Arabella’s sleep was troubled. Images of the encounter with Xavier ran over and over on a loop in her mind like a zoetrope.
She descended the rough stairs to his lair. Took in the glittering walls, crusted with diamonds no one else in the world knew about. Saw him in his dragon form, gigantic and glorious, his scales glowing in the torchlight. Including the tail that wrapped itself around her in an act of possession that should have bothered her but didn’t.
That was the part she kept coming back to, over and over.
In one version of the dream, he was in his human form, dressed in his threadbare clothes, his arms around her instead of his tail. His face leaned closer to hers. Arabella felt hers grow hot and her eyes closed in anticipation…
Only for her to wake up.
Her face was still warm and her body tingled with awareness. She didn’t know if she would be able to look Xavier in the eye for a while yet. He was the only person she had in her life at the moment, and he was determined to see her back to England as soon as possible. Or at least away from Antarctica, as long as she was far away from him. She hated that he wanted her away from him. She knew she had that effect on people but it still hurt. Arabella freshened up as best she could before making her way to what she was thinking of as the cave’s foyer. The fire still blazed, giving off comfortable heat. “Xavier?” she called.
Silence greeted her.
She stuck her head in his room and noted it was empty. When she looked in the doorway to his lair, she saw it was dark, too. The cave felt empty, somehow, like she’d known subconsciously that he wasn’t there. Disappointment thrummed in her. She missed him because of her dream, she reasoned. She’d had other dreams of the sort, usually much more explicit, about other men she’d met during her travels. That same wistfulness threaded through her when she woke up and remembered they weren’t real.
There was something so much more disconcerting about this feeling and Xavier that she wasn’t ready to address yet.
She helped herself to some dried penguin meat and, wrapped in a skin she sat in front of the fire to wait. Arabella refused to make herself look like any more of a fool than she already had or put both of them in danger again. She guessed half an hour had passed before Xavier stepped into the cave, triumph on his face. At the sight of his grin, Arabella couldn’t keep one from forming on her face.
“I believe I’ve fixed your dirigible,” he announced by way of greeting.
Time seemed to suspend itself for a moment. She felt frozen in place in a way that had nothing to do with the cold. She felt her smile slowly fade away. “You did?”
“I still had parts from another one,” he said. His expression faltered, and she wondered how he acquired them. “They were a match with your damaged components. The balloon has been re-inflated and I’ve moved it underneath a ledge to protect it from the elements. The storm has let up for a little while, but I’m sure it’ll start up again soon. The weather is as good as it will get to take off.”
It took a few seconds for the weight of Xavier’s words to make their impact. “You mean I have to leave today?”
He nodded. “I checked your fuel reserves and you don’t have quite enough to get you to Santiago on that power. You’ll have to coast by with the balloon for at least two thousand miles, and you have to do that with clear weather. I don’t have any excess fuel here and I don’t know when you’ll have another chance at leaving.”
He held out his hand to her, and she accepted it. He hauled her to her feet. “I was going to coast anyway,” she said. Doing so would take longer, but as Xavier pointed out, wind power saved fuel.
“If your dirigible is damaged again, I may not be able to repair it. You would be trapped here.”
A strange, unfamiliar sense of loss twisted around her heart, as illogical as it was. Arabella didn’t know why she felt this way. Xavier had made it abundantly clear since she crashed into his mountain that he didn’t want her with him. Except for that bizarre possessive streak he’d shown a couple of times that sent an odd thrill through her whenever she thought about it. She knew the last thing Xavier truly wanted was for her to continue invading his space and reminded herself that his possession was the result of his dragon half, not his human side. Arabella had to listen to what the human and rational side of him wanted; she didn’t belong here, in this frozen desert. She’d made it here, all the same. She realized for the first time that she had actually managed to visit all seven continents. It was a major milestone, and had done it by the time she was twenty-six, four years earlier than she originally intended.
All of this was still something she could be proud of.
