Invitation

Invitation
Naomi

My hand is the size of a cantaloupe but burns a bright, furious red. Little splotches of the deepest blue fan across my knuckles, and even the slightest twitch of my fingers sends a sharp, blinding pain ricocheting all the way up to my shoulder. 

Fraser adjusts his glasses, pressing them high against his straight, regal nose. Somewhat straight, I realize, since this is the closest I’ve been to the man so far. A faint scar stretches across the bridge of his nose, highlighting a kink from a very old break. The three deep gashes on his face are new and bold, even in the dim, fiery lantern light, but already skillfully tended and pitched together by bandages, like he’s had this happen to him before. 

We’re in his kitchen, I believe. It is a kitchen, but dated by several hundred, if not thousands, of years. There’s no refrigerator or dishwasher. A large wash basin and water pump serves as a sink, and the fireplace stretching from wall to wall is stained a deep blackish-gray from centuries of use. I’m sitting on a stool at a wide, worn wooden table in the center of the room that’s worn from use, and so is the dragon shifter, who gingerly turns my busted hand from side to side. 

He prods the knuckle of my middle finger and winces when I jerk away in pain. 

“You obviously broke that knuckle.”

“Well, it’s a good thing I heal so quickly. I’ll be fine by tomorrow.” I gulp, straining to keep from bursting into hot, fiery tears. “We should be more worried about Ian’s nose.”

“You shattered his nose,” he deadpans, his eyes searching mine. “He doesn’t feel a thing as it stands.”

Because he’s knocked out cold and chained to a bed several stories above our heads. Well, at least, that’s what Fraser told me after forcing me to sit at this table and then disappearing for twenty minutes while I sputtered in pain and tried to dry my tears by the time he returned. 

That twenty minutes did give me time to look around from my perch on the stool. While absolutely ancient, this kitchen is immaculately clean, as if any time he’s awake, however long those stretches last, he spends it on his hands and knees scrubbing every grout line with a toothbrush until they shine like diamonds. 

This section of the mountain palace is full of dozens of bedrooms, all of which are clean and tidy, with fresh linens and not a speck of dust on any of the surfaces. 

He doesn’t have staff running the place. If he did, it would take dozens of people working full time to maintain. 

A pang of knowing blooms in my chest. 

He’s waiting for them. 

His people. His kind. 

Or literally anyone to come back. 

He must be so lonely. 

He has to be. 

“I’ll be right back,” he says with a soft sigh, and he rises. He pulls open an old wooden door along the wall and disappears into the darkness below, his footsteps echoing down a length of stairs. While he’s gone, which isn’t very long, I try in vain to bend my ridiculously swollen fingers, but the pain cuts me open from bow to stern. By the time he returns with a frozen solid hunk of what looks like steak wrapped in a cloth rag, I’m pressing my forehead into the table and sniffling like an infant. 

“Have you ever punched someone like that before?” Fraser carefully presses the frozen meat to my knuckles. 

“No.” I whine, turning my head to rest my cheek on my outstretched arm. 

“I thought so. No one in their right mind would have thrown a punch like that without knowing full well they were about to break their hand.” He leans back and crosses his arms over his chest, his legs splayed. His knee brushes my thigh under the table. “It was a mean shot. I’ll give you that much.”

“It was impulsive.”

“It was effective.”

I hold his gaze for several seconds before staring blankly at the hearth, which has a small, but warm, fire burning. The flames are little more than sparkling embers, but somehow, it makes me feel a little less homesick for something I’m not sure I know how to describe. Not the palace in Moonrise. Not my parents or siblings. Something else. Something I suppose I haven’t experienced yet. “Today was the worst day of my life.”

“It’s incredibly difficult to watch a rejection take place.”

I look at him. Really look at him. He seems so normal right now, with his glasses and goldish brown eyes. Little creases in the corner make him look especially distinguished. He does, however, look like one of the dramatically illustrated men on the cover of the romance novels I hide under my bed, which is as irritating as it is confusing. 

He runs his fingers through his brown, almost–black, hair, which is long enough to brush his shoulders. It’s loose now, but earlier, he wore it back, tied with a length of rough fabric. His clothing is dated, like something out of the entirely fantastical movies about the times before the Great War, when men wore breeches and billowing shirts, but on him, it looks… nice. 

I roll my eyes to the ceiling with a huff, purposefully jarring myself back to the present. “Have you seen many mates reject each other? Or was this a first for you as well?”

“This wasn’t my first time.” His gaze briefly meets mine before he busies himself by checking the position of his makeshift ice pack on my fingers. “It happened often during the war. It was easier to reject a mate than feel one die or be tortured to death.”

It’s suddenly impossible to swallow. 

“How long was the war?”

“Your people don’t know?”

“Not much from that time survived. We have theories, but that’s it.” It’s true. Anything that old is tucked away in Arthur's massive archives, which the family steers clear from. He has the bad habit of hiding what he deems collectable in the recesses of the archives in Veiled Valley, and by collectable, he means magical creatures. 

Fraser rolls his lower lip between his teeth and rises methodically. “Ten years almost exactly,” he says, opening and closing several cabinets before pulling two pewter mugs off a shelf. He returns to the table with the mugs and a bottle of what might be wine. He blows the dust off the cork and pops it open, and the scent alone confirms I’m in for a treat. “At least, ten years of real battle. I remember there being a three-year period when things started to change, but none of us truly knew what was coming until Eastonia was essentially invaded one night.”

