Grrrr...
Joan lay on her stomach in the little stone house, her empty stomach growling again and again.
"You haven't eaten?"
"I didn't get the chance before they caught me... After you saved me, I didn't have an appetite, and I wasn't in the mood, so I forgot to get anything..."
The hunger reminded Joan of how she had gone from one uncertain meal to the next before she met Annan.
Should she go to the village now?
But the wanderers had probably already been there. There was likely nothing left... But what if there was?
As Joan wrestled with the decision, she saw Illymoyas crush a portal that was forming before her without even looking up.
Magical energy scattered, then vanished in a shimmer of light.
Joan could guess what it meant. "Are you really never going to speak to Annan again?"
"Dragons shouldn't live with humans."
"But I'm human too..."
Illymoyas raised her eyes. "Do you want me to send you away?"
"I'm firmly cutting all ties with that man!"
On Annan's first night in the Golden Palace, Black Widow tried everything she could to seduce him. She got "accidentally" stuck in a wardrobe, on a windowsill, and under the bed. She dimmed the Magic Lamp as far as it would go and showed him how she danced. Short of throwing herself on him, she used nearly every trick she had.
But Annan acted as though he had no interest in women. He kept asking her where Illymoyas might be.
If Black Widow had kept a diary, she would surely have written, "Annan makes it so hard to decide whether to love him or hate him."
Black Widow lay on her side in the soft bed, draped in sheer gauze. She watched Annan meditate by the window