It was time for her to leave, to return to England and figure out what to do next. “I understand,” she said, finally answering Xavier. “Let me get my things and I’ll be ready to leave.”
She was true to her word, and in a few moments, followed Xavier out of the cave, into the blistering cold. The storm had died down through the night, leaving an endless white landscape before them. She stayed close to Xavier, knowing that if she dawdled or wandered away, she would never be able to find her way back to the cave or her dirigible.
As he promised, the dirigible was stowed under what looked to be a rock shelf jutting from the mountain, covered with snow. Its balloon was inflated and upright, the vessel’s body sporting new patched in a few places. “How did you do this?” Arabella asked in wonder.
“I told you I had the components.” His voice was raised so she could hear him better over the ever-present wind, and she detected pride in it. “It wasn’t that difficult once I moved your dirigible from the crash site. It was a straightforward repair once I got it out of the snow. You haven’t had any fuel line breaks or other fatal damage.”
“How the hell did you haul…” She realized how. “You did it in your dragon form.”
“I did.”
They walked under the ledge to the dirigible’s lower exterior door, still locked. Arabella didn’t have the keys, nor did she have a platform that would take her to the deck area and allow her to enter it that way. “Damn,” she muttered. She wondered if Xavier would shift and let her ride on his back to the deck.
He picked up on her quandary right away. “This is a puzzle lock.”
She nodded. “In case I wasn’t in possession of my keys.” She felt herself flush with embarrassment. “I—I have never forgotten my keys, and I can’t remember the puzzle offhand. My father set it.” It was yet one more stupid thing she had overlooked during this whole ordeal.
“No worries about that.” Xavier pressed his ear against the door and twirled the lock’s levers, rearranged its pieces, his eyes closed in concentration. After a few minutes of trying different solutions, his face relaxed and he unlocked the door. He held it open, as gallant a gesture as a man leading her to a dance floor.
Not that Arabella was the sort to be invited to those kinds of soirees. She wondered if Xavier was in his old life. Once inside the dirigible’s belly, she set about switching on the flameless torches installed along the walls. She was relieved to see they operated none the worse for wear after the crash. In the dim lighting, she could see that the place was in disarray, but nothing seemed to be severely damaged. She would have more than enough time once she hit the wind to clean up. She unhooked one of the torches and made her way to the flight deck, Xavier closely behind her. The light picked up just how much of a mess she had on her hands, and she sighed. She hated housework. To her surprise, the deck was clear of snow and ice. She turned to Xavier. “How did you get the snow swept away so quickly?”
Color touched his cheeks. “I melted it off.”
Arabella couldn’t tell if it was the dim light afforded to them or if she was projecting her own exhaustion, but he looked more tired than she’d ever seen him. Dark shadows pooled under his eyes, and she realized he had to have been working since she went to sleep. All night, into the day. Whatever time it happened to be. She’d lost track of it.
“You breathed fire on my wooden deck to melt the snow,” she said.
“I didn’t burn anything.”
“I’m sure you knew exactly what you were doing.” She appreciated his careful efforts, but hurt inexplicably pricked at her. He wanted her gone.
Xavier nodded. “I’ll help you take off.”
Arabella looked pointedly at the steering yoke. “There’s only enough room for one captain.”
“No, I’ll pull your dirigible out from underneath the ledge,” he explained. “You’ll need help with takeoff.” He looked around the flight box. “A little privacy, please?”
Not for the first time, she felt like an idiot. Of course, he would do that in his dragon form. She nodded and motioned to turn around. There was one more thing she wanted to do before he changed into his dragon form and she never saw him again. She threw her arms around him in a fierce hug, noting he smelled faintly of smoke. She liked it. “Thank you for everything you’ve done for me.” He stiffened for a few seconds before he returned the gesture, strong arms circling her in a way that reminded him of his dragon tail. Her face heated.
“Thank you for providing some company,” he replied.
“I made things worse for you.”
