"Child of stone—" he began.
"My name is Tess."
"Is it?" he asked harshly, challenging. "That sounds like a human name. Is it your real one?"
"It's short for Thessaly," she said, somewhat petulantly, and he began to realize she was much younger than he'd thought at first. No wonder she'd lost her composure when confronted with the full power of a dragon at the heart of his territory; she might actually be the same age as her human face suggested, just a few decades at most. As rare as his kind were in the modern world, she might never have met a dragon before.
"If you don't go by—" She broke off before speaking his true name again, and instead asked, "What do you call yourself here?"
"Verd Torvald."
"David said you used to be called Vincent."
How much had David told her? He was suddenly, irrationally jealous. A vivid sense-memory shivered through him, of David's touch on his heated skin, David's body against his—
Back when they were nearly equals. Back before he came into his own as an adult dragon, and a hundred lifetimes of memories poured into him, like a torrent of lava burning away everything he'd been before. Everyone he'd loved before, from his foster parents to the Monaghans' son down the road.
"Then he must have told you I'm no longer the person he knew. I don't know what help he expects from me."
They had been walking toward the lodge, following the path around the rimrock. Now she stopped and spun around, reaching out to take Verdigris's arm. He looked down in surprise. Even normal humans shied away from touching him since he'd come into his power as an adult. They sensed the danger in him, even if they didn't know what they felt. And this woman knew what he was, so she also knew how dangerous he was.
But she not only didn't hesitate to touch him, she actually pushed him a step back. He'd been right about how strong she was.
"He is dying, Verd," she said, her voice as cold as the rock he sensed inside her.
"What?" The word was startled out of him.
"He didn't even want to come here. I talked him into it, I thought maybe you could help. I certainly couldn't think of anything else to try."
"Why—" he began. Now it was his turn to be caught wrong-footed. She still had hold of his arm, and he was caught between anger and a strange, raw hurt that David hadn't thought he would help, even though it should be true. "Why," he tried again. "Why do you think I could—"
"Because it was one of your kind that did this to him," she said, letting him go with a sh
ove.
"What?"
"I'll explain when you see David. Just ..." Her anger melted, and he was surprised by the depths of feeling that he saw in her gray stormcloud eyes. "Just, will you take a look at him, please? For whatever you two shared, back then."
Verd managed to gather the shreds of his dignity around him. "If David told you what happened between us, then he must have told you how it ended. I don't feel what I once felt anymore." Liar. "I have a hundred generations of my ancestors' memories; one love affair from a single lifetime can't possibly—"
"Nothing?" She scowled, as if she could see straight through his obfuscations. "Nothing at all? You're just going to let him die out there in the parking lot, then?"
"God, woman," he muttered.
"Just look at him. That's all I'm asking. It'll take five minutes. Verdegris. Please."
Verd was starting to understand what David, with all his fire and determination, had seen in her. Did David even know what she was? he wondered. Possibly he thought she was an ordinary human woman. But ... no, David had told her about Verd's true nature; he must surely know hers.
"So that's how it's going to be," she muttered, mistaking his hesitation for denial. "Fine. I'll tell David you were too much of a coward to help."
Anger flared in him along with the inner rustling of wings, the stirring of his dragon—but she turned on her heel and strode away before he could say anything.
Verd dropped the axe beside the path and followed her, both angry and curious. For such a small creature, she moved fast, vanishing around the corner of the lodge. He caught up in the parking lot, where she was opening the door of a dust-covered silver car with US plates, leaning down to speak to the man in the passenger seat.
And Verdegris hesitated.
He had no reason to fear seeing David Monaghan again, he told himself. No reason that should matter. He didn't feel those things anymore. He bore a hundred generations of ancestral memories, seething in his mind. There was no room for David anymore.