Chapter 20

Chapter20

Briar

Idon’t have an answer for Sol that day or the ones that follow, one week bleeding into another. He doesn’t pressure me, but sometimes I catch him watching me as if he expects me to shatter…or explode.

I keep myself occupied in the library. I could spend an entire lifetime digging through the stacks and still not make it through them all, but that’s not a bad problem to have. They keep me occupied. Distracted. Mostly engaged.

It would be lovely to say that being with him whisks away all the bad bits of my past, but it’s not the truth. I still have nightmares. I still jump every time a door slams or I hear unfamiliar footsteps.

Yesterday, I broke a plate and nearly cut my hands in a panicked flurry to clean it up, apologizing all the while. There was no one even in the room to apologize to. No one even noticed that the kitchen was missing a plate, or at least neither Sol nor Aldis brought it up.

At night, well, I love the nights. Sol and I fuck like each time might be our last, as if he can feel the seconds slipping through our fingers just as quickly as I can. Seven years felt like a small eternity, but as I reach the one-month anniversary of my marriage to Sol, I can’t shake the feeling that it’s nowhere near enough.

Seven years. Only eighty-four months.

Eighty-three now.

“Briar.”

I blink and blush. “Sorry, I was just thinking.”

Sol swirls his wine in his goblet. I know him well enough now to read his expressions most of the time, and he’s got a contemplative look I’m not certain I like. He’s very careful with me—that hasn’t changed in the past month—but I can tell something’s bothering him. He finally sits back. “Are you happy here?”

“What? Why wouldn’t I be happy?” Maybe I shouldn’t be. Even as pleasant as I find Sol’s company, it doesn’t change the fact this is an impossible situation with a deadline. We are at odds in purpose, even if we’re not at odds in anything else.

He doesn’t answer. He merely waits. I kind of hate it when he does that. He never allows me to divert a question with a question when there’s something he really wants to know the answer to. Or that he feels I need to share the answer to. It’s inconvenient, but no matter how frustrating I occasionally find this habit, I can’t pretend it’s done out of anything except caring for me.

I take a hasty sip of my wine. “Yes. I’m happy here.” It’s even the truth. He was right that day in the library. There’s something healing about having nothing but time to spend as I choose. To spend it with him in a comfortable way that makes no demands. He hasn’t brought up the child again, though filling me up plays into many of our sexual encounters.

I shiver and take another sip of wine. “I still don’t have an answer to your question. I don’t know what I want, Sol. Maybe this would be easier if I did.” He’s mentioned a few times that his late parents co-ruled together, but it feels like a huge imposition to the dragon people to attempt to do that when I have no intention of staying.

Sol considers me. “Let’s get out of here tomorrow. At least for a little bit.”

It’s something we’ve been talking about for weeks, but something always seems to come up and put off the plans. I smile. “What about the newest batch of reports that came in this morning?”

He hisses a little. “They can hold for a day. I’d like to show you the land beyond the keep.”

A thrill goes through me. I haven’t left the keep since the first day I arrived. Thankfully, the mating frenzy has eased enough that Sol doesn’t mind Aldis spending time in the library with us during the day, and I’ve really enjoyed her company. But he’s not comfortable bringing more of his people back into the keep yet. Not when every time Ramanu arrives for their weekly check-ins, they rile Sol up so much, he spends the rest of the day and night fucking me damn near unconscious and covering me with his seed. It might be vaguely worrisome if it didn’t get me off so hard. Maybe it’s worrisome that it does get me off so hard. I’m not an innocent bystander; I find myself taunting him in those moments, spilling words to make his frenzy spike and his control snap.

Reckless of me, perhaps, but he’s never given me cause to regret it. Truthfully, he’s admitted that it turns him on just as much as it turns me on. Bedroom games. I never knew they could be so much fun.

Still, my reading has brought plenty of things to my attention about the land surrounding this place. “What about the predators in the forest around here?”

He gives what amounts to a toothy dragon smile. “I’m the most dangerous predator around.”

I laugh. “I believe it.” I sip my wine. “I would like to see some more of your territory, Sol.”

“Good.”

The next daydawns bright and clear as if Sol controlled the weather to create a perfect environment. I almost went with pants today, but Sol told me we weren’t going particularly far, and I like how he looks at me when I wear dresses.

He leads me out a different exit than last time, heading in the opposite direction from the holy spring. Now that I’m not dazed and almost in shock, I take in the forest we move through with interest. I’m hardly an outdoorsy person. These trees look like…trees. Large enough to defy belief, but I couldn’t begin to say if they’re different than the ones in my world. They must be. The food I’ve been eating is all vaguely familiar and yet strange at the same time, as if maybe the food I’m used to and the stuff here had a shared ancestor at some point but evolved in wildly different directions.

For his part, Sol walks beside me in comfortable silence. It’s always comfortable. He doesn’t feel the need to fill the space between us with words unless he has something to say. It took me nearly a week before I stopped jumping every time he shifted, certain he’d require my attention.

He seems happy just to be in my presence. It’s…nice. Especially since I feel the same way. I find spending time with him incredibly soothing—at least when we aren’t having sex. There’s nothing soothing about that.

“What are you laughing about over there?”

I trail my fingers down his arm and then lace them with his. “Just thinking that sex with you is anything but restful.”

