To Tame a Dragon - Tiffany Roberts Page 0,53

long enough to wipe her eyes before starting down the slope.

All that stubborn dragon would have had to do was listen—listen to her wants, to her reasons for them, for ways they might benefit him, too. Even if he’d still disagreed, that show of simple courtesy and respect would have helped them avoid this.

But instead, he’d chosen to argue, to belittle her people, and in doing so, he had belittled Elliya. He’d left her feeling like her chest had been ripped open and a blood maddened beast had torn out her insides, leaving naught behind but pain.

No, not a beast—a dragon.

That she could barely see the distinction between the two terms at that moment only deepened her pain.

Her footfalls were heavier and faster than she’d intended, and the scree underfoot was loose. Little stones rattled and clacked against one another as her passage sent them tumbling downslope. Her heart leapt into her throat each time one of her feet slipped and the tiny landslides she was triggering nearly dragged her down. And yet, she could not bring herself to slow, not even when sharp rocks dug into the soles of her feet—all her willpower was set toward preventing herself from going only faster, from giving in to the urge to run.

She needed time, needed space. She needed to think. Elliya couldn’t even begin sorting through these complex, overwhelming emotions while Falthyris was nearby. That didn’t mean racing off into the desert or trekking deep into the mountains, but she did need the cave out of sight. She couldn’t bring herself to look at it right now.

Elliya would go to the river until she could find calm, until she could face him again without being overwhelmed by hurt, without speaking with rancor that would only widen the rift between them. And Falthyris could do with some time to himself, as well. He needed to reflect upon his stubbornness and hatred.

Somehow, despite her haste and the scree sliding around her feet, Elliya reached the more level ground at the base of the slope unharmed. It was a shallow valley with tall hills on one side and the rocky outcroppings and formations that ran to the river on the other. Given the smooth, rounded stones along the bottom of the valley, its curving path, and the color of the hardpacked dirt there, she guessed it must once have been the bed of a river or stream that had flowed into the larger waterway nearby.

Clenching her jaw, she walked along the dried riverbed at a brisk pace. A fresh breeze flowed over her, just as hot as before, but neither the air nor the sun had anything to do with the heat crackling across her skin—that was purely the result of her anger and hurt.

She wanted to scream her frustrations into the sky, wanted to hear their echoes fade until they died out entirely, wanted to throw a tantrum of her own that would put Falthyris’s moods to shame. But that wouldn’t accomplish anything save for alerting nearby predators to her location.

Though there were still some jagged rocks and hard, crusted patches of sun-dried dirt on the riverbed, crossing it was far easier than traversing the slope outside the cave. The natural path led her toward the first bend, where it would cut through a ravine on its route to the flowing river.

To her dismay, her feelings did not cool as she moved farther away from the cave. The mating bond, that sensation in her chest that had become so cherished, so familiar, wound tighter around her heart with her every step—tight enough to hurt. She’d not experienced that sensation when she had gone to the river alone before. She could only guess it was happening now because her emotions were high, because she was so upset.

Elliya squeezed the grip of her knife and curled her empty hand into a trembling fist. She refused to press her palm to her chest and soothe that terrible ache. She refused to submit to this pain, to be undone by it. Fresh tears welled in her eyes all the same, blurring her vision again before streaming down her cheeks.

She had expected better of Falthyris. He had shown her better over the last two weeks. The kindness, thoughtfulness, and genuine interest he’d behaved with made this all the worse, and she hated that his words had cut so deep. Before that day at the river, the day he’d shown her a new side of himself, she would have