“MY DAUGHTER?” Magnus roared. He towered over her, naked and enraged. “Vala is my daughter?”

Leida clutched one of the blankets to her, urging him to lower his voice with a frantic motion of her hands. She yelped as he jerked her up from where she knelt on the remaining blanket.

His green eyes burned with rage, pain, and disbelief. “You bore my daughter and never said a word!” His fingers dug into her upper arms until she flinched, and he pushed her away from him. “How long were you planning to keep such news to yourself, Leida? Another day? When we finally reached the village, and you presented her to me?”

She held out a supplicating hand, unsure how to respond. His anger was justified, but she had held back Vala’s parentage from him, not out of spite, but out of fear. “I was afraid!”

Magnus scorched her with a fiery stare. “Afraid of what? You keep speaking of this fear of me, yet I’ve done nothing to earn it. And how could you ever think I’d hurt my own child?” He bared his teeth, and Leida blanched, thankful he was still in human form, for as a dragon such a gesture would have been truly terrifying. Clothes flew as he hurled her skirts at her, and she dodged to miss being struck by her worn shoes.

Leida held her garments, watching as Magnus tore through his pack, pulling out a fresh change of clothing. “Lying, deceitful bitch,” he snarled. “You kept my daughter from me because of some fear you can’t even name?” His hand closed around her wrist, and he dragged her stumbling after him.

She gasped, struggling to hold on to her bundle of clothing and still keep the blanket around her with one hand. “Where are we going?” she asked, trying to plant her feet and hold her ground. It was futile. Magnus was far stronger than most men. Her resistance was no more effective against him than a gnat’s.

“The lake. I’m in desperate need of a bath.” He glared at her over his shoulder, his message clear. He wanted her scent off him, and his off her.

That look, of sneering superiority, made her temper rise to match his. She couldn’t break free of his grip, but she wasn’t going to make it easy for him. His surprised grunt let her know she’d accomplished her task when she abruptly sat down. The dewy grass was cold and wet on her bare buttocks, but Leida clenched her teeth, refusing to let him see her discomfort.

“Get up, Leida,” he snapped, tugging on her arm.

“No. Not until you let me explain. I know you’re angry, but if you’ll just—” Her sentence ended on a screech as he suddenly dropped his bundle of clothes, bent and heaved her over his shoulder. The move drove the breath out of her as his hard shoulder dug into her stomach.

The stinging slap across her bottom elicited only a breathless wheeze. She pounded on his back with her fists, and he adjusted her so that she could breathe again. There was time only to take in a huge gulp of air before she found herself flying through the air. A kaleidoscope of color flashed in her vision, the green of the willows, the brightening blue of the morning sky, before a shock of stinging cold water met her back and swiftly closed over her head.

Magnus’s expression was smug with vengeance when she resurfaced, wiping water from her eyes and coughing and sputtering. Leida raked her hand over the surface of the water, sending a spray at him. “Bastard!” she yelled. “Are you trying to drown me?”

“Don’t tempt me,” he shouted back and dove beneath the surface, coming up briefly before diving again, only to reappear in front of her. He circled her in a lazy, predatory fashion, reminding her none too comfortably of the great sea sharks of which she’d heard gruesome tales.

She stood in shoulder-deep water, her teeth chattering hard enough to make her head ache. Magnus’s dark hair was slicked back from his face, highlighting its sharp planes and angles. He seemed completely unaffected by the frigid water, not even a single chill to be seen on him, while she stood there, shivering and nearly blue with cold.

His green eyes no longer burned as he stared at her. Instead, they glittered with contempt. “Now,” he said an even voice devoid of any emotion, “I’m ready to listen.”

Leida only glared at him and began wading to the shore, her chattering teeth making it impossible to form a coherent word. And he called her mad? What person in his right mind decided to hold a conversation in the middle of a freezing lake? Naked at that, for any passerby to witness?

She could only growl when his arms wrapped around her waist, lifting and turning her so that she faced him, her breast flattened against his taut chest. Magnus spoke softly against her ear, words that sounded strange and garbled. She gave a grateful sigh as the water around them warmed instantly, chasing away the shivers that left her quaking in his arms.

“Better?” he asked, stroking her back with one hand as the other supported her weight, holding her to him.

