Steelhands - Jaida Jones [107]
“Then maybe I’ll have you buy me a coffee some other time,” Adamo said.
“When it’s still light out,” I added, feeling uncharacteristically buoyant. It was strange—I’d spent so much time thinking about the dragons themselves that there’d never been any space in my head for their riders, but now that I was spending time with one of ’em, it was nearly as exhilarating as I’d always imagined it might be to ride a dragon.
Except if I’d had hot chocolate up in the air, I’d probably have gotten the lot of it on my face instead of in my mouth.
“That sounds fine,” Adamo agreed. “If it’s all right with your ladyship, of course.”
I grinned into my cup, blowing on it to let off some of the steam. Somehow, no matter how long I waited, I ended up too impatient and I always burned my tongue. Despite that, it was delicious, not too sweet but not too bitter, either. Adamo downed half his paper cup in one big swallow, then grimaced.
“Don’t like things sweet,” he explained, when he caught me staring at him.
“Guess I’ll just have to make sure that coffee I buy you doesn’t have any milk or sugar,” I said.
“Bastion bless,” someone said from behind us. “Owen Adamo, what are you doing?”
It was a man with a posh kind of voice, though it wasn’t so snooty that I took an instant dislike to him. He didn’t have a look on his face like he was smelling something bad all the time, either, and he had nice eyes above a big nose. My first impression wasn’t all bad—just that he was a little too citified for my tastes. Standing next to him, just a shade taller, was someone I did recognize: the lecturer’s assistant Toverre’d taken it into his head to fall in love with for no reason other than his sky-blue eyes and glorious freckles, which in my opinion weren’t all that glorious, anyway. At least the situation with Gaeth seemed to have distracted him from that nonsense of late, though I had my own private assumptions about why. Hal stamped his feet and puffed into his hands with the cold, offering Adamo a small wave.
“Having a cup of cocoa,” Adamo replied. “Why, Roy, what’s it look like?”
“You know very well what it looks like,” Roy replied, looking back and forth between me and Adamo. “Ah, if I’m not mistaken, this is the same exuberant lass who once inquired as to whether your trousers caught fire in midair, is it not?”
“That’s me,” I said, feeling a distinct prickling in my cheeks. At least it was cold, so I could probably square away most of the blame on that.
“Royston,” Hal said, coming very near to elbowing him in the ribs. “I’m sorry about him. He’s always going on about manners, but I think he secretly likes forgetting he has them.”
“It would hardly be polite to ignore what’s right in front of my eyes, wouldn’t you say?” Royston said with a sniff. I knew exactly what he was thinking, and by hiding a sudden giggle in my hot chocolate, I ended up making a sound like I was choking.
“Might be needing spectacles soon,” Adamo suggested. “Seems like your eyes are finally going.”
“This really is incredible,” Roy said, ignoring him completely. “You have no idea, young lady—Owen Adamo has not willingly spoken to someone younger than he is for at least fifteen years. And he does not drink hot chocolate, either.”
“We probably shouldn’t interrupt him, then,” Hal said, looking at me like he thought he recognized me but couldn’t quite place it. He looped one arm through Roy’s, giving him a gentle tug. After a moment of standing his ground, this Roy fellow allowed himself to give.
“Don’t think you’ve heard the end of this,” Roy called to us, as Hal pulled him into the night.
“Never once thought I had, actually,” Adamo muttered. He finished off his drink in one more go, then crushed the cup in his hand with a small grunt. “Here’s some advice, Laure.”
“Thought you didn’t like giving it,” I said.
“Consider it more of a warning, then,” he told me. I nodded, touching the backs of my teeth with my numb tongue—I’d definitely burned it, and now all the taste buds were tingling. “Never keep an old friend around