Page 99 of Dragon’s Ending

Had he agreed with Mortimer’s judgement purely to suck up to the old dragon? No, that couldn’t be it. By supporting my defence of Ben, he’d defied Mortimer. So, what had changed his mind about me? All those years of telling me I wasn’t good enough, yet suddenly… I was?

I didn’t know what had changed. Unless, as Ben breathed softly against me, no doubt deep in dreams of unlimited historical records, I wondered for a moment. Maybe I was what had changed.

I stared into the darkness of my room, Ben solid and warm in my hold.

I don’t believe he has. The words replayed themselves with infuriating persistence.

And then there was the study. God, the study. The heart of his power. For years, being summoned there had felt like waiting to be executed. I’d stood in front of that desk so many times while Rhodri informed me exactly how I’d failed him. Reckless. Thoughtless. Volatile. Every conversation in that room had been judgement.

But tonight he’d trusted me to remain there without him. To bank down the fire when I left.

Such a stupid little thing. Except somehow it wasn’t.

My throat tightened unexpectedly, and to stop myself thinking about why, I pressed another kiss against Ben’s hair.

I knew I should be thinking about Mortimer’s council, but my thoughts were growing increasingly tangled. Politics, Bedivere, and one-handed unicorns mixed together until I fell asleep, Ben warm and safe in my arms.

Chapter Thirty-seven

BEN

I woke up to Dominic’s ever-reliable morning wood pressing against me.

“Morning,” he said when I blinked my eyes open. He looked disgustingly awake.

“Show-off.”

His grin widened.

The bed was warm and cosy, the central heating groaning somewhere in the distance. Dominic’s hand drifted lazily along my side the way it so often did whenever I was in reach.

I'd always assumed I knew what my life was going to look like. Not the details, perhaps, but the shape of it. Research I loved. Family around me. Eventually, someone kind to share it all with.

I'd never expected this. Never expected to look at someone and know that everything in me orbited around them. And I’d never dreamed someone would look at me the same way. Yet here was Dominic, who seemed incapable of going five minutes without touching me, kissing me, or watching me when he thought I wasn't looking.

The thought filled me with a ridiculous, breathless sort of happiness.

Dominic frowned slightly. “What?”

“Just thinking.”

“You're smiling, but it’s morning.”

“I know.”

“It's alarming.”

I laughed and leaned forward to kiss him. Somehow I ended up under him and for some considerable time, I forgot that mornings were supposed to be endured, not enjoyed.

My breathing was still evening out afterwards when I became aware of noise at the bedroom door. A kind of rustling sound, and then an envelope appeared under the door, skimming the carpet for several inches as if it had been shoved through the tiny gap between door and floor as hard as possible.

Dominic kissed my shoulder before rolling out of bed to go and pick it up.

“Want to make a guess who our postman was?” he asked, holding up an envelope with DOMINIC AND BEN printed across the front. A good half of the letters were backwards, but I got the gist.

“Well,” I said, “open it.”

“Yes, sir,” Dominic responded, snapping off a salute, before getting completely distracted by the way I was stretching out luxuriously now I had the whole bed to myself.