She was still angry, but grateful for the warmed water. “Yes, much. Thank you.”

He nodded, but offered no mercy in his hostile gaze. “Tell me, Leida. Make me understand why you would keep my daughter a secret from me.”

Leida shook her head. “I wasn’t hiding her, Magnus. I didn’t know I carried her until more than a month after I left your service.”

His face darkened again. “And still you continued to run.” She could see the muscles bunch in his jaw as he clenched his teeth. “Dragon pages found you, forced you to return to me. You held your silence about her, made a fool of me by letting me believe someone else sired her. Don’t tell me you didn’t purposefully conceal her. You just did so in plain sight.” A harsh growl escaped him. “You have your cruelties, Leida. You only dress them in the finery of self-pity and imagined persecution.”

Her hand arced out of the water, for once her reactions swifter than his. The crack of her palm against his cheek bounced off the surface of the water, echoing for several seconds. Magnus’s head snapped back from the force of the blow, and he responded instantly, the hand previously pressed against her back, lashing out to shackle both of her wrists in an unrelenting grip.

Leida didn’t struggle, but she held herself stiff in his arms, panting hard and glaring at him with tear-filled eyes. “It’s not pity, nor is it persecution. But I’m a person, Magnus, not livestock. Even as your favorite, I was still no greater than any other servant in your household—easily cast off, easily replaced.” She sobbed, her words running together in a breathless sentence punctuated by sniffles. “And there was Vala. I could have returned. Life might have been easier. I wouldn’t have had to labor in the fields as I did, but I welcomed the work. My life, and that of my daughter, didn’t hinge on the whims of a dragon lord.”

Magnus’s eyes narrowed. “That is the most foolish thing I’ve heard in many years, Leida,” he snapped. “So you threw off some imaginary yoke I’d placed on your shoulders, found your ‘freedom’ so to speak, and placed your welfare and that of your daughter, my daughter, into the hands of nature and fate.” He shook his head, his fingers tightening on her wrists. “What if there had been crop failure? Plague? All the things that have hounded the heels of men since before dragon memory.” He squeezed her wrists hard enough to make her wince. “You and your strange, misplaced nobility. Had you any sense about you, you would have returned to me.”

Her anger drained away, leaving only a bleak melancholy “Returned to what?” She sighed. “You with your new favorite?” She shook her head when he made to interrupt. “I only acted on what I knew then. What if you greeted Vala’s arrival with celebration? Claimed her, but refused to allow me to stay? I couldn’t take that risk, Magnus. Vala is everything to me, the finest thing I ever made. My decisions may have seemed foolish to you, but my wisdom isn’t more than three hundred years in the making. And I swear, on any sacred thing you put before me, I didn’t hide her existence as some way of exacting vengeance on you. You have every reason not to believe me, but I love you too much to be that cruel.”

There, she'd said it at last, acknowledged it aloud and was glad for it. Now she would wait and see how Magnus dealt with such a declaration. At some point in her speech, he had released her hands so that they came to rest on his shoulders. His silence unnerved her, and Leida lacked the courage to raise her gaze any higher than the hollow of his throat.

“Look at me.”

His voice was soft, beguiling, as if he prepared to sing to her. Leida raised her eyes to his, stunned, then overjoyed by the expression in them. The anger was still there, the frustration and the hurt, but she saw love as well. The same love she espoused for him shone back at her, deep and abiding. Tears blurred her vision as he kissed her, a worshipful touch of his lips against hers. She kissed him back, sliding her arms across his shoulders to hold him close. The ticklish feel of his fingers at her nape made her break the kiss, and she cried out, elated to feel the weight of the choker gone from around her throat. A faint tingling of power flowed through her, weak, but still present.

Magnus dangled the choker off his fingertip, watching as sunlight glinted over the silvered links. “No more bindings, Leida. You are free to use your magic. Free to make your way in the world, without me if you so wish it.” He frowned at that. “You feared I would make you leave. I feared you wouldn’t stay unless I forced you. There’s been enough fear between us.” He tossed the necklace from him, and they both watched as it flashed once more in the sunlight before sinking below the surface.

“What say you,” he asked, a hint of urgency in his tone. “Will you stay?”

Leida hugged him, nearly strangling him in her joy. “I will stay, always, for as long as you will have me.”

