Deven and the Dragon - Eliot Grayson Page 0,66

his adorable confusion over what the work entailed.

Flowers made him think of Fiora. Wine made him think of Fiora; ditto ale. Also books, sandwiches, beds, cloaks, the river, the hills, and waking up in the morning — not to mention breathing. He tossed pitchfork after pitchfork of straw and manure, trying to wear himself out. He ran with sweat in the early-afternoon heat, and he hadn’t stopped for hours.

All he could see was Fiora’s eyes, though when he dreamed he sometimes saw Peter’s body, cold and still, just for variety. He had failed on all counts. Peter would die. Fiora would never see him again. All he could hear was the last word Fiora would probably ever speak to him: Please.

“Deven, hey Deven,” Harry called to him. “Deven!”

“What?” Deven snarled, not pausing in his work. “What the fuck do you want?”

Harry stomped around him and stepped right into Deven’s line of sight. He was only fifteen, but George had hired him in Deven’s absence to take the place of the previous stable hand, who’d been Deven’s occasional lover, and who’d run off with a traveling spice merchant. Deven was relieved, more than anything; he couldn’t have borne spending so much time with someone he’d used to fuck. But Harry was a persistent, bossy little bastard, and he wasn’t intimidated by Deven’s size or by the rage and grief he carried everywhere with him now, like a burden he couldn’t and didn’t want to set down. Harry planted his fists on his hips and glared.

“I want to tell you that that odd bald fellow from the castle’s out in the yard lookin’ for you,” Harry said. “That’s what the fuck I want.”

Deven dropped the pitchfork from suddenly nerveless hands. “Andrei? Andrei’s here?”

Harry shrugged. “Don’t know what his name is, only he’s here and he ain’t going anywhere ’til he’s seen you, so. Go out and see what he wants, already.”

Deven went, snatching up his shirt from where it hung over a stall divider and pulling it over his head. Andrei was indeed standing in the yard, off to the side where a lone tree by the wall cast a puddle of dappled shade. Deven was suddenly conscious of how filthy and sweat-soaked and disgusting he was — but it hardly mattered. Andrei couldn’t despise him more than he already did. And Fiora — well, Fiora wouldn’t be asking how Deven looked.

“Andrei,” Deven said, and Andrei looked up from contemplating a small box he held in his hands. “What are you doing here? How is he? Is he recovered?”

Andrei sneered at him, showing his teeth. “Lord Fiora is no concern of yours. He wishes you to have this,” he said, holding out the box, though he gripped it so tightly Deven would have had to rip it from his hands to take it.

He didn’t try. “What is that?” The box was small, made from plain polished wood that gleamed as it caught a sunbeam falling through the tree’s foliage. It was perhaps the right size to hold a piece of jewelry.

“Take it, before I change my mind about agreeing to give it to you,” Andrei growled. Deven finally took hold of it, but it took a moment for Andrei to let it go. “You don’t deserve it. You don’t deserve anything, you worthless son of a bitch. With no disrespect intended to your mother, because I’m sure you didn’t deserve her, either. Use it well, or I’ll hunt you down and kill you if it’s the last thing I ever do.”

With that, Andrei mounted his horse with surprising agility and kicked his horse into a trot. It kicked up a cloud of dust into Deven’s face as Andrei rode out of the stable yard. The dust settled on the box, dimming its polished sheen, and Deven wiped the top of it clean with the hem of his shirt.

He had a horrible suspicion what was in that box, and he was afraid to open it. He certainly couldn’t do it while standing out in the yard.

The stable chores forgotten, Deven cradled the box to his chest and slipped in the back door of the inn, going straight to his room. He set the box on his trunk of books and looked at it for a long time before he could bring himself to open it.

Inside was a single glistening blue-black scale, a little smaller than Deven’s thumb, more beautiful and more precious than any gemstone. Beside it was a tiny scrap of paper