Chapter 34
Chapter
Thirty-Four
“Cora.”
The whisper pulls me from sleep, and I sit up too fast. The suite is dim and warm from the banked fire. Chase breathes deep beside me, still asleep.
So who whispered my name?
As if in answer, heat shimmies through my body. I close my eyes, relishing the sensation, then ease the covers back, careful of the way his arm drapes my waist, as if even in sleep he’s trying to keep me close.
I press a kiss to the curve of his shoulder and tell myself the tremor in my stomach is from hunger and not the choice I’m making. I draw a breath, then slide into my robe, softer than any I’ve ever worn in the human world. There are no slippers, so I pad barefoot to the door and crack it.
Adric is there, leaning against the stone wall. The orange moonlight that filters down through a high window slides along the sharp line of his cheekbone, making him look both dangerous and wildly sexy. When he looks at me, his eyes catch the light, giving him a wild, feral quality.
“Come,” he whispers. “I want to show you something.”
I start to protest that I’m hardly dressed for the occasion, then decide I don’t care. And I’m not worried about Chase waking up—I know the toll both the venom and the cure took on his body. I doubt he’ll rouse before morning.
In other words, I have no excuses, something he apparently realizes since he meets my eyes, grins, then starts walking, clearly expecting me to follow.
“I hate being predictable,” I mutter, catching up to him.
His grin is wry. “You never are.”
I don’t ask where he’s going, mostly because I know he wants me to, and I relish my small defiance.
He moves without hurry, and when he passes a torch, the flame leans toward him, the castle responding in a way I find both eerie and fascinating.
A smile dances on his lips. “The house will know its mistress soon,” he says, and once again I wonder if mind-reading is one of his superpowers.
After a few twists and turns, we reach a staircase that spirals just enough to be dizzying. I make a point not to look down, instead keeping my eyes on his shadow coat, billowing softly as we descend.
“Tell me where we’re going.”
He looks at me over his shoulder. “Do you trust me?”
“Not at all.”
He chuckles. “My love, I don’t know if you are telling the truth or lying.”
“Honestly,” I tell him, “I don’t know, either.”
He meets my eyes, and that’s when it happens. That’s the moment this feels real.
I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad one.
“Our destination is a surprise,” he says. “Try to trust me at least a little.”
I don’t answer, I just hurry to keep up with him.
Finally, we stop before an ornate door covered with carved dragons.
But though I see hinges, there is no latch.
Adric rests his palm on the largest carving, and the door swings open to reveal a long, covered archway.
“Come,” he says, taking my hand as we cross the threshold, then move down the dimly lit path, the illumination for which seems to come from the stone itself.
The far end of this covered path is shrouded in a thick darkness, so I have no clue as to our destination.
But I can see that on one side, the archway opens to the night and an expanse of pale stone that extends out like a cliff’s edge.
I can’t see what lies below—the moat, perhaps—but there is enough light from the five moons to illuminate the desert that glows all around us, both beautiful, and—as I have learned only too well—deadly.
I blink back tears as I think of Whistler, but despite my sadness, I can’t deny the allure of this place.
I’m about to ask Adric where we are when a shadow straight ahead resolves into a shape that slowly emerges from the dark. A coil of tail. A ridge of folded leather the size of a sail. An eye of silver looking right at me.
For a moment, I forget how to breathe. Then the stunning black dragon exhales, and heat rolls across the terrace like the draft from a furnace.
“Her name is Leth,” Adric says, and the dragon’s ear flicks as if in recognition. “Tonight, you will ride her.”
I think of Soren. He’s lost one dragon already, and yet he’s trusting me with this one. And, yeah, maybe I’m just feeling overly emotional with everything going on, but his trust tonight means the world to me.
“I—” My voice fails. I laugh then, not because anything is funny but because I’m so full of awe, I think I’ll explode if I don’t bleed some of this out somehow. And because despite all the loss—his, mine, ours—there’s still beauty and wonder.
He moves closer, then trails a finger over the sleeve of my robe. “We’ll have to do something about this.”
I stiffen, expecting him to dissolve the robe right then, or at least untie it and let it drop, leaving me naked in front of him. Instead, he presses his palm to my chest, his hand lightly brushing my breasts.
I gasp, both from his touch and from the heat beginning to bloom against my skin, as if he’s going to burn away my clothes.