Magnus’s chuckle was muffled against her newly bared throat, and he pried her arms from around his neck. “Then you will grow old in my caverns, and we will watch Vala grow up.”

He kissed her again, and they floated together, lost in each other as the world narrowed to the rhythmic lap of magically warmed water and the twine of her legs around his waist. Leida moaned as Magnus slipped inside her, gliding in and out in slow, easy strokes while she rained kisses on his neck and nibbled his earlobe. He caressed her beneath the water, cupping her buttocks when he came inside her, his grip tightening against her back when she soon followed.

A distant sound, of voices and whistles, brought Leida out of a pleasant daze. She glanced at Magnus who stood alert in her arms. He glanced at her, his smile fleeting but intimate. “It’s time to leave the water. Others have risen and started their day. I’ve no wish to provide some wandering group of drink-sick soldiers or field hands the diversion of seeing your lovely body.”

The scenario he described made her strike out immediately for the shore, the suddenly cold water spurring her to swim faster. By the time they made it back to the shelter of the willow, dried off and dressed, she was swaying on her feet with fatigue. Magnus strengthened the ward he had laid earlier around the tree and helped her spread out the blankets. Leida sighed her pleasure as he spooned around her, warming her back and legs under the blankets. This time it was he who pulled her from the edge of sleep with a question.

“Vala. She looks just like you, does she not? Except for her eyes.

They’re green, like mine.”

Leida rolled to face him, surprised. “Yes. That is amazing. How did you guess?”

Magnus smiled, that same superior expression that often drove her to distraction. “We dragons are astute, sagacious creatures, Leida.”

She rolled her eyes, turning back on her side to snuggle up against him. “She is also much like you in spirit. Considers herself the queen of all things.”

His soft laughter tickled her ear. “I look forward to meeting her.”

Leida sat on a flat rock near the entrance of Magnus’s caverns, enjoying the late afternoon sun on her face. The whispering laughter of an autumn breeze ruffled her hair and sent a swirl of red and yellow leaves fluttering over her feet. The forest seemed hushed, somnolent as the day waned. She enjoyed the quiet, finding it a respite from the usual constant chatter to which her daughter subjected her.

At seven seasons, Vala was a talkative child, inquisitive and insistent that her parents have all the answers to her numerous questions. Leida often found herself hiding a smile behind her hand when the child would ask Magnus some question that would make his eyes widen before he scowled and demanded to know exactly where she’d heard such a thing. Still, he would always answer, patient with Vala’s ceaseless talking, even when Leida wanted to cover her ears and beg her to stay silent for at least three short breaths.

An echo of childish merriment, carried on the gentle breeze, drifted to her ears. Leida peered into the maze of maples and birch, catching sight of a flash of scarlet as Vala ran past her, her cloak and long black hair rippling behind her like banners. She was long-limbed and as fleet as any young doe, quickly disappearing once again into the leafy underbrush.

Leida didn’t have long to wait before Magnus appeared. He ran by as well, skidding to a halt and loping back to where she sat, watching.

He bent, wrapped an arm around her waist and lifted her up against him. She welcomed his kiss, the brief teasing slide of his tongue across hers. “Wear the ruby girdle tonight,” he whispered into her ear. He released her as quickly as he’d embraced her, his teasing smile promising a long night of lovemaking. She resumed her seat, and he bowed once before following Vala’s path, hot on her heels in her favorite game of chase.

Some might say she was a poor mother, allowing Vala to run through the forest like a wild thing instead of studying deportment for that far off time when some important nobleman might court her. Such imagined admonishments didn’t concern Leida. Her daughter was a child, and should be allowed to follow the pursuits of a child. Besides, she suspected Magnus would have a difficult time accepting Vala’s maturity from child to woman. He was already grappling with the issue of her short-lived rebellions. Raising a human child was quite different than raising a dragon hatchling, and the dragon lord sometimes cast her baffled looks. Nothing in his centuries of living prepared him for the surprises Vala often tossed his way.

She smiled as Vala’s laughter floated to her once more, accompanied by Magnus’s deeper tones. Love swelled in her breast, a fierce welling of emotion that made her want to chase after them both and hug them close. “My blessings,” she whispered to herself. “My gifts from generous gods.”