That taste hadn’t touched his lips in years.  Scorched roses, bitter chocolate, dark cherries, and the lingering clarity of flame: dragonfire wine, the rarest and most potent in the world.  He could feel it on his tongue, cool except for the lick of fire at its heart, but he couldn’t wake up enough to swallow it properly.

It was like he was down at the bottom of a dark well.

“Should he shift again?”  That was Jillian’s voice, its usual warm huskiness strained thin with concern.

“No.”  He recognized that voice too, but he couldn’t place it.  “I could have treated him in that form if he’d stayed that way, but the damage is already done.  The strain of shifting back and forth will only worsen things.  It’s best to give his wings time to heal on their own in the hoard-space.”

“Hoard-space?”

“When dragons shift, we take our clothes with us, and whatever we have on us—purses, wallets, sacks of gold.”

“Sure,” Jillian said.  He could distantly feel her hand tightening on his.  “Those sacks of gold people are always carrying around.”

“Laugh if you must.  It goes somewhere, but it isn’t like you see it on the dragon.  And when you shift back, there it is again.  So we call it hoard-space, the place where your other form resides between shifts.”

Jillian’s thumb ran over his knuckles.  “What do we do for him, then?”

“Now that I’ve bandaged the wounds we can see?  There’s nothing to do but wait for him to wake.”

I’m awake.

But was he?  He couldn’t seem to get himself to open his eyes.  He couldn’t even seem to care about opening his eyes.  It was like all his feelings were locked in a box somewhere deep down inside him.  They weren’t in danger.  Jillian was safe.  Why should he try to open the box?  Right now, he was as numb as if he were resting in a snowbank.  He wasn’t troubling them with his pain.  He was still and cold and perfect.

But... hadn’t he decided that that wasn’t what he wanted?  It certainly wasn’t what Jillian or his friends wanted.  The more he pretended he didn’t need anything from them, the more distance he put between them.

Dragons hoarded everything: their gold, their secrets, their words.  The reflex to keep himself withheld and hidden was strong.  But he was as much a man as he was a dragon, and that had to mean something.

You always blame me for your own shortcomings, his dragon said.  You may have been taught to have no one, but that is not us.  We should hold our love closer than anything else.  Why should we hide ourselves from our own treasure?

I need to be someone she can value, Theo said.  He was aware that he was making an argument he was no longer supposed to believe in.  I can’t earn her love if I’m hurt.

You have her love.  Have a dragon’s greed for once and wake to claim as much of it as you can for as long as you can.

He’d rebelled by running away from home.  Even as an adult, it hadn’t occurred to him that as flawed as his home was, it might not actually be the problem.

If he had learned the wrong lessons when he’d grown up, he could learn the right ones now.  He could embrace what the valley had to offer him, what his dragon had to offer him: confidence, pride, daring, and a love of beauty.

He could believe that not only was Jillian his treasure, but that he was hers.  By waiting in this safe numbness, he was stealing himself away from her.

She was his key.  She unlocked him and set him free.

The room showed itself in painfully bright flashes as he struggled to open his eyes.  It was pain that woke him for good—not the pain of his injuries, but of Jillian squeezing his hand with near bone-breaking tightness in her excitement at seeing him start to stir.

She filled up his vision.  Her face was shock-white from worry, making her hair seem redder than ever.

“Theo?  You’re awake?”

“I’m awake.  You’re safe?”

“We both are.”  She cupped his cheek.  “You’re getting warm again.  I was so scared.”

“Where are we?”

“Oh, yes, I’ve redecorated since your last days here,” the familiar voice from before said.  “It makes sense for you not to recognize it, though I hope you’ll still know me.”

As much as he could, he turned his head.  He knew her at once.  She was older, yes, and he would guess the years had not been easy ones—she had more crow’s feet than laugh-lines—and she had a new streak of pearly white in her hair, but he knew her.  How could he not?  She had been a second mother to him.

“Dr. Mendoza!”

She smiled.  She had a wide, friendly smile that she used only rarely.  “Hello, Theo.  It’s good to see you again.”  In Old Draconian, she added, “Gold returned, however briefly, is always a delight.”

“To come home again to treasure is something one never forgets,” Theo replied.

He had long ago learned the affectionate, respectful way for dragons to greet each other when reunited after a long absence.  Foolishly, he only now realized that those manners existed because those situations arose.  He hadn’t betrayed himself or his people by leaving.  It might not have been the custom of Riell, but the possibility of it was in their very oldest tongue.

Emily Post didn’t advise people on how to deal with etiquette issues that didn’t exist, after all.