He shrugged. “It was nice to find out that I haven’t entirely lost my manners after all these years, and you brought tea. I’ll think of you every time I boil water for a cup.”
She smiled and willed back tears that had unexpectedly formed. When he pulled away and regarded her in silence for a moment, she hoped he didn’t notice them. If he did, he didn’t let on. His eyes never leaving her face, he tucked an errant strand of her hair that escaped from her braid behind her ear. A thrill coursed through her at the small contact and with it, sadness that it wouldn’t happen again. Arabella’s gaze met his and held it. Why, she wasn’t sure.
Xavier squeezed her hand through her glove in a gesture she guessed was supposed to be affectionate. “I’ll shift now and then we’ll get you airborne.”
The unexpected sadness that clung to Xavier like a second skin was shed as he changed into his dragon form. It was replaced by determination, a need to show Arabella that he could force her dirigible into the air. A need to see her off as safely as he could. It took some maneuvering to haul the dirigible out from underneath the rock shelf with his teeth and claws. It was certainly more difficult than moving it there in the first place but it slid out along the snow. He was relieved to see the repaired balloon was still intact and inflated after scraping the rock.
Arabella activated the dirigible’s engine, then activated the helium chamber. The vessel struggled, shaking from disuse and the cold. Xavier held his breath expectantly, grateful that her dirigible’s balloon was helium-powered instead of hydrogen. That particular gas wasn’t one that a fire-breathing dragon wanted to be near.
Especially when someone like Arabella was involved.
There’s that sadness again. He damned himself for it. Arabella Greaves was an intrusion. If she stayed here much longer, someone would come looking for her and might well find him. It was best for everyone that she leave. He had been alone for years before she crashed into his mountain. He would survive after she left.
Then why was there a dull ache in his chest when he thought about her sailing away?
He ignored it and focused on the dirigible. It raised itself a few yards in the air, just enough for Xavier to nudge his head underneath it and lift it higher. The vessel raised again, and Xavier crawled beneath it, bolstering it into the air as best as he could. He struggled a little to free his wings enough to take flight, but managed after a moment. He hoped he hadn’t frightened Arabella too badly.
Hell, she had flown all the way to Antarctica on her own. He doubted a little rocking from a dragon beneath her dirigible would faze her.
Still, he wished he could apologize for the discomfort. Speaking of discomfort… His body screamed in protest as he realized the weight of the vessel above him. Even though the snow had stopped falling, the wind was still fierce and he had to rapidly blink to clear his eyes of tears.
I’ve ever experienced that before. I didn’t know my eyes could water in my dragon form!
If he still kept a diary, he would have noted that. The dirigible heaved upward, finally taking flight, and sailed with the wind. Xavier’s heart leapt, proud of Arabella for the successful launch. It was for the best that she was leaving. He reminded himself if she stayed, someone would come looking for her. It wouldn’t be untoward to fly alongside her for a little while, just until she got used to the freezing skies again. He moved out from under the dirigible and stretched his aching wings before taking full flight. Keeping pace with the dirigible’s deck, he spotted Arabella at the steering yoke in the flight box, her expression serious, focused on the journey ahead.
Her gaze met his and a smile bloomed across her face.
Xavier would miss that. His mind flashed back to the night before, when his tail snaked out and… Shame welled in him at the memory. The compulsive need to plunder and hoard meant he couldn’t rejoin polite society. What he had done to Arabella marked the first and only time that had happened, and he didn’t dare risk a repeat. He soared upward to match the dirigible’s trajectory. Mild alarm threaded through him when he saw the speed Arabella had picked up so quickly, but he didn’t interfere. He just sailed alongside her, content to have something in common with her before she left Antarctica forever.
A quick glance at the flight box showed her face to be in deep concentration, but she didn’t look nervous. Xavier decided he wouldn’t be, either.