He snorts. “I would hope not. The only time you’re tempted to sleep in the midst is when I’ve fucked you unconscious.”

“That was one time.” And not even truly unconscious. My body just stopped working, overloaded with pleasure and sensation. “And it wouldn’t have happened at all if I didn’t feel safe with you.”

His hand tightens around mine, the tiniest of flexes. “I don’t take that for granted, you know. That you feel safe with me.”

My chest gives a slightly horrifying flutter. I swallow hard. “I know.”

A month of peace isn’t enough to fully distance myself from nearly half my life spent afraid. I wish it was. I wish I could wave a magic wand and eliminate all my scars, but that’s not how life works. I can’t unlearn half a lifetime’s worth of habits in a single month, but I’m no longer waiting for the other shoe to drop with Sol.

I’m…happy.

Sol leads the way off the main path and up a narrower dirty trail that has me huffing and puffing. Strangely, I relish the effort. The air tastes different out here. I don’t know how to explain it. The keep is always kept cool and comfortable and feels slightly icy on my tongue. This is almost the exact opposite. The air is faintly humid with a weight I can feel against my skin. If it were much hotter, it would be irritating, but it’s pleasant in this moment.

We reach the crest of the hill, and Sol steps out of the way, revealing a paradise. The trees are spaced farther apart up here, their thick canopy parted to let the sun in uninterrupted. A meadow of white and blue and yellow flowers leads to a small lake that backs up against a higher cliff. It looks like something out of a painting.

“I spent a lot of time here as a child.” Sol lifts his head and closes his eyes as the sun paints his face.

We’ve talked about our childhoods a bit, but only in broad terms. We’re both only children, which I’ve found to be a bit of a sore spot for each of us in different ways. I’m sure there are plenty of people who have no siblings and were perfectly happy, but with my parents the way they were, it was an incredibly lonely childhood. From the comments Sol has made, I think his was the same. His parents loved him dearly, but they had many responsibilities that kept them busy.

“Why didn’t your parents have more children?”

He looks down at me. “They tried. There was a time when my people would have families with large numbers of children, but it hasn’t been that way in generations.”

I worry my bottom lip as we start for the lake. “Is it like that with all the territories in this realm?”

“Only the kraken. The rest haven’t had the same difficulties we have.”

Easy enough to read between the lines there. I don’t understand how humans and dragons were able to breed in the first place, but it obviously acted as more than a conduit for magic. With each generation without humans mixed in, the difficulties rose.

Guilt clamps around my throat, but I try to swallow past it. I am one person. I cannot solve the entirety of this territory’s problems.

You could solve some.

I shove the little voice away. I like Sol quite a bit. Possibly more than like. In another life, I would have bent over backward to give him anything he wanted, anything he needed. I’d like to think that I wouldn’t give him a child I had no intention of sticking around to raise, but I can’t say for certain. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and survival was my only rule for so long.

I can’t do this.

If this didn’t end in seven years…

But that thought hurts worse than the others. With what I’ve discovered about Azazel and the bargainer demons’ hold on the power supply in this realm, I can’t imagine he’ll let me stay past my end date.

More, for all that Sol seems to enjoy my company and my bed, he never signed on for a permanent human wife. The only reason we’re married at all is so any child—the true goal of this contract—will be legitimate. If his plan went to perfection, I would leave him with a child and a wide-open spot for some nice dragon person to fill. Not his ex—he mentioned that they are married to someone else now—but he fell in love enough to consider marriage before. Surely he will after I’m gone.

“Briar.” From Sol’s tone, this isn’t the first time he’s said my name.

“Sorry, I was just thinking.” I turn to the gorgeous scene in front of me. Maybe the lake will ease my worries.

Except there’s nothing to be worried about. There’s no gray area, no unknown outcome. The path is beneath our feet, and it only leads to one place. I just didn’t expect to dread the future deadline instead of welcome it.

“Do you swim?”

I blink up at Sol. “What?”

“Do you swim?” he repeats patiently. He’s always so damn patient. He never gets mad at me when I mentally wander and am not entirely focused on him. He simply tugs me back to the present if he needs my attention…or lets me wander if he doesn’t.

I look at the lake again. I’d only intended to walk along the pebble beach and get my feet wet. “I know how, but I’m not the strongest swimmer.” I haven’t had much cause for practice, even if the bathtub here is nearly large enough to count as a pool.

“You don’t have to join me, but do you mind if I do?” He rubs a hand over his head. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been up here, and it’s my usual method of working through challenging problems. I think better when I’m swimming.”

“Go ahead.” I watch with avid interest as he strips out of his pants and vest and walks into the water. I don’t know what I expect, but I’m strangely delighted to discover he swims similar to how a crocodile does, spearing through the water nose first in sinuous movements. It’s enthralling even as some deep prey instinct shivers in response.

I hug my knees to my chest and watch him as the sun climbs in the sky and the balmy air starts to feel sticky. I can spend hours and days and weeks worrying about the future…or I can enjoy the time I have now.

The future will come regardless of what I do.

The feeling in my chest feels a bit like sorrow and yet somehow more bittersweet. It’s not going away anytime soon. Maybe not ever. But Sol is right here, right now.

I push to my feet and start to undo my dress.