“Adric, no.”
“Trust me, my Bride,” he murmurs as the fabric thins and shifts, turning slicker and lighter, the weight settling differently against my shoulders and hips.
He draws his hand down, and my breath stutters as his touch lingers.
His knuckles brush the underside of my breast for a ghost of a second, and I have to force myself not to beg for more.
And when he breaks contact and steps back, I’m not sure if I’m disappointed or relieved.
“Look,” he says, the heat in his eyes suggesting he knows exactly where my mind has gone.
I shake myself back to reality—then gasp when I glance down, because the robe is no longer a robe.
Instead, the garment clinging to me has become a dress the color of midnight with threads that catch moonlight when I move.
It’s cut to fall from my shoulders and skim the line of my body, split high enough on one thigh so my leg will be free.
And the bodice fits like it tailored just for me. I guess in a way it was.
“Handy talent,” I say, and hope to God my voice doesn’t sound as breathless as I feel.
“Occasionally,” he answers, eyes on my cleavage for one bold moment before he remembers how to be civilized and looks back toward the dragon. “Will you fly with me?”
It’s not a fair question, since every part of me is screaming yes so loudly I’m surprised he can’t hear it.
Even so, I force down my enthusiasm as I look him in the eye.
“I’ve ridden a dragon before,” I say, recalling the feel of my arms locked around Chase’s waist, as the dragon’s wings thrummed against the air.
“Tonight, you ride with me.”
I nod, a wild anticipation filling me as Leth shifts, unfurling her wing. Adric whistles softly, and the beautiful creature dips her shoulder. “We mount when she offers,” he. says. “Never before.”
He goes first, one hand braced against her scaled shoulder, his foot finding the notch at the base of her foreleg with practiced ease.
He swings up, then offers me his hand as I mount the same way he did, but with decidedly less grace.
I put my foot in the notch, and he pulls me up.
I end up with my hips aligned behind his, the contact more than a little distracting.
As if he can read my mind, he shifts, his voice full of low heat when he murmurs, “Reach around me for the leads.” I do, my fingers finding the warm leather straps. “Handholds only,” he says. “Though you’re welcome to abandon them and hold on to me.”
“Oh.” The word slips out, and something dark like shame twines through me as I recall the power and the beauty of flying with Chase.
But I want this too. No matter what else Adric might be—and I truly don’t know—he is the man who saved Chase. More importantly, he’s a man who’s somehow slid into my heart.
And, yeah, he’ll soon be my husband. So I draw a breath, drop the leads, and hold tight to his waist.
“Ready,” I whisper, the smoky scent of the dragon helping to calm my nerves as Leth’s wings flap, making us rise and the terrace fall away as night rushes around us, bathing us in golden-black light.
“We’re flying,” I say, which is perhaps the most obvious thing I’ve ever said. But then my brain catches up. “You’re flying. I thought you were bound to the castle.”
“The castle and its grounds, remember?” His voice carries easily over the wind.
“The curse draws a boundary — think of it as a dome, invisible but absolute. I cannot pass beyond it. But within it?” He tilts his head toward the sky, and I can hear something almost like pleasure in his voice. “I have all of this.”
“How far does it extend?”
“Far enough.” He guides Leth into a bank, and the outer wall sweeps below us, the moat a ribbon of dark water far beneath. “I have explored every inch of it. I have had plenty of time to learn all of this realm’s secrets.”
Considering how long he’s been bound, that’s probably the understatement of the millennium.
I press closer to Adric when the dragon banks, and his hands press over mine, leaving me to wonder just how secure we are on this dragon.
It’s a terrifying, exhilarating thought. This man—so in sync with the wildness of a dragon that only the grip of his knees keeps us mounted.
I press closer when the dragon rockets higher, and Adric’s hands squeeze just above my knees as I laugh with sheer delight, my fear evaporating in the certainty that Adric won’t let me get hurt.
We skim the outer wall, the moat a seam of even darker dark below.
Bats dive and wheel and slot themselves into the wind behind us.
Leth coasts on the wind, dipping and twisting and making my stomach drop when she rises and falls in a slow, sweet arc before climbing in a wide corkscrew that makes the world spread out like a map.
The desert is stunning from up here—wild and alive, shifting and breathing, the five moons throwing overlapping shadows that make everything look layered.