Deven and the Dragon - Eliot Grayson Page 0,80

you want to show me,” he said. “Whatever it is, you know I won’t — hell, I don’t know what to say I won’t do. What would be the wrong way for me to react?”

“I can’t tell you that. I need you to be honest.”

“Lead on, then,” Deven said, separating from Fiora and taking a step back with visible reluctance.

“In here,” Fiora said, and led the way to his dressing room.

“You need to show me your clothes?” Deven asked, bewildered. “Oh, no. Please tell me you haven’t gotten another one of those cloaks.”

Fiora blushed to the tips of his ears — he could feel them burning. “My cloaks are stylish and enhance my natural mystique,” he said stiffly.

His back was to Deven, but he caught a muffled, stifled sound suspiciously like suppressed laughter. “Oh, for — you don’t need any enhancement,” Deven said.

Well, that was a little mollifying. Perhaps Deven was right. He still meant to get another one made, though, this time with a blue silk lining. And Deven wouldn’t tease him about it if he valued his life.

Fiora extended a claw, Deven drawing a much more flattering sharply indrawn breath as he did, and then gently pricked his palm. He laid his hand against the hidden door, and the wall vanished into nothing.

“Oh,” Deven said wonderingly. “Fuck. Fiora, is this — is this where you keep your —”

“My hoard, yes.” Fiora cleared his throat. He still couldn’t quite bring himself to turn and look at Deven’s face. “Will you come in with me?”

Deven took his hand, heedless of the smeared blood, and gave it a gentle squeeze. “There’s nothing I’d love more.”

They walked in side by side, and then Deven stopped just over the threshold, staring about him with his mouth open. Fiora waited while he looked his fill, his gaze going from shelf to shelf, up to the ceiling, and back down again.

“Well?” he said at last, his heart in his throat. “What do you think?”

“Your hoard is books?” Deven asked. Fiora couldn’t read his tone at all. “Old books?”

“Specific books,” Fiora corrected him. “Old and new. Books I love, in whatever form they take.” He swallowed hard, starting to go lightheaded with disappointment. “It’s not what you were expecting, probably. We don’t need to stay —”

“It’s splendid,” Deven said firmly. “Amazing. Fiora, this is — this is like —” He turned to Fiora, his eyes shining. “Fi, this is like seeing you. I could go through this room, and look at these books, and know you more than I would if we spent every minute together for months.”

“And that’s something you would want?” He knew he sounded pathetic and weak, begging for reassurance, but — oh, but Deven couldn’t possibly have said anything more perfect, and what if he was saying what he thought Fiora would want to hear? He’d done it before. More than once.

Deven smiled, and there wasn’t a trace of insincerity in it. “Both. Looking at your hoard, and spending every moment with you for months. All of it. All of you.”

Fiora melted into Deven’s waiting arms, his knees weak with relief and love and hope. God, but he wanted that. “You have me,” he mumbled into Deven’s shoulder.

“Speaking of having you. Or a piece of you, anyway.” Deven sounded horribly uncomfortable, and he broke off to kiss the top of Fiora’s head. He’d gone rigid, all his muscles tense. “I have something I need to tell you about your scale.”

Oh, no. Fiora pulled back, guilt assailing him. Perhaps he couldn’t be blamed for mostly forgetting about Deven’s little friend Peter, given his own illness and Deven’s sudden return and his parents’ appearance — but he had, and it was unkind of him.

“Did he recover? The little boy, Peter? I’m so sorry I didn’t ask about him.”

Deven rubbed a hand through his hair, his lips pressed flat. “Well, yes and no. I mean, yes, he recovered, but he had a normal childhood illness, not something lingering and fatal. He’s been visiting his grandparents, and that’s why I hadn’t seen him and believed he was ill when I was told that. His other grandparents, not that old fucking bastard of a grandfather of his who sent me here to lie to you in the first place.”

It took a moment for Fiora to piece that together, and by the time he did he was boiling mad. “Wait a moment. You’re telling me that your bloody town council sent you here under false pretenses — that