pays-the-bills-job by now. God, I sure hope someone is feeding my cat."
"I did not know you had a cat."
She bumped shoulders with him. "There's a lot of things you don't know about me."
"Tell me then. What else from your time do you miss?"
"Oh, I miss flush toilets. Pizza and cable television. Coffee and chocolate." She winked at him. "And warm baths, of course."
"Of course." Baelin looked over to where Owen slept by the fire. "You are good with the boy. You will make a fine mother some day."
Jill snorted. "I sure hope I make a better mom than I do an aunt. Speed shopping for my niece's birthday present is what got me into this mess in the first place."
"Then should I ever meet your niece, I shall thank her. For if you had not come, I would still be in my cave with some poor weeping girl hiding in the shadows."
"Zoe would like you. She has a thing for dragons. They're about the only fairy tale characters she's interested in."
"Ah, fairy tales. A talking pig and a pumpkin carriage." She watched as he shook off the last vestiges of the little boy and eyed her with the skeptical gaze of the man. "Can such things truly happen in your world?"
She could tell the adult in him knew the truth, but the boy who'd sat captivated only moments before still wanted to believe in the possibility.
"Only in Walt Disney's world. It's just make-believe." She made a sound half-way between a snort and a laugh. "Then again, I never would've believed in time travel and look how I got here."
"When we first met, you said dragons did not exist, and yet here I am."
"Yes, you certainly are."
He stared at her, taking in every detail of her face, then his gaze rested on her mouth. "Would that, like in the story of the maiden with the apple, a single kiss could break my curse."
The wistfulness in his voice made her catch her breath.
"Maybe it can." Her reply sounded husky to her ears. Did I really just say that?
"My lady?" He jerked, startled.
Jill shrugged, attempting to lighten the tension suddenly filling the air. Are you out of your mind, flirting with a dragon? "Couldn't hurt to try."
"You would kiss me?" Longing and disbelief ignited in the flame in his eyes.
Too late to go back now. She cupped his cheek, the stubble tingling the sensitive skin of her palm, and she leaned in to touch her lips to his. It was a tender kiss. No tongue. No heavy breathing. No groping. Just a soft brush of the lips and no more—and yet it shook her to her core.
She eased back, surprised at how something so innocent could affect her so. With an single kiss, Baelin had just crossed the line from a ticket back home to something much more.
"Still a dragon?"
He nodded, but she wasn't certain he heard her. Silence stretched between them, his eyes searching her face for a happy ending to his own tale.
Her heart broke for him in that moment, because it was an ending she wasn't sure would come true.
The sound of Roderick trudging out of the woods startled her back to reality and she recognized the mistake for what it was. She didn't want to care about him, and she didn't want him to care about her. After all they had been through, she knew without a doubt that one of them was going to get hurt.
Before Baelin could say another word, she stood and walked away, the pull of his need too intense.
CHAPTER 22
If Jill thought having two knights constantly trying to one up each other in displays of physical prowess and chivalrous deeds was annoying, she was wrong.
Apparently, there was nothing like a little fighting and bloodshed to promote male bonding, even if the enemy in question was a big, hairy, snaggletooth pig. Jill wasn't exactly sure what happened in the woods between the two men, but since then, the knights had done a complete about face and carried on as if they were the best of friends.
Now here they both sat, in a crowded, smoky inn in the middle of nowhere, well on their way to getting drunk.
She shook her head, amazed at how little had changed in eight centuries of male evolution. Put them in t-shirts and baseball caps in a sports bar and they would fit right in. All they lacked was a wide screen TV in every corner and a half dozen well-endowed waitresses in white tank tops and orange shorts two sizes too small.
Speaking of which, at this very moment Roderick was leering in open appreciation as the barmaid leaned over the table to deposit two more tankards of ale, her ample cleavage nearly falling out of the top of her gown. Baelin wasn't much better as he watched the girl saunter away with an exaggerated sway of her hips.
Jill stood corrected. Apparently they did have Hooters in medieval England after all.
She should be glad. At least they weren't at each other's throats anymore. But she wasn't entirely sure being in a public place in the company of the bosom buddies was any better.
