by Imogen Sera
She put her hands on his hard shoulders and let them drift down to his muscular arms. She wanted to touch him everywhere she had been imagining since she had met him, but she was happy to start here and appreciate his embrace. Her skin was burning all over against the cold night air and as his lips drifted from her mouth down to her chin, her neck, her shoulder, she looked up at the starry sky.
“Ingrid,” he said breathlessly, pulling his lips from her skin and looking into her eyes.
And suddenly the odd dread that Helias seemed to inspire washed over her. She gasped and jumped up, staring at him with wide eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she began, chest heaving. “I shouldn’t have— I’m sorry.”
She wanted to turn and dart inside and pretend nothing had happened, but duty kept her rooted to the spot. Helias stared at her, eyes blazing, but the man whose lap she’d just been sitting on now terrified her for no discernible reason. She wordlessly guided them both inside, back to the library, and silently laid down on her couch. Her cheeks were burning, her heart was pounding, and between her legs was throbbing. She turned to face the back of the couch and let silent tears fall for a long time. She fell into a fitful sleep hours later, her lips sore and her body burning. She dreamed of fire and ash, and of great gleaming wings.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Helias was restless. He’d been hiding at his desk all morning, head in a book, ignoring anything but the text in front of him. He knew Ingrid had pretended to sleep for a long time after she was actually awake, and after she wordlessly disappeared from the room he could finally breathe freely.
His mind continually wandered back to the night before; he snapped his book shut and sighed in frustration. Touching Ingrid, holding her, kissing her had felt perfect. He had been awestruck when she had reached up suddenly to press her lips to his, overcome with a feeling of completeness. She had pressed her soft body to him, wound her small hands in his hair, looked up at him with big blue eyes, and he had known complete happiness for a moment. Then she had leapt away from him with no warning, and he had seen her face clearly. It wasn’t colored from embarrassment or regret, but her features had been distorted by terror.
He wondered if she suspected what he was. He knew that the time was drawing close to tell her, but he was growing dangerously attached and was wary of frightening her away for good.
She returned as silently as she had disappeared, and quietly set a plate of breakfast on the desk next to him. He turned toward her and caught her hand. He looked in her eyes and she looked as if she was going to break.
“Ingrid,” he began cautiously, “can we pretend that never happened?” His chest squeezed painfully as the words left him.
She nodded. “That sounds like a good idea,” she said, visibly relieved.
The morning passed as most of their mornings that week had, albeit quite a bit quieter. He pored over his notes, frustrated that he wasn’t getting anywhere with the translation. It meant ‘inside’ or ‘within’ or something similar, but it didn’t make sense in context. A thought struck him.
“Ingrid,” he said, interrupting the heavy silence, “you spoke of a room behind a passageway?”
She nodded, watching him.
“Where is it?” he asked.
“Under a back storage room.”
He stood up, excited. “May I see it?”
She hesitated for a moment and then nodded. “I suppose your confinement is finished today anyway.”
Ingrid excused herself to change, and returned a few minutes later wearing form fitting pants and a blouse. He tried not to stare, but he had only ever seen her in a dress, and eventually he just tried to make his staring not so obvious.
She packed away the papers she had been sorting through, and stood to face him. “Ready?”
. . . . .
Ingrid was pleased that Helias was completely ignoring the embarrassing subject of the night before, but also, strangely, disappointed. She supposed that was because she really wanted to be kissing him again. He followed behind her as she led him to the back storage room. She looked over her shoulder to see if he was keeping up, and noticed that his gaze was intently fixed on her backside. She turned her attention back forward and smirked. She supposed her pants did hug her ass more closely than the dresses that she tended to prefer.
“Alright,” she said, stopping in a small, chilly back room. There were large boxes lining the walls, most filled with potatoes and onions. “On the floor here is a trap door.”
She kicked around with the toe of her boot, listening for the distinctive hollow sound.
Upon finding it she crouched down and examined the floorboards. “I know one of these comes up,” she muttered, pulling gently on each of them.
Ingrid made a small noise of excitement as a board easily lifted, revealing where the trap door was hidden in the floor. She pulled at the handle and it wouldn’t budge, and after a minute of pulling on it hopelessly Helias gently nudged her away from it and lifted it easily.
Cold wind blew up from the opening in the floor, and together they looked down into the dark hole.
“Why do you need to see this?” Ingrid asked quietly.
Helias was staring distractedly into the hole. “I believe this is where the plague - the corruption came from,” he murmured, not looking away.
