Chapter 36 Monsters Who Knock
Bella
The first thing I notice when I wake up isn’t the sunlight or the sound of birds or any kind of peace. It’s cake. A plate of sad wedding, vanilla cake frosted and leaning slightly like it lost a battle with gravity, sitting on my bedside table like some kind of sugary peace offering. I blink at it for a long moment. Then I blink again.
“Gilfred,” I whisper, nudging the tiny green lump snoring under my pillow. “We’ve been gifted dessert...for breakfast.”
He peeks out, blinking one lazy golden eye, then crawls over to sniff it. He pokes the icing with one tiny toe, recoils dramatically, and chirps like he’s just discovered poison.
“I know,” I mutter, rubbing my eyes. “It is suspicious. But if it was poison, it’d be a pretty stupid way to assassinate someone. Death by frosting?”
He tilts his head. “Yeah, you’re right. It’d be a nice way to go.”
The smell hits me next, rich vanilla that I remember shoving into my face yesterday. It's definitely not the “haunted castle” aesthetic I was expecting. My stomach growls, traitorous and loud. I sigh, eyeing the cake like it’s trying to seduce me. “Okay,” I mumble. “Maybe just a little bite—” But no. I stop myself. Because this is exactly how fairy-tale girls die, they take food from mysterious strangers, or in my case, from tall, winged men who breathe fire and think the concept of pants is optional. I do like pants though...
Either way, I've decided the cake is screwing with me, and I swing my legs out of bed; the floor is cold beneath my feet. The room is quiet, too quiet. The kind of quiet that makes your thoughts echo... And, because I’m not about to be some locked-tower idiot again, I walk over to the door and I turn the handle slowly. It opens. “Oh, thank the stars,” I whisper, letting out a breath I didn’t realise I was holding. “We’re not prisoners.” Gilfred chirps, unimpressed and I open the door wider, just to double check...and scream. Because there, filling the entire doorway like a very polite nightmare, is Damien. Tall. Broad. Entirely too handsome for someone who looks like they could roast a sheep whole. His hand is mid-air, frozen in the act of knocking. We both freeze. For about three very long, very awkward seconds after I've screamed in his face and clutched my imaginary pearls.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING STANDING THERE LIKE THAT?!” I blurt.
He flinches. “I—I was going to knock!”
“WELL, YOU DIDN’T KNOCK, YOU LURKED!”
“I wasn’t lurking!”
“You were definitely lurking!”
“I—You screamed like I stabbed you!”
“Because you appeared out of nowhere!”
Gilfred, bless his useless little soul, dives under the blanket with a squeak. I swear I can hear him muttering lizard curses. Damien and I stare at each other. My heart is hammering. His expression is somewhere between mortified and mildly concussed. And then, somehow, I start laughing. It bursts out of me before I can stop it. It’s ridiculous, everything about this moment is ridiculous, and I laugh so hard I have to hold the doorframe. Damien just stands there, eyes wide, like no one’s ever laughed near him before. He blinks slowly, like he’s waiting for me to explode again.
When I finally manage to breathe, I say, “Do you always sneak up on people at their bedroom doors?”
He clears his throat. “No. I—wanted to see if you liked the cake.”
I blink. “You left me the cake?”
“Yes. I thought you might be… hungry.”
“Right. And then you thought haunting my doorway was a great follow-up?”
Something in his jaw twitches, and his eyes drop sheepishly. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“Well,” I say, crossing my arms. “You did. But points for the effort. Also—” I look at the cake again “—it’s very good.”
He straightens slightly, as if I’ve just handed him a royal pardon. “It is?”
“Yeah.” I grin. “Best bedside breakfast I’ve ever had.”
There’s a flicker of something behind his eyes...something soft, almost shy. “I’m glad.”
Then, from the blanket, a very indignant chirp. Gilfred pokes his little head out and glares directly at Damien.
Damien’s mouth twitches. “Ah. The lizard.”
I gasp. “Excuse me. That is Sir Gilfred, and he is not a lizard.”
The dragon king has the audacity to raise an eyebrow. “He looks like one.”
“And you look like a walking barbecue,” I shoot back.
For a second, I swear he almost smiles. I'm mentally putting that on my bucket list. Make the socially awkward broody barbecue smile. Yes.
The silence that follows isn’t uncomfortable, exactly. Just… strange. He looks like he wants to say something else, but can’t figure out how. His hand is also still halfway raised from earlier, like his brain hasn’t decided what to do with it yet.
Finally, I sigh, gesture toward the hall. “So, are you going to keep standing there, or…?”
He blinks. “Or?”
“Or invite me to breakfast? Or tour me around your terrifyingly large castle? Or, I don’t know, something?”
That seems to jolt him back to life. He clears his throat again, lowers his hand, and nods quickly. “Right. Yes. Of course.”
He starts to offer his arm—then hesitates—then retracts it—then offers it again. His eyes flicker gold, then brown, then gold again.
“Are you arguing with yourself?” I ask flatly.
His lips twitch. Oh, that was a close one! He definitely thinks I'm funny. I just have to get it out of him.
“Something like that.”
I can’t help it. I slide my hand through his arm anyway, feeling the warmth beneath the fabric, the solid muscle that tenses under my touch. “Well, whoever wins, let me know. I’d hate to be holding the wrong side.”
He freezes completely at the contact. He doesn't move a single muscle, and I'm left standing here awkwardly clutching a warm stone wall. Great. I’ve broken him again. He’s a dragon who can burn down kingdoms without blinking, but apparently, one sarcastic girl with cake can make him forget how to breathe. Oh, we have some work to do on him.