They'd stumbled on the busy little inn at a muddy, wagon wheel-rutted crossroads only an hour before. It was the first time since her ill-fated excursion to the village that Jill had seen another building in their travels. Come to think of it, it was first time she'd seen anything resembling a road since then, too.
Delighted, Roderick had suggested they stop for the night. Jill had expected Baelin to say no. After all, the last two times she'd been anywhere near a large group of people, she ended up getting herself sacrificed to a dragon and burned with a hot poker. Not a very good track record, in her opinion. But to her surprise, Baelin had agreed. He'd told her to refuse the obvious comfort of the inn would've been odd and drawn suspicion from Roderick. It was probably not a good idea to have a dragonslayer—even one who now considered Baelin his new favorite drinking buddy—wondering if they had something to hide.
As dangerous as it was, the lone perk in stopping by the inn was waiting up stairs. Jill would have a bed to sleep in tonight. Baelin had procured her a room all to herself and she was looking forward to a peaceful night's sleep in a nice comfortable bed instead of out on the cold, hard ground surrounded by wild animals and snoring knights. She could hardly wait.
Poor Owen was out in the stables. It didn't seem fair to make the boy sleep outside in a smelly old barn like a flea-bitten dog. But Baelin told her it was part of his duties in his training to be a squire, to guard Roderick's horse and weapons throughout the night. Apparently, child labor laws were non-existent in the Middle Ages. At least they'd sent him off with a hot meal before they settled down to their beer guzzling.
Which was another thing that left her uncomfortable. What if Baelin got drunk and slipped up and somehow revealed himself?
Just then, his gaze caught hers and she realized he was nowhere near as buzzed as Roderick. Did being part dragon help him handle his alcohol better than a normal man? Maybe he was a walking flambé and the alcohol burned off the minute it hit his stomach? It didn't matter. She was just relieved at least one of them was sober and they didn't have to worry about driving home tonight.
The barmaid returned with three servings of stew served in hollowed out loaves of bread. It smelled good, although Jill avoided asking exactly what was in it. She probably didn't want to know and she ate it anyway. It was a welcome change from the dried meat and hard bread they'd survived on before killing the boar. And after eating nothing yesterday but roast pig for breakfast, lunch and dinner, she was beginning to hate pork, too. The warm ale was a shock to her American taste buds. She would have killed for an ice cold Bud Light, but beggars couldn't be choosers.
She dug in, not coming up for air until the bread bowl was empty. Blissfully full
, her exhaustion and the warm air of the common room threatened to lull her into sleep where she sat, but she was not about to snooze on the hard table when she had a soft, cozy bed to curl up in.
"Well, since you two are no longer in danger of slitting each other's throats without me to play referee, I think I will go to bed."
Roderick stood, steadier on his feet than she thought he'd be. "Allow me to escort you to your chamber, my lady."
Baelin stood, too. His hand already on her elbow, he lifted her from the bench. "Nay, I shall see the lady to her room."
"Ah, and will you be staying there?" Roderick grinned, a knowing gleam in his eye.
Baelin tensed at her side, his fingers biting into her arm. If he wasn't gripping her with his right hand, she was certain he would have drawn his sword on the other knight.
Jill shook her head. "So much for the friendly truce."
Roderick lifted his hands in mock surrender. "I meant no insult. I was merely asking if you intend to seek out your bed also or if you will return for a bit more refreshment."
"I see." Baelin rubbed the side of his face and chuckled. Just as quickly as his anxiety flared, it was gone. Guess having a friend after so long took a little getting used to. "Aye, I shall return. 'Tis obvious it is not safe to leave you to your own devices. The next man may not be so understanding and you might very well lose your head."
"I would appreciate that." Roderick grinned. "Makes it terribly difficult to keep my helm on without it."
She looked back and forth between the two men. "Please don't kill each other after I'm gone."
"We will make every effort not to." The knight laughed as he sat back down and turned his attention to the barmaid.
Baelin guided her through the maze of tables filled with people. There was an interesting mixture of lords and ladies, merchants and peasants alike. So different and yet so similar to what she would expect to see in the lobby of a modern hotel. She smiled as they passed by a family with several small children. The youngest had fallen asleep with his head on the table, his little hand cupping the half eaten bowl of stew as if afraid someone would take it from him while he slept. Too cute.