dreadful as it was alien and incomprehensible. Since when did Deven need anyone? He didn’t. He needed his books, and enough work to keep him busy — and he loved his aunt and uncle, but he could have managed without them. He would need to manage without them eventually, though he hoped that was decades away.
Since leaving Fiora, he hadn’t managed. He needed. And he hated it, and he didn’t know why he felt that way, and he couldn’t go another moment without seeing Fiora again, whatever Fiora wanted. It was selfish, and it was wrong.
Deven urged his horse to a gallop as they came to a flatter part of the road, letting her have her head. It was selfish, but he couldn’t wait another moment to relieve the fear and the need, and the sneaking, sickening terror that Fiora could be worse than Andrei had let on.
At last he clattered up to the castle stables. Marius, the coachman and stable hand, came out and blinked at him in surprise; Deven tossed him the reins and didn’t stop to hear his protests.
Twilight had set in. The half moon was already high in the sky, escorted by the first two stars of the night. As Deven went around the stables, passing near the rose garden on the path to the front door of the castle, a glint of moonlight on…something, caught his eye, far down along one of the smaller winding paths through the garden.
Something that glittered like gemstones. Something large.
Deven ran.
He rounded the curve of the path along the bottom of the garden, the same path he’d taken the night he cut Fiora’s rose. He passed the wild climbing roses, now losing their freshness after enduring the heat of summer, but still sweet enough to fill the air with their scent.
And there, lying in the path just beside the barren rose bush where Deven had found the blue rose, was Fiora.
Chapter Nineteen
Fiora was in dragon form, with his neck stretched out and his muzzle resting on the ground. His wings flopped at his sides, not folded neatly as they usually were, but limp and bedraggled. Fiora’s long tail was under the rose bush, perhaps wrapped around it.
A livid spot stood out on his flank, small but obvious due to the usual shiny perfection of Fiora’s armor: a gap, with his dragon skin showing through. It looked like it ought to have been the same light blue as Fiora’s human skin, only it was reddened and swollen.
Deven stopped, his feet skidding in the gravel. Fiora didn’t move. His eyes were closed, and he didn’t even blink.
Deven was at his side in an instant, crouched down by Fiora’s massive head. He laid his hand on Fiora’s neck. Was he breathing? Deven couldn’t tell, and his heart felt like it might burst out of his chest.
“Fi? Sweetheart, open your eyes.” No response. “Fi!” Deven shook him a little — or tried to, but it was like trying to shake a stone wall. His fingers slid off of Fiora’s scales as if they were made of ice. “Fuck. Fiora, look at me, please, I’m begging you…”
He didn’t know how long he knelt there, frantically petting Fiora’s neck and face, pleading with him…but at last there was the faintest sigh, one of Fiora’s eyelids fluttered — and Fiora melted from dragon into human, his bulk flowing into the ether and reforming into Fiora’s human body in the blink of an eye.
Fiora was naked, and his pale-blue limbs lay sprawled across the path, the gravel digging into his delicate skin. His eyes were still closed, and his face was pressed against the ground.
Deven stripped off his coat and laid it out flat, carefully lifting Fiora and gently placing him on top. A red mark marred Fiora’s hip, smaller than the matching wound on his dragon form but the same shape and placement. Deven shuddered and wrapped Fiora up in the coat, which covered him down to his knees — luckily, for Fiora was chilled to the touch. He was breathing, Deven could tell now, but his breaths were shallow, and far too few and far between. What the fuck was wrong with him?
“Fiora,” he whispered, and buried his face in Fiora’s long hair. It stuck to the moisture on Deven’s cheeks. He hadn’t even realized the tears had been streaming down. “Wake up.”
Nothing. Deven hoisted Fiora up into his arms and set off for the castle as quickly as he was able. Where the bloody fuck