Draco A Medieval Scottish Roma - Jayne Castel Page 0,20
want another.”
A strained silence fell then. An infuriated expression settled over Maximus’s face, yet he said no more. Perhaps he realized he’d overstepped, and that to say anything more right now would just worsen the situation. Draco held his tongue as well, although he watched Gavina, firelight playing over the lean angles of his face.
Heart pounding, Gavina turned and walked stiffly across to the tent they’d erected for her earlier. Without looking back at her two protectors, she knelt down and crawled inside.
Draco returned to the piece of rose-wood he was whittling. He needed to distract himself, to think of other things besides the brief yet explosive conversation that had just transpired.
He studied the wood carefully, a crease forming between his eyebrows. He’d started carving it without knowing exactly what he was going to make. Often his carvings began this way. Usually, the piece of wood or stone whispered to him, told him what it wanted to be.
This one was starting to take the form of a woman—a siren maybe.
Draco’s mouth twisted. Ironic really. Sirens were famous for luring their victims onto the rocks, but Draco’s life was already foundering, he didn’t need a mermaid to lead him astray.
“I don’t know why you’re smirking,” Maximus muttered from the other side of the fire. “If Lady Gavina doesn’t agree to wed you, we’re all doomed to remain immortal.”
Draco’s chin jerked up, and he met Maximus’s angry gaze. “You sound so sure of yourself, Max,” he growled. “But you don’t know she’s the ‘White Hawk’ the riddle speaks of … any more than Cass knows I’m the ‘Dragon’. The pair of you have gotten so frantic of late you’re now grasping at shadows.”
A nerve flickered under Maximus’s eye—a sign that those words had hit him where it hurt.
Remorse flared within Draco, an ache rising just under his breastbone. He didn’t like to lash out at Maximus or Cassian. The pair of them were the only souls alive who understood him, who really cared about what happened to him. And yet, ever since his friends had found love and wed the women who’d brought them happiness, he’d felt oddly estranged from them.
Neither Maximus nor Cassian knew of those lost years he’d spent under Saint Margaret’s chapel in Edinburgh. He’d planned on telling them, yet when they’d finally met up again, he found himself making up some other story about why they hadn’t seen him in so long.
He’d felt lonely afterward. Lying to his two best friends had felt like a betrayal at the time. But oddly, now he felt as if he was the one betrayed.
Maximus and Cassian had found something to live for, and yet all he wanted was death. They wanted ‘normal’ lives—to be able to remain in one place without eventually becoming outcasts. They wanted to father children, and to age just like everyone else.
Draco just wanted an end to it all.
“This is it,” Maximus replied finally, a rasp to his voice. “I can feel it in my gut. You and Gavina must wed, or the curse won’t be broken.”
Draco’s fingers tightened around the bone hilt of his whittling knife. He’d spent the last millennium avoiding marriage. However, over the years there had been one or two women—one especially—who he’d cared for enough to consider it, if he’d been mortal. Magda had been dead nearly two centuries now, a spirited woman who’d died tragically young. He sometimes thought of her. But he’d never willingly choose a woman like Gavina De Keith.
As beautiful as a winter’s dawn, and just as cold.
He’d witnessed the horror that darkened her large blue eyes when she’d told them what her name meant. She’d regretted her admission the moment the words left her lips—especially when she’d realized what it meant.
“You can’t compel her to wed,” Draco reminded him, his own tone cooling now. Maximus’s urgency, his need to break the curse, burned so brightly, it risked consuming him. “Just as you can’t force me.”
Maximus stared back at him, his jaw tightening. “I know you’ve always been an arse, Draco … but I never remember you being this selfish.”
Draco shrugged, the insults washing off him.
“Don’t you want to break the curse?” Maximus pressed, leaning forward.
“Yes, as much as you do.”
“Really … well you’re not acting like it.”
Draco snorted, his own anger rising. “I knew this would happen. Once you and Cassian got yourselves entangled with women, you lost your perspective. We all know how dangerous it is to hope. How many times have we looked forward to