Chapter 497: Chapter 497- Are you Scared?
She was not stopping.
Her thick hips moved in the rapid, side-to-side sway of a woman walking fast, her dress swinging, her hair loose and bouncing at her shoulders, her face aimed forward with the expression of a woman who has decided that looking back would be a tactical error.
"This is ridiculous, I said I was SORRY—"
"You YELLED—"
"Because you were about to drag us out of our HOME—"
She turned a corner onto the wider part of the main street.
She did not see the man standing there.
Her face connected with the solid wall of his back — not the soft impact of running into a person who stumbles, but the hard, absolute resistance of something that did not move.
Her nose took the full contact.
She stumbled backward.
"CAN’T YOU SEE—" the words came out automatically, the reflex of a woman who has run into an obstacle while arguing and has not yet looked at the obstacle, "—YOU IDIOT—"
She looked up.
Her whole body went limp.
Not literally — but the particular physiological response of a person whose nervous system has just received information it did not expect: the muscles in her thighs went soft, her hands dropped to her sides, her spine lost its argument-ready tension.
It was him.
The dragon.
He was looking down at her.
His purple eyes found her face with the unhurried assessment of someone who has all the time in the world to observe what has just run into him. His expression was not annoyed. It was the mild, amused quality of a man who has found something interesting in an ordinary afternoon.
Her lips parted.
Nothing came out.
"Shouldn’t you be more careful—" he began.
"RIKA."
Esvan arrived.
The slight body pushed through the last few feet of crowd and reached her, both hands finding her elbows, pulling her upright, scanning her face for damage with the rapid, practiced motion of someone who had done this before.
"Are you hurt? Your nose—"
Esvan looked up.
At the man Rika had walked into.
The eyes of a small, fine-featured person swept upward from the level of his chest — up across his abs, his collar, his jaw, his face.
The expression that settled was not intimidated.
It was the expression of a person who has watched their wife run directly into a stranger and has decided that the stranger is the party responsible for this situation.
"What," Esvan said, "have you done to her?"
The voice was fully male. Flat. With the particular edge of someone very small preparing to become a problem.
"What?" Raven said.
"No—" Rika moved. She inserted herself between them with the urgency of a woman who has realized precisely what is happening and has approximately two seconds to prevent its consequences. "No, no, no. He didn’t do anything. Sir—" she turned to Raven and gave a bow so deep her hair fell forward over her face, "—I’m sorry. I apologize. Please, I walked into you, it was entirely my—"
"Why are you bowing to him?"
Esvan’s voice had gone strange.
The small, fine-featured face was aimed at Rika with an expression that had moved past irritation into something more complicated — the hurt, confused look of a person watching their partner apologize to a stranger with a deference they had never received at home.
Rika straightened.
She looked at Esvan.
She looked at Raven.
She pressed her lips together very hard.
Because she could not explain it. She could not say: ’this is a dragon, and Lady Edda, who has killed a dragon, bowed to him this morning, and he told me to meet him at the waterfall tonight and demonstrate sex to Edda, and his cock pressed against my back when he stood behind me, and it was enormous, and I have been thinking about that for three hours and trying very hard to stop.’
She said nothing.
Esvan’s eyes moved back to Raven.
Raven’s eyes had moved to Esvan.
He was observing.
The short hair. The fine jaw. The flat chest under the practical shirt — the flat chest that he had seen, two hours ago, at the basin. The small, dark nipples. The lean, compact body.
He looked at the flat chest.
He looked at the face.
He looked at the voice that was coming out of it.
His mouth twitched.
’That,’ he thought, ’is the woman from the waterfall.’
He looked at Rika.
He looked at the woman-playing-a-man between them.
’They are together,’ he thought. ’A couple.’
His expression did something that was not quite a smile.
"Apologies," he said. He looked at Esvan with the mild, pleasant expression of a man making a completely innocent observation. "So — she is your husband? Given how protective he seems."
Rika said, "Yes, yes, he cares for me very much—"
"What does that mean?" Esvan said.
"You must have a very—" Raven looked at Esvan with the attention of someone cataloguing something, "—respectful relationship. Given how angry he looks."
Esvan’s jaw went tight.
The fine-featured face was doing something controlled and not entirely successful at the control. The eyes had the particular sharp, bruised quality of a person who is being observed by someone who is not reacting the way observation usually produces.
’He’s looking at me like—’
’Why is he looking at me like that.’
Raven’s eyes dropped to Esvan’s chest.
Then rose.
He recalled the basin. The dress coming off. The small, neat tits. The dark nipples.
He looked at the flat chest.
He looked at the face.
The amusement in him grew by several degrees.
’Very easy,’ he thought. ’When there is nothing there to contain, the binding is simple.’
"So," Raven said, tilting his head with the pleasant, conversational tone of someone asking about the weather, "how do you manage the voice?"
Esvan went very still.
Then Esvan’s hand moved.
It found the front of his collar — both fists, the grip of a person who has decided that diplomatic options have been exhausted and is moving to the next available category.
"What the—" The voice came out fully male, fully furious, the training in it complete even now. "What the hell are you talking about? You want a beating? You—"
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING."
Rika’s hand found Esvan’s wrists.
She hit them sideways — not gently, with the full, sharp force of a village woman who carried feed sacks and had a punch that had recently left a print on Jacob’s jaw.
Esvan’s grip broke.
Rika stepped between them, her thick back to Raven, her face to Esvan, her wide hips filling the space between the two parties.
"What is wrong with you," she hissed. "What are you — do you understand who — do you have any — APOLOGIZE."
"What?!"
"APOLOGIZE."
"He started—"
"I don’t CARE who started—"
"You’re taking his SIDE—"
"I’m taking the side of NOT DYING—"
Esvan’s mouth shut.
Opened.
Shut again.
The fine-featured face was doing something complicated — the layered expression of a person who is furious and confused and slightly hurt and is processing all three simultaneously.
The hurt was winning.
Rika, who argued with him in the street, who threw things and chased him for yelling, who had once poured a pot of broth on his head over a disagreement about which route to take to market — was taking the side of a stranger against him.
Esvan looked at the stranger.
Raven had not moved.
He was standing with his hands at his sides with the absolute, unhurried patience of something that does not have a concept of threat from the things currently threatening it. His purple eyes were on Esvan with the mild attention of someone watching a show they have found mildly entertaining.
Esvan looked back at Rika.
"Why," Esvan said, very quietly now, "are you scared of him."
