Deven and the Dragon - Eliot Grayson Page 0,70

was Andrei? And where was the doctor who ought to be in constant attendance at Fiora’s side — a whole college of doctors, if one couldn’t do enough?

As he approached the terrace, Fiora stirred in his arms and moaned faintly. “No,” he whispered, so weakly Deven could hardly hear him. “No, I want to stay in the garden. Fred, put me down.”

He began to struggle, not with a lot of strength, but enough that Deven had to stop and kneel down to reposition him.

“It isn’t Fred,” Deven said, barely able to force the words out through his tightening throat. He wrapped his arms more firmly around the frighteningly thin bundle in his arms. “It’s me. It’s Deven.”

“Deven,” Fiora murmured, his lips twisting into a pitiful little smile. His eyes fluttered open. Their gold was dimmed, almost silvery-gray in the moonlight. They widened in shock. “Deven? Oh no, don’t look at me,” he moaned, and turned his face away.

“Fiora, what’s wrong with you? You’re —” Deven swallowed hard. His head was buzzing with something that felt like panic. “You look like you’re dying,” he whispered.

“I am.” Fiora said it like a simple statement of fact, like he hadn’t just exploded Deven’s world into tiny jagged fragments. “Why are you here? Please just leave me here.”

Leave him? Leave him? Deven’s arms tightened until they ached. He was never leaving Fiora again. He would stay by his side, day and night, somehow splitting himself into twins so that he could do that while also taking every doctor in the kingdom by the collar and personally dragging them to Fiora’s bedside. He’d tear the world apart if that’s what it took, drain his own heart’s blood if he had to, but Fiora would live.

“What’s wrong with you?” he demanded. “Tell me what’s wrong, and we’ll fix it. You were — God damn it, Fi, you were fine less than two weeks ago! You were fine until the morning after we…after we…” Realization hit like a ten-ton boulder. Fiora was a dragon, practically made of magic, unlike a human in so many ways. All his resistance to Deven’s advances. All his talk of his destiny, the darkness that lay before him. Deven had dismissed it as nonsense, the melancholy of a lonely man with an overinflated sense of the dramatic. “I did this to you. Somehow, I did this to you. Fiora, answer me! Tell me how to undo it.”

Fiora let out a little sob, shaking his head against Deven’s arm. “There’s nothing. There’s nothing you can do. You can’t — you can’t —” He coughed again, a dreadful rattling hack that shook his whole body and made Deven’s tense in horrible sympathy. “You can’t change the way you feel just because you don’t want me to die.”

“Change the way I feel? No, I can’t change how I feel.” Deven laughed, a little wildly, nearly sobbing with it. How he felt. How he bloody well felt…he hadn’t put words to it, because nothing he’d experienced in his life thus far had prepared him to know how. But looking down into Fiora’s wan face, feeling the fragile lines of him in his arms, Deven knew at last. “Fi. You may wish I didn’t, but I love you. I love you more than anything. I’ll do anything to make this right, even if you never see me again. I love you,” he repeated helplessly, and felt it in every beat of his heart.

Fiora stared up at him, his face crumpling in misery. “Don’t lie to me. Don’t — if you loved me, I wouldn’t —” He cut off abruptly, choking and wheezing, his eyes wide and unfocused.

Fiora’s whole body shook, like an epileptic seizure, every limb flailing — and then he went still like someone had cut his strings, falling limp in Deven’s arms. His eyes slid shut.

“Fi!” Deven frantically felt under the coat, laying his hand flat on Fiora’s chest. He was still cold, and his heart wasn’t beating — no, there. His heart was beating. It simply wasn’t in quite the right place. Deven kept his hand there, panting with the shock of terror, feeling it thump under his fingers. Slow, but steady, and Fiora’s chest rose and fell with even breaths.

Deven resettled the coat around him, gathered him up, and stood, setting off for the castle again. He wanted so badly to steal a kiss, to feel Fiora’s soft lips one more time — but he didn’t have the right. He’d done this. He