I watch the deep purple liquid drain between the two mugs, both overly full, but we probably deserve it. He carefully sets my mug in front of me. 

“What were you before the war?”

This line of questioning surprises him greatly. He goes very still, cupping his mug between both hands, and stares down into the liquid for several seconds before replying, “I….” 

He furrows his brows. For a moment, distant memories play out behind his eyes, but he blinks and shakes his head. “My father was the Dragon King of Quartzspire. I was the prince, the heir of his territory. Uhm… but I wasn’t a warrior until the war. None of us were, really.”

“What do you mean?”

“We didn’t train to be warriors out of habit like the wolves do. We didn’t need to. We were already ready. At least, we thought we were.” He takes a deep gulp of his wine. I follow suit, sensing growing tension. “Before the war, I was a teacher. That was my profession.”

I laugh, but he’s not joking. “Wait. You were?”

“Is that funny to you, witch?”

“I mean, a little? You’re absolutely terrifying.” Another laugh falls flat, but his answering glare isn’t as serious as it could be. 

He leans forward over the table, still cupping his wine. “Well, if that’s so unbelievable, you’ll be shocked to learn that my students were all under the age of ten. I taught the young ones. I taught the children, until there were none left.” 

“Where did they go?”

He doesn’t answer. I regret asking. I regret it so much I reach out with my good hand and grip his wrist. 

He shrugs me off and takes another drink of wine. “Back then, we lived in harmony with the foxes, wolf shifters, and witches who used to call these mountains home. I taught in the nearby valley. There was once a village there.”

“Ian found remnants of what he thought was a cabin.”

“There’s rubble all over. That's all that’s left.”

“I’m sorry if I–I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have laughed. I shouldn’t have asked.”

“I’m not.” He grits his teeth. “Don’t apologize. I haven’t ever been asked that question before. I wasn’t sure how to answer.”

A tense silence settles between us for several minutes. I sip my wine, which does help numb the pain still radiating in crushing waves from my fingers. He checks on the swelling several times like he’s trying to keep his hands busy, and honestly, having his full attention is very nice. 

The silence becomes too much, and the wine loosens my tongue enough to ask, “Is Wren still here?”

“No.” He puts the ice pack back over my fingers and gently takes my wrist, propping up the network of small bones and tendons. “He left before sunrise this morning, once Ian calmed down enough to shift back to normal. He needed to check on his people.”

I nod, but words fail me while his touch travels up my arm to my elbow. It’s innocent. It’s a warm, caring touch that propels me back into the present, into our fucked up, shitty, absolutely horrific day that hasn’t ended yet. “My arm feels fine.”

“You’re going to be bruised up to your elbow,” he says firmly, meeting my gaze. “Idiot.”

I scoff, and his smile lights up the room. If I could yank out of his touch without blacking out from the pain, I would. “Do you know who I am? If anyone else touched me like this, their head would be on a spike.”

“Lucky,” he murmurs, “that I’m not ‘anyone else.’” He releases me and settles back with his mug. We’ve drank half of the wine already. I feel warm and at ease and would probably be enjoying myself if a dark, endless shadow of expectation wasn’t hanging over my head. 

Fraser turns his mug in a circle. “I suspect you’ll be leaving as soon as you’re able to travel effectively.”

“Tomorrow morning at the earliest, yes. I’d like to sleep. Being this injured isn’t easy on my powers. I'd hate to land in the middle of the woods instead of in the Roguelands as planned.” I wonder if he knows what the Roguelands are. Was it called something else before? Was it anything like it is now? My lips part to ask, but the words fail me. 

Fraser scans my face. “Naomi.”

“What?”

“There’s a chance it’s too late for Oakley.”

I hold his gaze for a long time. “I know.”

“Ian can stay here as long as he needs.”

“Thank you.” I’m absolutely gutted but unsure how to convey that without either bursting into tears or screaming the word ‘fuck’ as loud as I possibly can. 

“I know there’s a lot you want to know. I know you have questions.”

“You’ve made Ian’s situation very clear.”

“About me,” he corrects. 

“You think so highly of yourself.”

“What I mean,” he grinds out, leaning forward, effectively closing the distance between us, “is that I would not be opposed to seeing you again.”

“Are you asking me on a date?”

“What the fuck is a date?”

My laugh pings through the room, and the air seems to warm by several degrees. He huffs a frustrated breath, but his eyes…. 

“You said there are no Firestones left outside of your family. I know that's hard, being the only one.”

The words strike me in the chest, untangling something so terribly knotted I hadn’t noticed how deeply that fact ran through my veins. 

“You are welcome back here any time. The invitation stands.”

“Why?” I ask. “You don’t seem to like me very much.”

“I’m sure the feeling is mutual, Fireheart.”

The next morning, bruised and impossibly sore, I stand in the same room where I watched Ian break a sacred bond against his will. I have nothing to take back with me other than freshly sharpened weapons and my usual cloak. Fraser isn’t here. He didn’t come to say goodbye, but I didn’t really expect that. 

I also didn’t expect the carefully wrapped bundle resting in the center of the massive room, addressed to me. 

I leave before I can change my mind.