Page 41 of Dragon’s Ending

Rhodri nodded to me as he got up to leave, and then I was left in an almost-empty dining room. I thought about taking lunch up to Ben, but he probably wouldn’t want food around those old papers—and actually, that’d be a great way to encourage the mice to come back. I didn’t know why mice weren’t frightened of us, but they seemed determined to live here. Maybe we were just so big compared to them that they didn’t notice we were also apex predators? Who knew. Not like I could interrogate a mouse.

So taking Ben lunch was out, but I should probably go and roust him out of his history-induced daze. Except… I still hadn’t settled from that time with Rhodri, the hope that this was the start of something. The hope that fought with fear that it wasn’t. Ben’s presence was soothing, in a way I didn’t understand, but right now, I wasn’t ready to be soothed. I needed to let some of this energy out but it was still fucking daylight so I couldn’t fly.

I ended up striding through the woods, away from the castle, away from the house, away from my father. Of course I knew he’d mourned my mother, but it was only now I wondered if that was part of why he was this way. One childhood memory wasn’t enough to build on, but there had been a time when he’d not been disappointed in me. Maybe her loss had caused this hardness in him, this need to control everything.

And maybe it didn’t matter, because his behaviour was what it was, whatever the reason for it. I reached the top of the hill and looked out over the countryside, countless rolling hills, trees, and rain. Of course there was rain, moving in this direction.

Not particularly wanting to get wet, I headed back. The rain caught me anyway, so heavy that I sheltered for a while under a handy horse chestnut tree, until it became clear that the dying leaves were acting not so much as a canopy as a funnel, sending a stream of cold water down my neck. That was when I spotted it, a spiky green case that had burst partly open to reveal a shiny new conker.

Teddy would love it. Rae, not so much, already having to negotiate a serious collection of pine cones in Teddy’s room. I wasn’t sure if it was the thought of Teddy’s delight or Rae absolutely blaming me that made me bend down and carefully pick it up. I’d give it to Teddy. The rest was up to them.

Chapter Seventeen

BEN

I was vaguely aware of the afternoon passing. The records kept swallowing me whole for stretches of time before abruptly releasing me back into the present. Each time that happened, I’d glance automatically towards the door. And each time, Dominic still wasn’t there.

It was ridiculous of me to think he would be. He had his own life, his own responsibilities here. Yet somehow my brain already expected him to appear periodically beside my chair with some outrageous comment designed to derail my concentration completely.

I was halfway through trying to untangle a truly appalling series of fourteenth-century inheritance disputes when the door finally opened. I looked up far too fast to be casual.

Dominic leaned against the doorframe, damp hair curling slightly at his temples. He looked relaxed again, more like himself than he had when he’d left earlier, though there was still something a little unreadable beneath it.

“You still alive?” he asked.

“Debatable,” I admitted. “I may actually have expired somewhere around 1382.”

His mouth twitched. “Tragic way to go.”

“I don’t know. There are worse deaths than being crushed beneath badly catalogued legal records.”

“God, you really are a historian.”

I smiled despite myself, and there was a brief pause that didn’t feel awkward exactly. Just… aware.

Then he said, almost casually, “Want to go flying tonight?”

Happiness rushed through me, immediate and ridiculous.

“Yes,” I said, trying very hard not to sound too eager. “Could we stop at the castle first? I’d like to look at those markings in dragon form.”

“Of course you’d want to do that,” he said, and if I weren’t losing my mind, he sounded fond.

The thought warmed me embarrassingly all over again.

* * *

The castle felt different at night. Wilder somehow, with a presence suggesting it was more than a simple ruin that had been abandoned to weather and time. Moonlight and shadow shifted constantly across the broken walls, giving the impression of movement. As if something were there.

I wasn’t fanciful at the best of times, and I definitely wasn’t going to let Dominic suspect how creepy I found this place in the dark. So I stripped as fast as I could, shifting while Dominic was still unfastening his jeans. And no, I was not going to hang around to watch that. Instead I paced over to the marks on the wall, my large body feeling almost clumsy on the ground compared to its streamlined self in the air.

Evelyn had been right to make sure, but the moonlight revealed nothing new. In fact, the marks themselves were pretty hard to discern. I tilted my head, closed one eye then the other, stepped back, looked at them from above and below and each side, and saw absolutely nothing.

That some kind of mating dance you’re doing with the wall? Dominic’s voice was amused.

Dragons didn’t blush, but it felt as if I did. Just checking, I told him, then sighed. I’d hoped that my dragon would have recognised them or sensed what I couldn’t. But instead, I was standing staring at an old stone wall and getting absolutely nowhere.

Seen enough? Dominic asked.