“It’s just a horrible illness, Helias,” she began gently. “One of the servants caught it at the market or something and brought it back and-”
He was shaking his head. “Dragongrove was the origin of it. No one was sick before it was here, and it’s spread in a perfect circle from this house. I’ve been researching this a long time, and I’m sure now.”
“Illnesses don’t come from a hole in the ground,” she maintained.
“They have to come from somewhere,” he shrugged. “Who was the first to fall ill?”
Her mind drifted back to the day that she tried to avoid remembering. “It was Madeline.” A chill that had nothing to do with the breeze from the hole was creeping up her spine.
“Did she spend time down here?” he questioned gently.
She looked down at the dark hole again and shuddered, nodding slightly. “Every day,” she began, then looked Helias in the eye. “You absolutely can’t go down there. You’ll get sick.”
“I’ll be fine.” He was avoiding meeting her gaze.
“I’m serious,” she said, pulling on his hand to force him to look at her. “You haven’t seen what the plague does. You can’t expose yourself to it.”
“Ingrid,” he started, facing her and putting his large hands on her shoulders, “please trust me. It won’t affect me. I’m not like-” he paused thoughtfully. “You know as well as I do that I won’t get sick.”
She heated at his touch and nodded reluctantly.
She took a minute to explain the layout to him. They would drop down here, and then the passage closed in a bit so they would need to crouch or crawl about twenty feet until the passage opened into a large room with smooth walls. The large room seemed to light itself so there was no need for a torch, but the passage to get there would be very dark.
Ingrid descended first with Helias right behind her. Once they stepped out from directly under the trapdoor they were in complete darkness. Helias reached for her and she clasped his hand, squeezing gently and then pulling him behind her. She stopped abruptly as she came to the large room, and Helias bumped into her from behind. She warmed and blushed at the full body contact, before taking a deep breath and assessing the room.
She hopped down the large step into the room, and uttered a tiny “oh,” as something caught her eye. Sweeping across the room, she bent over, picked up a small doll and clutched it tightly in her hands. Her breath shuddered and her shoulders shook for a minute before she collected herself. She turned to find Helias right next to her, looking concerned. She held the doll out to show him, still holding it possessively with both hands.
“Emily,” she muttered quietly.
&nbs
p; He pulled her gently against him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Helias stood up from where he had been crouching for the last hour, examining every inch of the ground. He stretched and looked around. The room was cast in an eerie green light, thanks to strange glowing veins that seemed to run through the rocks. In the corner there was a child sized table with chairs around it, which Ingrid had informed him had been made for the children by Madeline’s father. There were also several children’s toys scattered around, and knowing the fates of their owners made him uncomfortable to even look at them.
“Ingrid, is anything different about this room from what you remember?”
She looked up at him. “I’m really not sure, I haven’t been here for a decade. Maybe it’s… greener?” she finished lamely.
She was lying belly down on the ground, feeling along as he had been for anything of significance. He smiled toward her. He was surprised she was tackling this with such enthusiasm, he had expected her to show him the way and return to her chores; he was certainly glad for the company though. A short time later she rolled onto her back and sighed at the ceiling.
“Helias, we’ve been over this whole room. It’s one solid piece. I don’t think we’re going to find any kind of passageway.” She sat up. “Maybe this isn’t the right place?”
He sighed, closed his eyes, and leaned his head back against the wall. “I was so sure.”
Ingrid rose and crossed the room to him.
He could feel her in front of him but he kept his eyes shut. The air between them seemed warmer than the chilly air all around them. He felt her place her small, warm hands on his cheeks. “We’ll figure it out. There must be more rooms like this, and we can enlist the residents to help, and we-”
He pressed his lips to hers suddenly, taking both of them by surprise. She gasped briefly before quickly melting into him. She moved her hands from his cheeks to entangle them in his hair, trying to pull him closer. His flesh tingled where she touched him, and his heart felt as if it would burst. His hands were everywhere, pulling her close, stroking her back, cautiously drifting down to grip her ass…
“Wait,” he said suddenly, hands still resting on her backside. She looked up at him, confused and breathless. “You said it looks greener down here?”
He released her then, and crossed the room to look at something on the opposite wall. The glowing veins through the rock were much more concentrated here, and if Ingrid was right and the room truly was greener, maybe what he was looking for was the source of these veins. If the color had changed, then something else must have changed too. He turned to explain himself, and saw that Ingrid was standing just where he left her; her fingers were gently pressed against her lips and her expression was still dazed.
