Dragonhearts - Page 3
I didn't laugh though. “I don't think you're striking the right note here,” I told her with a sigh. “I just saved your life using real magic, something most people never get to see even once in their lives, and you're pouting because I didn't use the magic you wanted me to use?”
“I said I didn't want you to!” she corrected me with the unnecessary forceful tone children often use for emphasis. “And I am not pouting,” she added with a pout. She was trying to look fierce, but it only made her look even more adorable than she already was.
She had definitely inherited the best of her mother's good looks, particularly the raven black hair which only served to set off the shocking emerald of her eyes, but there was a refinement about her features which came from her father's lineage, as well as a stubborn paleness to her skin which resisted all attempts of sunlight to change that. Even dressed in peasant clothing, she looked like a princess in exile, but fortunately, she either didn't know that . . . or simply didn't care.
With effort, I managed to stick the topic at hand, but I couldn't fully repress a snort of amusement at her “not pout.” “Regardless,” I said sternly, “it would have been too risky, both to you and the forest, to use fire.” She was right in a sense though. I would be using fire later to dispose of the corpse, and I would be grumbling about the effort when I did it.
But I wasn't going to tell her that!
Knowing that she had just been reprimanded, she focused her attention firmly on the ground before admitting in a small voice, “I just don't like being wrong.”
“Don't I know it!” I said with feeling. “But I'm starting to think you take my protection of you just a little too much for granted.”
“Only when it's unnecessary,” she muttered under her breath, but not so much so that I couldn't hear her.
“I beg your pardon!” I snapped, truly disbelieving that I had heard what I had just heard. “'Unnecessary' . . . is that what you just said?”
“Yes,” she answered in a voice filled with self-assurance as she brought her eyes up to meet mine. “That is exactly what I said.” There was nothing childish about the way she said that either.
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