“You’re quoting the law at me?” Orion scoffed. “I majored in dragon law at Harvard. Since you attacked her without provocation, the law says that you are responsible for any damage that she inflicted on you. Now get off this cliff. I’ve got some more courting to do.”
“I won’t.” She put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “You cannot give me an unlawful order. I will report you to the Dragon Elders. I will— Aieeeee!”
Orion had picked her up, lifted her high over his head, and hurled her off the cliff.
Cadence let out a startled shriek, and her heart leapt to her throat. She looked down and saw Viola in dragon form, flapping her blackened wings, awkwardly flailing at the air. Viola descended rapidly and finally landed on the ground with a graceless splat. Then she turned human again and began running naked through the fields towards the castle.
“How were you so sure that she would still be able to fly?” Cadence asked.
“I wasn’t.” Orion grinned fiercely.
He was kidding, of course.
Wasn’t he?
She turned her attention back to the mutton, diving into it, pulling at it with her fingers and stuffing it into her mouth. Gradually her hunger abated.
When she was done, she looked up at him, embarrassed.
“Sorry, that was not at all ladylike,” she murmured.
“I like seeing a woman with a healthy appetite,” he said. “I think it’s sexy.” He grabbed her hand and licked the juices off, and at the feeling of his tongue lapping at her, she stifled a small moan.
“Is…is that you seducing me?” She swallowed hard.
“Perhaps. Is it working?”
He took her fingers in his mouth and sucked on them, and this time she moaned out loud.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
“Stuck up,” she murmured.
“Extremely self-confident.” He kissed her palm, and she bit her lip in frustration and then reluctantly pulled her hand away.
“We…we should finish up the mutton and go back now,” she said, her voice hoarse. “Fire and ice, remember?”
He quirked one eyebrow at her.
“What?”
“Fire can melt ice,” he said with a smile. “It can melt it into a nice, wet puddle.” And then he knelt down by the mutton and began tearing into it with gusto.
Chapter Seven
Her appetite was normal at breakfast, and her attempts at reproducing yesterday’s gust of frozen air had failed. She’d managed to make her coffee iced and not hot, and she’d frozen a tray of water into ice cubes – that was about as good as it got.
It was a Saturday, so the children weren’t in school. Apparently, during the week they went to school in town – on the south side of Lyndvale, at a public school where humans, shifters and fire dragons attended. It wasn’t that ice dragons couldn’t go, but they all lived in North Lyndvale, so that was where their children went to school. In the middle lived humans and shifters who did business with the dragons.
While Orion was in his office taking care of some mining business, Cadence went out to the courtyard behind the castle and watched Phoebe and half a dozen other dragonlings doing their fire training. They stood in a semi-circle around bales of hay, with half a dozen adults, and blasted the bales with their flames. Great. Ten-year-olds were more powerful dragons than Cadence.
Phoebe turned her bale into a mighty fireball, then waved at Cadence and skipped over to her.
“How’s your snow going? Are you doing any training?” she asked.
“No, but I probably should. Then I could be fierce like you,” Cadence said.
Phoebe beamed. “You should practice,” she said. “My mother says practice makes perfect. Here, blow out some cold air.”
Cadence blew a blast of barely frosty air, and Phoebe blew a puff of flame at it.
“Look, we made steam!” she said. “I’ll tell my science teacher.”
“Phoebe, get over here! Now!” a tall, lean woman called out to her sharply.
“But Mama, she’s nice,” Phoebe called back. “She’s not an evil word that rhymes with witch like you said. What word rhymes with witch, anyway? Oh, hi, uncle Orion.”
Orion strolled up to the group by the hale bales, hands shoved in his pockets. “Problem?” he said coolly to Phoebe’s mother, whose face was turning an interesting shade of red.
“Oh, no,” she muttered, “I just don’t want Phoebe to bother our guest.” She managed a pained smile, then dropped her gaze.
“The outhouses by the wheat field need cleaning,” he said to her. “Thanks for volunteering. For this entire week.”
She gasped in shock and anger. “I am royalty. I am the Lady Morning-Light, of the Glorious Crimson Flame.”