The way he rather wanted to climb into bed behind Aster and hold him and keep him warm and safe all night, now that he’d fed him supper and chilled his wine and heated his bath and made his bed, was a lot less simple.
Fuck it. He’d spent two years brooding, and he refused to spend another night on such a useless occupation, especially when his blood fizzed hot in his veins and his limbs practically vibrated with energy. Corin hadn’t felt like this, likehimself, in years.
Even with the day’s activities, the evening was still youngish. Down in the village the inn’s taproom would still be open for hours yet. Not that Corin needed to have another drink necessarily, but he did need to restock more supplies, and since he hadn’t sent word down to the village in advance, he’d have to do something he’d only done two or three times before: appear in person wearing human skin and clothing instead of scales.
How annoying, but no time like the present.
It took all of a minute to strip and bundle his clothes, tip the bottle over his open mouth and get the last few drops, and bank the fire. And then he only had to step outside and allow the transformation to flow through him, reshaping everything so swiftly he almost couldn’t track the individual changes.
Corin shook out his wings, lit up the night with a burst of flame simply because he could, and launched himself up toward a twinkling star peeking through the ragged clouds.
Even though he’d spent hours in the air that morning, he still indulged himself by circling north and then spiraling in toward the village rather than taking the direct route. Beneath him the earth gleamed with the scattered diamonds and rubies of snow catching the last of the sunset and the first of the pale moonlight. Tiny dots of flickering yellow and orange showed him where the village clustered along the bank of the river running down from the mountains, and only his dragon eyes allowed him to pick out the more regular shape of his fortress from the tumbled edges of the natural rocks around it.
At last he swooped down, wings spread to allow the updrafts to buffet him as they chose, and landed with a muffled thump on the far side of a grove of oaks at the edge of the village. The trees hid him well enough as he shifted and dressed, the work of a few moments. Since the inn’s patrons tended to the informal, Corin didn’t even bother tucking in his shirt or lacing it at the neck, striding through the snow toward the village square with his trousers bunched at the tops of his boots and not a care in the world.
He passed only one person on the way, a man standing in the doorway of a house across from the inn and taking the air. The fellow started, stared, and said, “Sir Corin! Is that you? You should probably—”
“Evening!” Corin called back over his shoulder, speeding up a bit so as to avoid whatever dull nonsense the man wanted to say to him.
The inn yard was deserted, and he pushed the door open and stamped his way into the taproom unimpeded, thank God. He’d speak to the innkeeper, who doubled as the manager of what passed for a general store here, lurk out of sight while they put his order together as quickly as money could induce them to, and then be on his way.
In the taproom, two fireplaces blazed away, thick tallow candles sat on the tables, and the bar boasted a large oil lamp. It took even Corin’s dragon eyes a moment to adjust.
When they did, he found himself the target of a whole room full of other sets of eyes: the barman in the act of pulling a pint, several tables of village yokels, the innkeeper standing by the best table in the room that sat right in front of the larger fireplace…
And the two haughty gentlemen, both decked out in velvet, silk, and furs, who lounged at their ease on either side of that table with a tall bottle and a deck of cards between them.
The older of the two, the one with the absurdly brushy mustache and arched eyebrows that suggested perpetual surprise, lifted the quizzing glass hanging around his neck and peered at him through it. Corin had hated the pompous and self-important Sir Gustave Perron at court, and he found that somehow, after two years of not having to see his fucking face, he hated him even more.
The younger one Corin couldn’t put a name to, though his face looked familiar. But anyone with a ruffed lace collar that high—while traveling through the back ass-end of nowhere, no less—had to be an insufferable prick. His curled lip and up-tilted chin as he stared at Corin didn’t help the impression.
You should probably…Fucking double fuck. Tuck in his shirt, wear a coat, turn around and leave as quickly as possible—or maybe apologize to the fellow across the street as soon as he had the opportunity.
“Sir Corin!” Sir Gustave blinked and cleared his throat. “In the flesh, I do declare.”
“Thisis what the legendary Sir Corin is reduced to?” the other put in, his drawling tone a perfect match for his appearance. “My word.”
“Shut it,” Sir Gustave hissed in an undertone as he went as pale as the snow outside and shoved to his feet in a flustered rustle.
Corin smiled sourly. Sir Gustave might be an ass, overly conscious of his position as one of King Theobert’s household gentlemen, but stupid he was not. The younger idiot had already given Corin enough reason to take him outside and beat him to a pulp, if he even chose to let him live.
“Sir Corin, what a pleasure to see you,” Sir Gustave went on much more loudly, as if declaiming to a crowded throne room. Men like that needed an audience, and it didn’t matter who they were, apparently. “We are here on King Theobert’s business, long may he reign. We bear a royal proclamation intended for your eyes!”
Here he paused, emphasizing the drama of his announcement, Corin supposed. What a windbag. And fucking bloody hell. There went Corin’s last gasp of hope that these court popinjays would be here for reasons entirely unrelated and irrelevant to him.
“Bully for you,” Corin growled. “I suppose there’s no way to prevent you from telling me what’s in it. Because if it’s anything to do with summoning me back to court, I won’t go.”
As Sir Gustave almost certainly knew perfectly well, he had every right to refuse such a summons, too. He’d always served at his own pleasure rather than the king’s. He’d taken an oath, yes, but out of a desire to be honorable rather than out of necessity, and he’d been released from it officially when he left court. Dragons owed no fealty to human monarchs, only the courtesy of not eating anyone under their protection. And even that could be negotiable.
Hmm. Corin eyed Sir Gustave’s companion with new interest. He’d never actually roasted and devoured a human as the dragons of old had done, and honestly the thought of it turned his stomach. But one could always roast without devouring. No rule against it.
If he wanted to eat a human, he’d start with Aster, and not in the for-dinner kind of way.
His cock stirred.
Fuck, not the time.
And then it hit him. Only one thing had changed recently. Aster had been followed or tracked somehow, must have been. Almost certainly with magic, since he’d only been here a day; Lord Cezanne must have moved very quickly during the weeks it’d taken Aster to travel here, getting the king involved, organizing whatever this was, sending Sir Gustave after at once—either chartering a ship and sending him by the much shorter sea route, or hiring frequent and expensive changes of horses. And now…no need to speculate, since the man with the answers stood before him.