A gust of wind nearly halted him in his path. The dirigible’s balloon tilted to starboard, but Arabella immediately righted the vessel. Buoyed by helium and wind power, the dirigible picked up speed at a near-frightening rate, and Xavier found himself struggling to keep up. He looked down at the ground and flinched. He couldn’t remember when he last flew at this height. For the first time since he discovered he was a dragon, he felt nauseous looking at the frozen landscape.
How quickly can her dirigible get this high?
For the first time, he was flummoxed at how technology had advanced in just five short years. The dirigible that brought him here… A wave of nausea roiled over him in a way that had nothing to do with nervousness around heights. He didn’t want to think about that journey. Not now, not ever. He still forged on, determined to see Arabella off as long as he could hold out. As he sailed alongside her, he began to fully appreciate her skill as a pilot.
She had chalked up her crash as a fluke caused by the weather.
Seeing how she navigated through powerful gusts of wind and the snow that had started to fall again, he finally believed her. She would have been an absolute force to be reckoned with in any location outside of Antarctica. Wind heaved at him and the dirigible, harder than any gust he’d ever felt before. His body sailed upward against its will and he struggled in vain to right himself. He lurched left, striking the side of the dirigible, before being launched upward again into what looked like a vortex of swirling snow. The wind knocked the air from him. He couldn’t see the ground. When he looked to his side, he realized he couldn’t see the dirigible, either, even though he could hear its engine faintly over the roaring wind in his ears. The wind slammed him headfirst into something hard and immobile. He couldn’t see what it was, and as he lost consciousness, he found he didn’t care.
His last thought before slipping into oblivion was hope that Arabella would make it to Santiago in one piece.
Arabella’s concentration was broken by the gigantic, scaled body of a dragon slamming into her dirigible’s flight box and then to the exposed deck. She screamed, the sound bouncing off its glass walls. “Xavier!” she yelped.
He wasn’t moving, nor had he shifted back into his human form. Terror and indecision clawed at her as she mulled over her options to save him.
She couldn’t go back to ground. According to her instruments, she was over ten thousand feet in the air. She didn’t know where she could safely land and if she did, she was unsure if she could get her dirigible airborne again. She had nearly reached the perfect altitude to take her away from this frozen hellscape back to civilization. It still wasn’t safe to drag Xavier into the relative warmth of the lower deck, and she wasn’t strong enough to do so, besides. She would have to wait until he shifted.
If he shifted.
Tears of frustration clouded her vision. She impatiently brushed them away with a gloved hand.
What if he had died?
Why the hell had he collapsed in the first place?
The dirigible arced upward. Xavier remained pinned to the deck, his body against the glass as it surged. According to her flight instruments, she was nearly at cruising altitude. Once she was finally among the clouds, she would shut off power to the engine. The helium and balloon would take over, guided by the wind to take her to Santiago and from there, back to England. That added another quandary to her situation. To Xavier’s situation.
Like it or not, he was coming with her.
As soon as the dirigible reached the clouds and settled into its new course, she was ready to save him as best she could. Arabella tied a rescue rope around her waist, a safety feature she had never had to use before. No one had ever had to conduct exterior repairs while in the air, or been in danger of being blown overboard. She was pleasantly surprised when she cautiously opened the flight box’s door to the deck. The wind was far less ferocious at these heights, although the cold still reached her bones. She was grateful for the rope as she shook Xavier where she guessed his shoulder would be. “Wake up!” she shouted into one scaled ear.
He snorted a little. Relief flowed through her at the sign of life. Relief and concern. He was capable of breathing fire, after all.
“Xavier!” She shook him again. “If you cough and set fire to my dirigible, I’m going to be very cross with you!”
He grunted again.
“Wake up!” She nudged him with a booted toe. “Or at least shift so I can drag you below decks!”
His eyes opened, but the pupils were glassy, unfocused. Arabella knew little of medicine, let alone medicine for dragons, but she could tell that was a bad sign. Had he hit his head when he collapsed?
He opened them wider, as if finally in recognition. He opened his mouth, revealing rows of sharp fangs, before his eyes rolled back in his head. He began to shake and his scales started to melt away. His body rearranged itself, naked skin and limbs appearing.
