Private Tales Half Burned in Flames

[Cullen]

Cullen laughed incredulously, the sound bitter. "That's what they want you to think.." he growled quietly.. "My mother and father had dragons, and a clutch that should have been mine. My mother's dragon died when she was killed, my father's fled to the wastes. The eggs..?" He shrugged and shook his head. "If they see a threat, they will destroy it. They will take everything, just like they did last time, and that is the only reason I have not beaten Leovold Solherre into the dirt already."

He leaned back, running a hand through his hair, the firelight casting shadows on his face. "I've seen it happen. Power can be taken away as easily as it is given. The trials, the Rising, all of it — it's just a game to those in power. We're all pawns, Eira, no matter how worthy we are." His voice softened as he looked at her, the anger in his eyes giving way to a deep sadness. "I don't want you to get hurt. I don't want to see you lose everything you've worked so hard for."

Cullen reached out, taking her hand in his. "You say you care for me, and I believe you. But caring for each other in this world is dangerous. It makes us vulnerable. It gives our enemies something to use against us." He sighed, squeezing her hand gently. "I don't want to push you away, but I don't want to see you suffer because of me either."

 

[Eira]

She felt foolish.

Every word she said to him only went to show how little she truly knew of the world outside of her family.

Power, what her father started to teach her after bonding with a Moon Dragon, was not unique to just her. Other families would have done it, perhaps even the Morvane's, but Eira was lucky enough to be blessed with a strong dragon. She did everything, poured her heart and soul into making her dragon's wings healed to full strength, but anyone could ruin that progress by tearing at her wings.

Eira found herself staring into her bowl, her expression crestfallen.

"Then we do not need to be seen... at least, for now." She braced herself for the hurt of his words telling her they could not even do that. Did she truly want this? If she begun to care what he thought, waited for the sting of his refusal, then perhaps there had been a way to melt the ice at her heart.

"No matter what they took from you once before, they cannot take Meala away from you now. I will not allow it." Eira still did not lift her head, to display that power she had learned to wield. No, she spoke defiantly, almost like a child. She had this power, so what good was it if she could not have all that she wanted and defend them?

 

[Cullen]

Cullen's smile grew and he let out a breath of quiet laughter at her words, his knuckles catching beneath her chin to tilt her gaze to meet his. A mistake as it was to fall at the mercy of her eyes. Those eyes were not simply brown. A million hues, in fact, so many that he wondered what the word brown even meant. They are the forest and the autumnal leaves, the soil kissed by summer rain. How could something so spellbinding be reduced to one word.

He'd stared too long, and swallowed.

"If I anger them, they will take her, whether you allow it or not." he said quietly. But that she cared at all caused his chest to ache as though the very fingers he held in his hand were clutched around his heart, squeezing at it. How long had he craved such care? She'd given him but a small taste of her affection in that room and he hadn't been able to sweep it from his mind since.

His own dark eyes fell to her lips, studying them as though they were another work of art. He was just a man, a lonely one, a broken one, and for one moment he'd felt something deeper than the anger that consumed him every single day. It was a drug, and as much as he told himself he could resist it, resist her, he couldn't.

Her name spilled out in a breath as he drew her toward him, closing the gap of static air between them until his lips collided with hers, claiming them, and his blood ignited.