Page 27 of Dragon’s Ending

BEN

It was odd, the way Dominic was actually more distracting when he wasn’t trying to be. Still and quiet, he was concentrating on the papers, sorting them into stacks that looked so haphazard they made me die somewhere deep inside. Yet the care with which he was scrutinising each sheet—when he felt himself to be unobserved—was deeply attractive.

Oh, God. I had a problem. He’d invaded my dreams last night, just the way he prowled into my records room, all casual arrogance and provocation. Except in my dreams, there’d been less clothes and a lot more skin, along with heat and need and… God. I had to stop looking at him. I wasn’t used to spending time with someone so stupidly hot, that was all.

I wrenched my attention back to the sixth century. Seventh by now, I noticed, as I reached the first generation not to have an Arthur. And then Dominic blew out a breath sharply enough to startle me. He was staring at me, an arrested expression on his face.

“That story about the knight and the unicorn,” he said, and he looked almost stupefied. “The unicorn bit the knight’s hand off.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“The knight who rescued the princess—he only had one hand.”

I blinked as I put it together. “This is a family story? A family memory of Bedivere?”

Dominic shrugged, but the movement was awkward, lacking his usual easy confidence. His dragon was close suddenly, gold flickering in his eyes before he looked away.

“My mother used to tell it to me,” he said eventually, like the words had been dragged out of him against his will. “When I was little.”

It was the first time his mother had been mentioned in my presence, and I kept silent. He was so tense that I thought anything I said would be unwelcome.

He picked up one of the leather-bound ledgers, turned it over in his hands, then put it back down with a small thud.

“It was just a bedtime story,” he added, dismissive now, too quick. “A knight rescued some princess from a tower or whatever. There was a unicorn guarding her. It bit his hand off.”

“A guard unicorn,” I repeated.

One corner of his mouth twitched. “See?”

“No, no, I know that part sounds ridiculous, but—”

“You think?”

I looked up to find him watching me properly now, and despite the edge in his voice there was something wary underneath. This mattered to him in a way I didn’t yet understand.

“The unicorn isn’t the important part,” I said carefully.

That seemed to catch him off guard. The tension in his shoulders eased fractionally.

“It isn’t?”

“No. The hand.” I was trying to remember what I knew about Bedivere. “None of the stories mention how he lost it, but details like that surviving in family stories—” I shook my head, unable to help smiling again. “Dominic, this is exactly how history survives when written records have been lost.”

He stared at me for a second as if he couldn’t quite work out whether I was serious.

Then he laughed softly under his breath, though there was still something careful in it. “You really are enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“Aren’t you?”

“I’ve no idea what’s going on, honestly.”

That made me laugh, and to my surprise, he smiled back almost immediately, easy and unguarded enough that something warm shifted low in my stomach.

Right. Definitely a problem.

I looked back down at my notebook before my face could give anything away.

“So,” I said, trying for a more measured tone, “what actually happened in the story?”