Inferno Unchained

Chapter 16

RPOV

I had put the boiling water out of my mind and added it to the long list of weird things that kept happening to me. Lissa was helping me by keeping my mind off of it, and off Dimitri, by dragging me into town. She had disguised herself, saying she didn't want to bother today with the escort. Most town merchants would probably recognize her, but I trusted the town's folk. Mostly.

In disguise, she couldn't just purchase whatever she wanted, and I noticed she was having trouble not buying everything in sight. I had to giggle. I suppose we all had our problems.

We were walking down the street when we bumped into two men. I wasn't sure who bumped into who but I assume it was Lissa's fault for looking only at the merchandise on sale, and me only keeping a close eye on Lissa.

"Woah there. Careful."

The guy I had bumped into could barely stop me from hitting the ground hard. He straightened me up, and I looked at him and his companion. The man before me was handsome with messy brown hair and green eyes. His companion had black hair and ice blue eyes. The green eyes were fixed on me, but the blue ones were taking in Lissa as though he had never seen a woman before. The attention made Lissa giggle and blush. The green-eyed man poked the blue-eyed man in the ribs, and this seemed to get him out of his daze. He cleared his throat and then looked me over. There was curiosity in his eyes, but no blatant lust or disgust. Usually, it was one of the two. I saw the other man eye me curiously too, but in his eyes, there was definitely lust. I think I heard him murmur something about his cousin being right, but I had no idea what that was about.

There was something about these men that made me stand there and observe them. Normally, I would either apologize or curse depending on whose fault it was, but something made me stand there and take another look at these two gentlemen. Lissa certainly didn't mind.

The man I bumped into was rock solid, yet he had a slender physique. I wondered why it felt I had walked into a wall when clearly he didn't look that solid. They felt somewhat familiar. I knew I had never met them before, but they were giving off something I recognized. And at that moment it hit me. They were Dragons. Now that I knew Dragons could have a human form I could tell quite easily. They smelled like Dimitri too; that smoky scent that was apparently unique to Dragons.

Honestly, I was kicking myself. Dimka and Dimitri even smelled the same. Really, I should blame myself for not figuring it out sooner.

The fact that these two Dragons were in human form also told me that it seemed to be a general ability Dragons possessed, and not something Dimitri cast to mislead me. I felt a little better about that.

"What brings you men to this town?"

I emphasized the word men so they would guess I knew they weren't men at all. The blue-eyed one seemed a little confused, but the green-eyed man had a large smirk on his face.

"So you can recognize us? Not many humans can. Of course, not many humans know we can even appear this way and we would like to keep it that way."

He seemed to be hinting at something, but whatever he wanted to say in subtext was lost on me. Maybe he wanted to make sure I wouldn't tell?

"Why don't you want people to know? Maybe they would fear you less if they saw you could appear the same as them."

He smiled, but there was no humor in the gesture.

"People always fear what they don't understand, if people know we could look like them, and be killed like them, they would try to hunt us when we were human. It is a lot easier than when we are as large as their buildings and protected by our scales. Human skin is so fragile."