Deven and the Dragon - Eliot Grayson Page 0,65
the tint of blue faded away to leave an ashy grey in its wake.
The second thing he saw was the rose — Fiora’s rose, Deven’s gift — lying wilted and broken in a mess of glass on the floor.
“Fi? What’s — bloody hell, what’s happened?”
“Don’t address me that way,” Fiora said, so calmly he might have been drugged. Only the faintest tremor in his voice gave him away. He reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a folded square of paper, and flung it across his desk. “Read that, although I doubt its contents will surprise you.”
Feeling as if he’d stepped into someone else’s nightmare, Deven snatched up the paper. It was a letter — to him. From Holling. And it was more than explicit enough.
Deven crumpled it in his hand, his knuckles going white. How had this come to be in Fiora’s possession? Andrei, no doubt, intercepting Deven’s letters. Choking anger rose up, only to extinguish itself in a burst of grief and despair. Trying to play the victim here for having his letters opened by someone else would be the last resort of a cowardly, whining villain with no real defense to offer.
He was the villain, and he had no real defense. He could at least not whine like a coward. But panic was setting in, as Fiora stared at him with such horror and contempt in his golden eyes — eyes that had been bright with laughter and passion only that morning.
Only that morning, a few hours since. Deven wanted to throw up. Thank God he hadn’t had dinner.
“Fi — Fiora. Believe me, I —”
“I wouldn’t believe you if you told me my own name!” Fiora’s eyes flashed with something like flame, as if his dragon’s nature was coming out with his fury. “Who the fuck is Peter?”
“Councilman Holling’s grandson — he’s only twelve. He has some lingering illness the doctors have said is fatal, and there’s nothing they can do for him. Fiora, please, listen to me. When I agreed to the council’s request to send me here, it was because I knew Peter, he used to visit the stables and pet the horses. I couldn’t let him die. I didn’t mean to —”
“You didn’t mean to what, precisely?” Fiora spat, cutting him off again. “To earn my trust only to betray it? To lie to me, to flatter me, to seduce me…” His voice wavered, and he coughed, a deep, hacking, dreadful sound that came up from his lungs.
Deven stepped forward, drawn against his will — Fiora was ill, there was something horribly wrong with him, he wanted to wrap him in his arms and keep him safe, kiss him and comfort him and beg forgiveness on his knees.
“Don’t,” Fiora choked, and stood with a horrid screech of chair legs on stone, leaning his fists on the desk as if he couldn’t quite keep himself upright. “Don’t you dare come near me.”
“Please,” Deven whispered. His whole body had gone ice-cold, chill perspiration running down his spine. This was worse than a nightmare. He knew he wouldn’t wake. “Please.”
That morning, Fiora had said he’d make Deven beg. And he’d been right…a terrible laugh bubbled up in Deven’s throat.
“Go,” Fiora said, his voice hollow. “Go, and don’t ever come back. I never want to see you again.”
“Fiora. I’m begging you.” Those words meant nothing. Nothing meant anything. Fiora wavered in Deven’s vision like a mirage, a momentary glimpse of paradise about to vanish into an endless expanse of nothing. “Please,” he said again, as if it could make a difference.
“If you —” Fiora paused to draw a deep, shuddering breath that rasped in his throat. “If you have the slightest, faintest trace of care for me, then leave. Go. Please.”
That last word, raw and desperate, echoed in Deven’s ears, setting up a hum that blocked out all other sound. Please. Fiora was asking him, begging him, to go.
“Goodbye, Fiora,” Deven said, his voice as rough as sandpaper. “I wish you — God, be happy. Forget all about me, and be happy.”
Deven turned and walked out the study door, with Fiora’s pale, stricken face the only thing he could see.
He thought it would be a long time before he could see anything else.
Chapter Eighteen
The stables needed mucking out badly, after the spate of traveling merchants who’d enjoyed the inn’s hospitality for the week since Deven had been home. Deven would’ve welcomed the repetitive, exhausting labor of it, except that mucking out stables made him think of Fiora and