Chapter 35
THIRTY-FIVE
CASSIA
Night had fallen by the time Cassia made it back to her cottage.
She’d spent the afternoon coordinating with Junie on ward reinforcement plans, her weather-sense tracking the distant accumulation of Nerissa’s weapon in the Pacific. The tsunami was still building—a slow, inexorable gathering of force that set her teeth on edge even from miles away.
Tomorrow, she would practice combining her magic with Aero’s. They would try to figure out how to fight in tandem without leveling buildings. The clock was ticking closer to zero.
Tonight, she just wanted not to think about any of it.
She was halfway through making terrible coffee—a habit Aero had ruthlessly mocked and continued drinking anyway—when a knock sounded at her door.
Her magic recognized him before she opened it. That hum in her blood, that prickle along her nerve endings, that sense of there you are that had nothing to do with sight or sound.
Aero stood on her porch, still wearing the same clothes from the war council. Dark circles bruised the skin beneath his eyes. His hair was disheveled in a way that suggested he’d been running his hands through it repeatedly.
He looked terrible. He looked beautiful. He looked at her like she was the only thing holding him to the earth.
“Come with me.”
No greeting. No explanation. Just those three words, delivered in a voice rough with exhaustion and something else she couldn’t identify.
“Where?”
“I want to show you something.”
She should ask more questions. Should demand details. Should point out that they had a crisis to prepare for, and neither of them had slept properly in days.
Instead, she grabbed her jacket and followed him into the night.
Gust launched himself from his perch with an indignant chirp. You’re just going? Without knowing where?
Yes, she sent back. I trust him.
Her familiar’s skeptical silence was eloquent.
Aero led her down the bluff path toward the beach, his hand finding hers in the darkness. Something warm moved between them—steadier than before, a quiet current rather than a volatile surge. She wondered if practice was finally teaching their magic to coexist for longer than a few seconds.
They reached the sand, and he stopped, turning to face her.
“I haven’t shifted in front of anyone except Delos in longer than I can easily say,” he said. “My dragon form—it’s not something I share. It’s too vulnerable. Too exposed.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I want to.” His hands framed her face, tilting it up so she met his gaze. “I want you to see all of me. Every part. Even the parts I’ve hidden for centuries.”
He stepped back. Took a breath. And let himself go.
The shift was nothing like she’d imagined.
In movies and books, dragon transformations were always violent—bones cracking, skin splitting, agonized screaming. This was different. This was fluid, graceful, like watching storm clouds gather and reshape themselves into something new.
One moment, Aero stood before her. The next, a dragon filled the beach.
He was massive. She’d known he would be—storm dragons were among the largest of their kind—but knowing and seeing were different things entirely.
His scales were storm-gray, shifting like thunderclouds in the moonlight, darker in some places, silver-bright in others.
Lightning crackled along his spine and wing ridges, casting flickering illumination across the sand.
His wings, folded against his sides, looked like they could span forty feet when spread.
His eyes—those same lightning-touched eyes she’d been losing herself in for weeks—watched her with an intensity that made her heart stutter.
“Oh,” she breathed. “Oh, you’re beautiful.”
A deep rumble rolled through his massive chest—something between thunder and satisfaction, resonant in a way that she felt as much as heard.
“That’s still adorable,” she said, stepping closer. “Even when you’re the size of a house.”
His massive head lowered, scales inches from her face, steam rising from his nostrils in the cool night air.
Cassia reached out and laid her palm against his snout.
The charge between them didn’t spark. It sang.
Power flowed from him into her and back again—not violent, not chaotic, but harmonized. Like two instruments playing the same chord. Like two storms meeting and merging instead of colliding.
“This is what we can be,” she whispered, understanding flooding through her. “When we’re not fighting it. When we just… let it happen.”
Aero’s dragon head dipped in a nod. Then he shifted his position, lowering himself to the sand, one wing extending toward her in unmistakable invitation.
“You want me to…”
Another rumble. Impatient, this time. Get on, it seemed to say. Trust me.
Cassia climbed onto his back.
The scales were warm beneath her, radiating heat like sunbaked stone. She found a natural seat between his shoulder blades, her legs bracing against the powerful muscles, her hands gripping the ridge of scales that ran along his spine.
His wings unfurled. Forty feet of membrane and bone, lightning flickering along the joints.
“Hold on,” his voice rumbled—not words exactly, but meaning she understood somewhere deeper than language.
And then they were airborne.