And yet Aster’s appearance at his gate had managed to make Corin appear older, tired, andalmostnot excruciatingly handsome.
Perhaps making him unhappy was a family trait. No one had ever accused Belinda of having anything in common with her plain, freckled, awkward younger brother. But there had to be a first time for everything.
Or perhaps Aster simply couldn’t satisfy anyone, including his own fiancé. He wouldn’t be here if he could.
The miserable thought congealed and formed a cold, sad little lump in Aster’s gut, joining the much larger cold, sad lump that had been there ever since he fled his home nearly three weeks before. He’d slipped away in the middle of the night without even taking his valet into his confidence, leaving behind a vague note, all his possessions other than what he could carry in his saddlebags, and everyone he’d ever known—except for Corin. He might never see his family again if his father disowned him for running away and snubbing the proud Duke Marellus so thoroughly. He’d never again feel his mother’s embrace, or hear her laughter.
Silence had fallen for far too long, leaving an awkward weight to the air. Aster shivered in a breath of the frigid wind that had been at his back the whole way up the mountain and blinked, recalling himself to the present. Everything went a bit blurred for a moment as he did. Fuck, but he’d traveled so far, slept so little, eaten even less. He tightened his hand on the reins he held until the leather bit into his palm, praying that it’d keep him focused and prevent him from passing out where he stood.
“Do I bring my horse inside?” he asked, his words seeming to shatter the quiet and then blow away in fragments on the wind, which whistled over the bridge and through the canyon below in a mournful wail. He didn’t see anywhere else to stable a horse, but really? Corin came from a long, noble line of wealthy dragons. His pedigree outclassed Aster’s by quite a lot, as a matter of fact, even though he’d given it all up to become a comparatively humble knight in King Theobert’s service.
As a not-unimportant side note, Aster had no wish to dine or sleep in the same room as his horse, either, much as he loved the beast. Although he supposed he might be lucky if Corin didn’t simply put him wherever he stabled the horse.
“Lead him through and out the other side,” Corin said, already leading the way himself into the gloomy bowels of the fort. “There’s a lean-to out there you can put him in.”
Well, that was a small relief, anyway. Aster followed, Etallon coming along meekly in his wake despite Corin’s disturbing draconic presence. For the first time, it occurred to Aster to wonder how Corin managed to be anywhere near a horse, much less ride one, which he’d done constantly while serving the king. Generally speaking and quite understandably, horses—and most other animals—got very, very nervous in the presence of a dragon.
Perhaps the air of competence, strength, and gentlemanly courtesy that humans noticed immediately upon entering his presence translated to something horses could detect with their sensitive ears or noses.
Or, more likely, he’d simply learned how to behave around animals, a skill that many humans also lacked.
Aster might do better as Corin’s unwelcome visitor if he could at least pretend to see Corin objectively, rather than through the lens of his own desperately suppressed longings.
Feeling his cheeks flush hot, he ducked his head, hoping Corin wouldn’t see his expression in the dimness of the dusty, musty corridor through which they passed. A few steps on, it opened into a hall of sorts, a big rectangular room with high slitted windows, a couple of dark arched doorways in shadowy corners, and a cold, dirty central hearth with a few rough-hewn benches and chairs around it at odd angles.
The fort looked like it’d been abandoned for decades. Not even mice would find any comfort here.
“Good God,” he said, startled out of his intention to make himself as unobtrusive as possible. “How bloody long have you lived here, again?”
“You know exactly how long,” Corin replied acidly, his already deep voice dipping down to an even lower register that had Aster shivering from the nape of his neck to the backs of his knees. He didn’t even favor Aster with a glance, striding without pause toward the other side of the hall, where a large door hung ajar, askew like everything else in this place. “Are you going to ask mewhyI’m here next? Stable your fucking horse and stop talking.”
Oh, God. He wished he could sink straight through the floor. So much for Corin’s gentlemanly courtesy, but Aster had more than earned some snappishness with his tactless stupidity.
All at once his feet felt like they were cast from lead. His neck could barely hold up his head. It’d simply been a long journey. He needed supper. That had to be it. He couldn’t be so weak as to have hot tears prickling at the insides of his eyelids simply because he’d left home possibly forever, and he was alone, and his fiancé utterly despised him, and the one person whose kindness would have made it better…well, seemed to also utterly despise him. Aster had trained as a knight and even fought some duels, not that he’d won many. All right, any. But still. He was better and braver than this. He quickly turned his head and wiped a stray drop clinging to his eyelashes onto the edge of his hood.
“I beg your pardon.” He barely managed more than a whisper, hardly audible over the clop of Etallon’s hooves. And the hitch in his voice disappeared in the sighing of the wind through all the blasted drafty crevices in this miserable place.
But of course, Corin’s hearing was better than a human’s.
He spun around so abruptly that Aster stumbled as he came to a sudden halt, Etallon helping not at all by tugging on the reins with a sulky toss of his head. For a moment he overbalanced, one arm flailing and the other caught in the reins—and then in the next moment big hands caught him by the upper arms and tugged him upright again.
Everything seemed to whirl as dizziness assaulted him, and then he blinked at…the surprisingly vulnerable-looking hollow of Corin’s muscular throat, his Adam’s apple just above it, and the dark stubble all over his chin and jaw.
And then all he could think about was the shocking heat surrounding him. God, Corin’s dragon body threw off more warmth than any three humans. After the freezing ride up the mountain, and the lonely weeks of travel before that, sleeping rough so as to avoid being seen and tracked—and not to mention how cold he felt from the inside out—a dragon’s banked flame felt like heaven. Corin’s touch felt like heaven.
He wanted to sink into it. Sink into Corin. Lean his weary head against that broad chest and go to sleep for a couple of days.
Aster was aknight. And a lord, an honorable gentleman, not some lost little boy who needed comforting, least of all from his former almost-brother-in-law. Aster would’ve given so much to have this for so many years, and now that he did, it was nothing but pity…
Any moment now, he’d force himself to pull away. Aaany moment.
Corin’s hands slid down and wrapped themselves above his elbows. They went all the way around, although Aster’s biceps were far from dainty.
“What’s the matter, Lord Aster?” Corin’s voice rumbled out of his chest and seemed to lodge firmly in Aster’s, a vibration that had his joints melting and his head drooping forward. For the last two hundred years or more, dragons had essentially been accepted as part of the human nobility, all the ancient feuds and fears resolved. Aster thought of them more as wealthy men and women with the ability to fly and with odd metallic tints to their skin than as monsters, or anything. But the legends of how they could mesmerize humans into obeying their powerful wills didn’t seem so far-fetched right now. “You seem…not yourself.”
“How would you know? You hardly paid any attention when you were—you hardly know me at the best of times.”
Aster winced as the words left his lips. God, he didn’twantto be rude. Or reveal how deeply it had always hurt that Corin had barely taken the trouble to speak to him even when engaged to Aster’s sister. But the energy required for tact and care eluded him in his state of utter exhaustion.
