“This is more important than class—nourishing you, getting to know you…”
“What do you want to know?” I asked uneasily.
He frowned. “Well, to start with, I’d like to know why you let yourself almost expire from thirst instead of coming to me and letting me give you what you need?”
“Um…” I looked down at my hands, biting my lip. How could I explain how hard it was for me to ask for what I needed from him? How could I tell him that I felt so far below him, so undeserving of what he offered and I still didn’t even know exactly why he was offering it.
“Well?” he demanded and I realized I would have to give an answer—he wouldn’t allow me to get away with silence.
“Well, just…just look at you,” I said, gesturing at his muscular physique. “And look at me.” I gestured at my own scarred form.
“I am looking at you, Kaitlyn,” he murmured.
Looking up, I saw that he was staring into my face and the expression in his eyes was softer than it had been a moment before.
Nervously, I put up a hand, making certain that my ever-present curtain of hair was concealing my scars.
To my surprise, Ari reached up and pulled my hand away.
“Don’t do that,” he murmured, brushing my sheaf of hair away from face and baring my scars. “Don’t hide yourself from me, L’lorna.”
“Please…” I put my hair back in place, feeling a panicky tightness in my chest. “Don’t do that,” I told him. “I can’t…can’t have you or anybody seeing me like that.”
“Why not?” he asked gently.
“You know why not,” I told him. “You can see well enough—everybody can. Besides…” I smoothed my hair back into place more firmly. “I thought your people—the Drakes—hated females with…” I had to swallow hard before I could get it out. “With facial deformities,” I finally said.
He frowned and made a fierce gesture with one hand.
“My people don’t know everything. I don’t want you to hide from me, Kaitlyn. At least not while we’re alone together like this—as we will be quite often from now on.”
“We will? What do you mean?” I demanded, frowning back. I looked around the room, which was outfitted like a small den with leather couches and chairs and even a cooler which seemed to be filled with drinks. There were pictures on the stone walls of dragons flying—clearly it was a place for Drakes, but I had never heard of it before. It must be one of the many hidden places in the castle that only certain people knew about and could access.
“This is the Drake Den,” Ari explained. “Only males whose wings fly the highest are allowed entrance. And since Sanchez was expelled and sent back to the Sky Lands, I am the only one who can come in.”
I looked at him uncertainly.
“So this is your own private little den? You’re the only one allowed in here?”
“As well as anyone I invite—as I am inviting you now,” he said firmly. “You will meet me here every day thirty minutes before breakfast and then again, directly before dinner. In this way I can be certain you’re getting enough nourishment and I won’t have to worry about you fainting again.”
“I didn’t faint,” I protested. “I just got…a little dizzy.”
Ari looked skeptical.
“You were so weak you could barely bite me,” he pointed out. “Speaking of which, you still haven’t answered my question—why did you wait so long before taking nourishment from me? Why didn’t you come to me earlier?”
I looked down at my hands again.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come out when you came for me this weekend,” I told him in a low voice. “I was…in a dark place.”
“I understand,” Ari said with surprising gentleness. “Avery and Megan explained to me what happened with your Nocturne family. Kaitlyn, I am so sorry.”
“Me…me too.” I didn’t want to cry again, I told myself. I had been crying all weekend and all it had done was dehydrate me almost to the point of death. Still, I couldn’t help the moisture that welled in my eyes at the thought of little Allegra wondering where I was and wishing I would come home to her…
“Here,” he murmured and presented me with a clean white linen handkerchief beautifully embroidered with the initials AR in one corner.
It was such an old-world, courtly gesture and so old-fashioned of him to have such a thing as an embroidered pocket handkerchief that I was distracted from my grief.
“This is beautiful work,” I said, examining the inch-high golden letters in the corner of the handkerchief. I looked up at him shyly. “Who made it for you? A girlfriend back home?”
Ari frowned.
“Do you really think I would have pledged myself to nourish you if my heart was bound to another?”
“I don’t know!” I exclaimed. It occurred to me that it was awkward to be having this conversation while still seated on his lap, but there didn’t seem to be any way of getting loose, for the time-being at least. “I don’t know why you’re doing any of this,” I went on. “Feeding me, protecting me…I mean, it just seems wrong for someone like me to ask for anything from someone like you—especially your blood.”
“Why?” Ari demanded. “Why should you not take what I wish to freely give?” His accent—which was part Spanish and part something else, probably Drake—seemed to get thicker when he was upset, I noticed.
“But why do you want to give it? Just out of obligation?” I demanded. “That wouldn’t be enough for most guys to take on some ugly little scarred girl who—”
“Stop!” Ari actually put a hand over my mouth, stopping the flow of self-hating words. “Don’t,” he told me, his eyes blazing. “Don’t ever speak of yourself that way, Kaitlyn! I will not allow anyone to talk about you that way—not even you.”
I shook my head, indicating I would stop and he took his hand from my mouth.
“I don’t understand you,” I said to him. “I don’t understand why you