Arabella could have wept at the sight. As it was, she didn’t want her eyes to freeze shut, so she willed the tears away. As soon as he was back in his human form, laying on his back, she grabbed his hands and dragged him into the flight box. From there, she summoned all her strength and as carefully as she could, hauled him into her cozy cabin belowdecks.
He was warm.
Xavier stretched and snuggled a little deeper beneath the blanket. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt this warm. It was pleasant. He missed it. He was warm and he could smell a familiar, sugary odor that he couldn’t immediately place. It wasn’t biscuits just out of the oven, but a little more clinical. Almost medicinal.
Dr. Thaddeus’s Miracle Elixir.
The thought of the stupid sugar water placebo Arabella favored had him fully awake, and he took in his surroundings with horror. He laid in an unfamiliar bed. It was a small one, pushed against the wall, but a bed nonetheless. He had blankets heaped over him that bore a distinctive trace of Arabella Greaves’s scent, without a penguin skin to be seen. Arabella herself stood next to the bed, an unstopped bottle of the alleged miracle elixir in one hand and a spoon in the other. It looked to be silver. Xavier’s dragon side itched to snatch it from her. They stared at each other for a few seconds.
Arabella’s expression was unreadable.
Xavier tried to make his the same. Inside, he felt an odd mixture of relief and fury. She was safe. She’d made it away from Antarctica in one piece. She’d brought him with her. “What the everloving hell is this?” he bit out at last.
She flushed in the light offered by the flameless torch on the wall. “I’m sure you have many questions.” She looked at the bottle in her hand. “You left this bottle behind when you ransacked my cupboards.”
“Arabella, what is this?”
“I found half a tin of tea you left, too. We’ll have to ration it. It’s all we have until we get to Santiago.” She poured a small measure of elixir into the spoon. “I’m sure you have a headache. This will help.”
“Arabella!” He didn’t intend to shout. He immediately regretted it when he saw her flinch. She took advantage of the opportunity to shove the spoon into his mouth. He swallowed it—ugh, too sweet—and waited for her explanation.
She yelled right back at him. “You collapsed on my fucking deck! You fell out of the sky! What was I supposed to do, shove you off? I saved your life!” She stoppered the bottle and slammed it on a shelf fastened to the wall. “I suppose we’re now even.”
“How the hell are we even?” He threw back the blankets. Arabella looked scandalized at the sight and he remembered he was naked. He quickly rearranged them back over his body.
It was nice to be lying in a proper bed. Even nicer that it smelled like Arabella. Not that he would ever admit that to her.
“You saved my life when I fell out of the sky,” she reminded him.
He immediately felt like an idiot. She was right, damn it.
“How did you manage that?” she demanded.
“You were there when I rescued you.”
She gave him a withering look. “I mean, how did you manage to fall out of the sky?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t want to think about that now.” He changed the subject. “You can’t really mean to take me to Santiago.”
“I can and I do. I’m not going back to Antarctica. If you want to go back to Mount Xavier, you’ll have to find someone in Santiago to take you.” She crossed her arms over her chest in defiance. “I’m not going back there. You’re welcome to stay with me, but I fully intend on returning to England.”
Dread sawed at him. He knew there was no practical way he could return to Antarctica short of sneaking his way on to an expedition. He wouldn’t be able to fly that far on his own power, nor did he have the means to purchase a ticket aboard a ship or dirigible. He thought about his lair, so carefully carved into his mountain, his hoard of diamonds glittering in his cavern, and of the tea he’d saved from Arabella’s dirigible. He would never be able to return to his treasures. He eyed the spoon still in Arabella’s hand. He snatched it and stuck it under the blanket. “I’m keeping this.”
“Of course, you are,” she snapped. “If you decide you want to discuss this rationally, come and speak to me. I won’t be far.” She stomped out of the room, slamming the door behind her.