“Thanks.” Ivy extricated her hand from his and made her way to the corner of the room, where she’d left two water bottles. She handed one to Helios and downed the other in short order. The camp had no electric light, so they relied strictly on lanterns and fireplaces for illumination. It would have been cozy if she hadn’t spent the past hour sweating her brains out.
She caught her breath while she watched Helios carefully put away the weapons they’d been using. In the absence of proper training equipment, he’d gone straight for the real deal. There were no blunted tips on the swords and knives available at the camp. They had to travel light, and that meant bringing only what was essential. Practice weapons didn’t make the cut. At first, Ivy had been wary of handling a blade sharp enough to kill, but she soon realized the only way she would ever land a fatal blow on Helios was if he let her.
“Thanks,” she said when he’d finished tidying up. There was a small stack of steel blades in one corner. The room had been designated as a training area, but Ivy hadn’t seen anyone use it besides Helios and herself. She probably needed more practice than anyone. Avicen healers rarely fought. While they would wade into battle alongside their warrior counterparts, they carried no weapons, only the tools of their vocation. Some had rudimentary combat training, but most eschewed such things in favor of pursuing further knowledge of their craft. Ivy had never truly entertained the idea of learning to fight—not until she knew what it felt like to be helpless. She didn’t relish the thought of feeling that way again. Ivy didn’t know what awaited them at the location of the next seal on the map. It could be nothing. It could be a very dangerous something. All she knew was that if someone wanted to hurt her, she would make them earn it.
“It’s no trouble.” Helios raked a hand through his black hair. He didn’t appear to be as out of breath as Ivy, but she enjoyed the fact that she’d managed to make him look at least a little disheveled. “Training you is the least I can do. I have much to make up for, after all.”
Ivy went to take another sip from her water bottle before remembering she’d finished it. Helios offered her his. She accepted it. “Thanks,” she said. “But what do you mean, you’ve got a lot to make up for?”
An inscrutable look flickered across his face. “I pledged my loyalty to Tanith, even though I knew what she was capable of. The Dragon Prince—Caius—wasn’t always popular with the nobility, but I knew why they elected him. He’s a good man. Tanith…well, no one ever said anything like that about Tanith. And still, I followed her.”
Ivy reached for him without thinking. Touching while sparring was one thing. Casual touch was something else altogether. Helios’s gaze bounced from the hand she’d placed on his arm to her face. Whatever he saw in her expression made him smile, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “But you’re here now,” Ivy said. “Whatever you did before—whatever you were before—none of that matters. Your past doesn’t define you.”
“If only that were true,” he said sadly. “Not that I don’t appreciate the sentiment.” He smiled again as he delivered her own words back to her. “It’s just…being around people like Dorian and Caius has reminded me of what we should be, of what the Drakharin could be. For so long, we’ve prided ourselves on being strong and ruthless and vicious, and where has that gotten us? We live on an isolated patch of land in the middle of nowhere, and the ones not lucky enough to be granted residency at Wyvern’s Keep or any of our other strongholds live like rats scurrying away whenever humans get too close.”
“You’re starting to sound like Tanith,” said Ivy. She regretted it when Helios’s expression turned sour. “I didn’t mean—”
“No,” he interjected. “You’re right. A part of me—a very small part—understands her motivation, but I don’t agree with what she’s doing.” His brow furrowed. “It’s important to me that you know that.”
Ivy gave his arm a gentle squeeze. “I do. And it’s important to me that you know that you’re a good person, too. I don’t like watching my friends beat themselves up.”
Helios canted his head to the side, studying her. “Is that what we are? Friends?”
The question disarmed Ivy as effectively as Helios did during their lessons. Of course they were friends. They hadn’t known each other very long, but extraordinary circumstances such as theirs had a tendency to bring people together. When life-and-death situations trimmed the fat off one’s interactions, friendships had a way of forging themselves in the fire.
“Yes,” Ivy said with absolute certainty.
Helios huffed a little laugh. “Well then, I will try my utmost to be worthy of your friendship.”
Ivy started to draw back the hand that still rested on Helios’s arm, but he caught it with both of his own. His gaze dropped. Dark lashes fanned across his cheeks, a stark contrast to his pale skin. It was not quite as white as Ivy’s, which could be described without hyperbole as snowy, but almost human-pale. Even his scales were faint, practically invisible against his slightly flushed cheeks. Maybe she’d given him a better workout than she realized.
“It means more to me than you know,” Helios said, “that you offer someone like me your friendship so readily. Especially when I don’t deserve it.”
Ivy didn’t know where this bout of self-flagellation was coming from, but she’d heard enough. “Hey, you saved my life. If it hadn’t been for you, I never would have made it out of Wyvern’s Keep alive. Tanith would have burned me at the stake and roasted marshmallows on my smoking corpse.”
Helios grimaced. “Not a visual I needed.”
Ivy forged on. “I believe in you. Even if you don’t, I do.”
He didn’t look comforted, but a little lost, as if her words had unmoored him. With her free hand, Ivy reached up to cup his cheek. Her touch startled him out of his daze, and his eyes shot up to meet hers. Ivy didn’t remember stepping closer, into his space, but she must have. Helios breathed in deeply and his chest brushed hers ever so slightly.
“Why?” His voice was soft, the word more breath than sound.
Ivy shrugged. “I just do.”
He shook his head, covering her hand with one of his. “I never thought I’d meet someone like you.”
“And I never thought I’d have a Drakharin teaching me how to fight with knives.”
Helios smiled, his tongue darting out to lick his bottom lip. The fire dried out the air, chapping his lips in the process. Ivy was riveted by the sight. Her brain felt sluggish in a way that was not even remotely related to her physical fatigue.
They were so close. Close enough to kiss.
Ivy had never kissed a boy before. Or a girl. Well, Echo, once, but that was more of a peck, and it was during a game of spin the bottle, so she wasn’t sure that really counted.
Helios was looking at her lips. Perhaps he had noticed her looking at his and was reacting accordingly. Perhaps she had something on her face and he was looking at that. A dozen possibilities to explain the way he was gazing at Ivy flurried through her mind.