And it was wonderful to see her again.  Dr. Sonia Mendoza had removed Theo’s tonsils and appendix, set his broken arm, and treated him for a nasty case of childhood flu.  Throughout it all, she had been calm, soothing, and funny.  More importantly, she had been the one to sit him down when he’d been in his “reckless” teenage years and tell him matter-of-factly that he would only be unhappy if he didn’t work out what was driving him mad and do what it took to be sane.

“I left the valley to go into the world,” she’d said.  “Why do you think I’m a doctor and not just a healer?  There’s nothing wrong with being a healer, and our traditions of medicine are as old as those of Hippocrates, but I wanted to learn something else, so I did.  It took me years and a hell of a lot of money, but I did.”

“And then you came back,” Theo had said.

She’d thwacked him gently on the head with his own medical file.  “Because I wanted to, Theo St. Vincent, not because I had to.  If you want to see something of the rest of the world, go out and do it.  Only please, as a favor to me, do it without going to so many waterparks.  The bacteria in those places is astonishing.  I don’t want one of my patients exposed to it.”

Now Theo ignored his pain to smile at her.  “I saw the world.”

“I can see that,” Dr. Mendoza said.  She turned to Jillian and said, “You can go on and pour a drink for him if you like, Jillian.  Glasses are in the cabinet.”

Jillian let go of him reluctantly.  It made his hand feel cold.  He resisted the childish urge to tell her to hurry back, but all the same, he couldn’t wait until they were touching again.

Luckily, evidently Dr. Mendoza kept her office arranged so that the liquor cabinet wasn’t too far from the examination room.  Theo thought the American Medical Association would have some questions about that—if, that was, they could ever have gotten into Riell in the first place.

“Thank you,” Dr. Mendoza said.  She sipped the dragonfire and regarded Theo with benevolent skepticism.  “Theo, everything seems to be on the mend for right now.  Your mate acted with admirable quickness getting you here, from what I understand.  And I’m impressed you stayed conscious long enough to open her eyes to the valley.”

“I don’t remember any of that,” Theo said.

“Open my eyes to the valley?” Jillian said, frowning.  “You mean let me see the road through the woods?  No, he was already out by then.  I just guessed my way through it.”

Dr. Mendoza surveyed her for a moment and then said, “I like you, I think.  A practical solution to a practical problem is not something most people come up with when faced with something seemingly supernatural.  I can see why you make a good match for our dreamer over here.”

“I’m practical,” Theo protested.

“You’re too sweet to be practical,” Dr. Mendoza said.  “Even as a boy, you were always convinced you could get me to save some wounded bird.  It was very endearing, but ‘practical’ isn’t the first word that comes to mind.”

“That’s adorable,” Jillian said.

“You’re impractical too, then,” Theo said.  “You can’t tell me you don’t love wounded birds.”

“It’s how I go about it.  I know going in that there’s almost no chance I’ll succeed, I just try anyway.  You’re impractical.  I’m quixotic.”

“The kind of person who would, say, haul a dragon down a trellis and use a stolen Porsche to drive him into a hidden valley.”

The humor left Jillian’s face.

“I was terrified,” she said quietly.  “You lost so much blood in the car, and your pulse wasn’t strong and your skin was cold.  But you kept babbling like you were running a fever.  Dr. Mendoza said you were—that dragons’ fevers go in reverse.  But I didn’t know what to do.  I just cranked the heat up for him.”

“That’s probably all you could have done,” Dr. Mendoza interjected.

“I’m sorry I frightened you,” Theo said to Jillian.  He couldn’t imagine what he would have been like in her shoes—if he had had to let her come close to death right next to him, with no real way of helping her except to keep driving, and with no real idea of where he was going or what to do when he got there.  And not even any medical understanding of what was happening to her body.  “I remember hearing you talk to me even after I couldn’t answer anymore.”

He had dreamed of her.  She had walked into the darkness where he was curled up in dragon-form and laid her hand against his scales.  Beneath her touch, the guilty red and gold had all faded away.  He’d become a kind of nothing color, unsure of what he was, and then she’d said, No.  You can keep your own skin.  It doesn’t mean anything except for that it’s yours, and color had blushed back into him.  All the same old patterns.  But now they had a new meaning, one he and Jillian had made for themselves.

Treasure, he had said to her in the dream, somehow able to speak to her with his dragon’s tongue.  You are my treasure.

If he’d only remembered that dream earlier, he would have saved himself a lot of internal debate and confusion.  He would have to find a new realization to come to so he didn’t keep repeating himself.

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

“All will be forgiven if you do what Dr. Mendoza tells you,” Jillian said.  “Stay warm, keep your bandages dry, don’t shift.”

“I know you’re eager to,” Dr. Mendoza said.  Her voice was sympathetic, but her flinty gaze said that there was absolutely no point trying to argue with her about this.  “But whether they’re scarred or not, from what Jillian has said, your wings should heal well enough for you to fly again if you just leave them alone for a while.  I’ve mixed up a draught for you to take that should interact a little with the hoard-space and help you to heal.”