He smiled at the sight and turned back to the wall. Right in front of him seemed to be where the veins of light originated from; they were thickest and densest here. As he ran his fingers over them, he felt a seam. Ingrid was suddenly next to him, cheeks bright pink, and asking about what he’d discovered. He explained his thoughts, then placed her hand on the seam so she could feel it.
Ingrid grew excited and felt along it, pushing and prying with alternating touches. After a moment it gave slightly, and they both pulled at the loose rock until, in front of them, a small passageway took form. They shared an excited look, then Ingrid pressed a quick kiss to his mouth, smirked at him, and ducked down into the hall. This hallway was much more brightly lit than the room before, the veins of light were thick and overlapping each other. It continued a short distance before opening into a massive cavern, and they were at the top of a steep walkway leading down to the floor far below. It was bright here, brighter than daylight, and a vibrant luminous green. Looking around Helias could see that the veins weren’t veins here, the walls were entirely glowing. The glowing rock surrounded them, and looking down into the cavern he could see a small lake. In the middle of that was a large island with a strange, huge glowing gem.
He recognized it. He had never seen this before, but he had learned all about them during his education as a child. A dragon shrine. He was suddenly overwhelmed with emotion: here it was, the answer he was looking for. Soon, very soon, he could return home.
The green was unsettling though, and if he had to guess, unnatural. He looked over at Ingrid, and she was gaping at the sight.
“Helias,” she whispered. “What is this?”
He looked at her wordlessly.
“Please tell me,” she said, and raised her hands to cup his face. “There’s so much you’re not telling me. I want to know.”
“Ingrid,” he began sadly, “I can’t-”
“Please,” she interrupted him. She looked up at him with her big blue eyes, and his resolve crumbled.
. . . . .
“Please,” she repeated, cutting him off mid excuse.
Something in his expression changed then. “It’s called a dragon shrine.”
“So… something crazy cultists built?” she asked, pleadingly, looking mildly nauseated.
He smiled gently at her, and pushed a strand of hair from her face. “Sweet, skeptical Ingrid.”
She looked into his eyes. They were lovely and bright and green, and then, suddenly, they weren’t. There was fire in them, orange and red were roaring and burning. There was terror and destruction and something ancient there. The familiar dread washed over her, and she shuddered in his arms. She fought it, this time, quashing the feeling down until it was just a vague sense of unease.
“What are you?” she breathed.
“Ingrid,” he paused, looking over her shoulder. “I will explain everything, I swear. But right now that,” he gestured to the lake below, “is making me really uneasy. Can we go back to the house please?”
She nodded, brows furrowed, not taking her eyes from his face.
CHAPTER NINE
“Dragon?” Ingrid repeated from her seat at her desk, her face white.
“Dragon,” Helias confirmed.
She paused for a minute, staring at him unblinkingly. “I don’t believe you.”
“Okay.”
“I said I don’t believe you.”
He shrugged. “You don’t have to believe me.”
She sighed, thoughts whirling through her mind. She had half suspected it in the eerie cavern, when his eyes were full of fire and devastation, but up here in the daylight and comfort of her room it seemed so impossible. Still, what he said would explain so much.
“Okay, we’ve established that I don’t believe you,” she began, “but let’s say I did. Why are you here? You just travel around selflessly trying to cure illnesses or something?”
He chuckled darkly at that, and then told her everything. Of his life at home before the illness came, of the sudden illness that stole away half of his kind, of his father’s grief and rage before the subsequent banishing of his remaining children to find an explanation, and of his time spent wandering and researching before he had come to Dragongrove.
When he started Ingrid was sitting at her desk; a short time later she was sitting next to him on her bed. Now they sat side by side, and Ingrid had an arm around his back while her head rested on his shoulder.
Her heart ached for him after hearing his story, even while her mind was racing. Not only had he lost half of his family and friends, but he had been expelled from the only home he’d ever known.
She picked up his hand where it was resting on his lap and brought it to her mouth. She looked up into his eyes; his gaze was piercing. She pressed a soft kiss to his palm, not taking her eyes from his, and heard his sharp intake of breath. The gesture, which she had meant to be comforting, had awakened something more immediate and primal between them. Her heart was pounding and her flesh was on fire, and she desperately wanted him.
Helias was silent but his gaze was intent as she kissed all over first one hand, from fingertips to wrist, and then the other. She glanced at him and wondered briefly if she could catch fire from the heat in
his eyes. He groaned almost silently as she pushed her lips against the inside of his wrist, so she did it once more, and then again.