Theo doubted the draught would taste even a tenth as good as the dragonfire, so he took another lingering drink as if to store up the flavor in his mouth.

“This is heavenly,” Jillian said, following his lead.

Dr. Mendoza shrugged.  “It’s a California variation.  This side of the Atlantic, you can’t get the proper Brandusan kind, so the fruit is never right.  It’s acceptable.”

Theo chuckled at this reflexive snobbery, pulling one of the stitches in his side.  Dr. Mendoza raised her eyebrows at him like she knew why he’d laughed and wanted him to know it was his own fault.  But whatever she started to say in response was interrupted by the door creaking open.

A tall, pale blonde girl stepped lightly into the room.  He knew those pixie-like features.

“Cousin Izzie?”

The girl scowled.  “Isabelle.  No one’s called me Izzie in years.”

“I beg your pardon,” Theo said.  He tried to keep any amusement out of his voice.  “You know how long I’ve been away.  I’m not used to you being grown up.  Jillian, this is my little cousin Isabelle Benoit.  Isabelle, this is my mate, Jillian.”

Isabelle swept into a curtsy that looked graceful despite the lilac nightgown she was wearing.  “I’m honored to meet my cousin’s mate.”

“Don’t worry,” Jillian said.  “I won’t call you his ‘little’ cousin.”

“Thank you,” Isabelle said, glaring at him.  “At least someone in this room understands dignity.”

“Oh, don’t whine, Isabelle,” Dr. Mendoza said.  “Help yourself to a small glass of dragonfire.  Though why I’m wasting good brandy on a seventeen year-old is beyond me.  Miss Marcus may be human, but at least she has a respectable palate.”

“Marcus?” Isabelle said.  Something Theo couldn’t decipher showed in her face, but the Benoit side of the family had always been even more tightly controlled than the St. Vincents.  Whatever the expression had been, it was gone in a moment.  She poured herself about half an inch more dragonfire than Theo personally thought appropriate.  “Jillian Marcus and Theodore St. Vincent.  I don’t know that we’ve had a mated pair since you left, cousin.  Though this might not count.”

Theo knew what she meant—Jillian was human—but he was in no mood to tolerate it.

“It counts,” he said firmly.

“People may not think so.”

“Do you?” Jillian asked.  Her head was tilted slightly.  When she talked to Isabelle, she sounded a little different than she did otherwise: this must be her work voice, her “talking to snotty teenagers” voice.  Understanding, good-humored, and just a little dangerous.

Isabelle met her eyes.  “Should I have decided yet?  I won’t be rushed.”

The arrogance of her tone was refined from long practice, but Theo thought he could detect something nervous underneath it.  Was Isabelle afraid of humans?  Some dragons were, as loath as they were to admit it.

“Think about it this way,” Jillian said.  “I’m well-positioned to talk your cousin into remembering how many of your birthdays he’s missed.  He must owe you so many presents.”

“I won’t be bribed any more than I will be rushed,” Isabelle said haughtily.  “I will make up my mind about you in my own time.”  Then a sunny, youthful smile took the superiority out of her face.  “And now I have.  Cousin, I like her very much.”

She leaned down to the examination table and kissed him on the cheek.  Unlike Dr. Mendoza, unlike Theo himself, she didn’t drop into Old Draconian to honor the occasion.  Theo thought he could see the generation line being drawn between them.  But he was flattered by the affection implied by the kiss—he had always liked little Izzie, and yet he’d made almost no effort to stay in touch with her after he left.  He would do better.  Jillian would help him.

Isabelle left in a sashay of purple silk.

“She was worried about you, I think,” Jillian said, watching her go.  “She was on the street when I brought you into town.  She seems like a good kid.”

“She would be appalled by that assessment,” Dr. Mendoza said dryly.

“They always are, aren’t they?  Don’t worry, I won’t embarrass her by approving of her to her face.”  She nudged Theo.  “I can see she inherited your rebellious streak—the two of you have the same tattoos.”

“Tattoos?”

He hadn’t noticed any on Isabelle and he certainly hadn’t noticed any on himself, unless some youthful drinking bout had left him with one on his buttocks that only Jillian now knew about.  Then he looked down at his chest.

“These?  All dragons have them somewhere.  They’re like birthmarks.”

She shook her head.  “I should have guessed.  You didn’t really seem like the type.”  She threaded her fingers through his hair and stroked it back.  “I’m glad Isabelle wasn’t here for that.  You’ll have to teach me everything about dragons so I don’t go around making teenagers laugh at me.”

“He’ll have time,” Dr. Mendoza said.  “I doubt he’ll be healed enough to shift until at least a week from now.  The two of you have a holiday ahead of you.”