Chapter 37 #2
“We’ll fly to the peak together. Roe, Is, you ready for this?” Jace looks to the Jadetail curled beside Tenebris, now back in his dragon form.
“You’re lucky you weigh less than a mouse, little viper, or you’d be hiking,” Isra says, nudging Roe with an elbow.
“Oh please, Is. I’ve had enough of your intolerable jokes already today,” she says.
Roe scratches under Serelyn’s chin in an almost endearing show of affection. “Besides, Sera and I are old friends, aren’t we?”
The dragon snorts and cranes her neck, allowing Roe a better angle. My throat dries when Sera’s eyes lock on mine.
Daylight sparkles in her citrine gaze, like fractured crystals. Jadetails are said to have been born from the eternal storms circulating on the surface of our neighboring planets, and watching her glorious eyes, I believe it. Her scales weave down tucked wings and a long, jagged spine.
“Serelyn, Nova. Nova, Serelyn.” Isra gestures a quick introduction between us. I tuck my chin and offer a bow. The female dragon huffs, mist spilling from her nostrils in a dense haze.
“Alright, let’s gear up and get going. We’ll reach Shadevale by nightfall. And stay close, there are lurkers in the surrounding woods.” Jace pats Tenebris’s shoulder before climbing into his mount. He offers a hand, and I take it reluctantly, pulling myself to the seat in front of him.
Jace’s thighs skim across my back, holding me in place. A ripple of terror, or maybe something else, shudders through me at our proximity. All he would need is to bury those claws, lurking under his skin, right into my back and I’d meet Morvayne.
“Remember what I told you the first time we flew together?” His whisper is cool against my ear, raising gooseflesh up my arms I swiftly wipe away.
“Grip the saddle, shallow breaths, and don’t close my eyes.” I shift against his rigid chest, now pressed against me.
“Am I making you uncomfortable?” He laces his arms between mine. “Serelyn doesn’t trust those she doesn’t know, but you can travel on foot if you prefer. The trek is a two day journey to the summit,” Jace growls, lethal, venomous, and dripping with a jealousy I can’t shake.
“I’m fine,” I reply, gripping the mount until my knuckles ache.
Tenebris’s shoulders shudder as he pushes off the ground and stretches his wings.
For an instant, the world tilts, then we’ve launched to the skies, climbing and rolling and soaring toward the clouds.
A scream builds in my belly, but I refuse to unleash it, holding the sheer thrum of terror in my chest. Serelyn, Isra, and Roe trail our path as we ascend above puffy white steam.
Isra’s joyous howl echoes through scattered cloud cover. I glance behind us, locking eyes with a scowling Roe. Sweat beads on her brow, and she clings to Serelyn’s mount like her life depends on its flimsy buckle.
“She doesn’t fly much,” Jace says, meeting my gaze. Tenebris’s wings ripple through a turbulent patch of air, and we dive toward the ground. “Hang on, starling. This storm will make for a rough ride.”
As if summoned by his voice alone, thunderheads brew on the horizon, angry and roiling. Apprehension burrows in as we plummet into the grey streaks of rain.
Drops pelt from the skies, blurring my vision, as Tenebris banks left. The winds howl like creatures of the night and lightning crackles on the horizon.
Even with the tension between us, Jace wraps his arms around me. His steady breath against my ear drowns out the storm. I should be terrified, this close to death, but a fluid ease overcomes me.
My rain-drenched heart pumps steadily. Breathing is easy. A dangerous little thought takes seed. He feels like peace…like home. I’m one step away from meeting Morvayne, yet I’ve never felt more at home. Gods be good, I know I said my taste in men is questionable…but this is a whole new low.
“Are you cold?” Jace dips his chin to my jaw.
“A little,” I murmur, but it couldn't be further from the truth. I’m burning from the inside out. Jace Ashborne lights a fire in my chest hotter than fucking brimstone.
“We’ll be there soon,” he replies. “Just hang on.”
When we land finally, I’m soaked to the bone and breathless. My hair curtains my face in drenched locks, that a quick comb through doesn’t fix.
“Gods, I hate flying,” Roe groans, scanning the horizon.
The mountain’s peak is high enough to pierce the veil of stormy thunderheads. Like a rolling, grey sea, the clouds swirl beneath us, masking the ground like we've flown to another plane entirely.
“If you came out with us more, you might change your mind.” Isra chuckles as he wrings out his tunic.
“Keep dreaming, golden boy.” She shoves a sharp shoulder into his chest. “I much prefer the ground.”
I wrap my cloak tighter and follow the others up the trail.
Split granite lines the path, slithering around Shadevale’s peak.
On a clear day, the view from up here might be comforting, like the continent is nothing more than a smudge.
I wonder if this is what the gods see of us.
To them, we must be ants, stealing and scavenging for scraps to build our hill.
“The tomb entrance is up there.” Jace gestures toward an archway in the distance. The trail flattens into a small precipice, and as we approach, the cracks in the rock clarify into runes.
Hundreds of symbols are carved into the granite. Some I recognize from my father’s records, some are entirely foreign, but they all sink into my skin, leaving me trembling and anxious.
“How do we unseal these?” I ask.
In the shadows of the arch rests a door, not a grand marble entryway or gilded gate, just a simple wooden door, marked by the same runes as the stone.
“With this.” Jaces holds up a palm-sized dragonstone. The blue gemstone glints in the evening light, sending beams scattering over the rocky path. “Blessed by Morvayne and passed down to every generation of Ashborne. This is our only way in or out.”
He settles his breath and places the stone against the doorway. The air ignites with an electric crackle and shadows slither from the door’s threshold.
“That’s not concerning at all,” Roe says, her hand hovering over her sheathed dagger.
“Let’s just get this over with.” Jace bites his lip and the tomb comes alive.
The runes carved around us glow the same shade of blue as the dragonstone as the door swings open. My thighs tense, like I half expect the souls of the damned to pour from that voidless, dusty darkness.
“Once the eclipse starts, my command over the stone will dwindle. So make haste, humans,” Tenebris says from behind us.
He’s shifted into his human form, and my throat immediately closes. Bare as the day he hatched, the dragon approaches us with hands laced behind his back. I rip my gaze from his stony features, cheeks blazing as if I’m the one fully nude.
Isra rustles through his pack and tosses the dragon a rolled pair of trousers. “Do us all a favor, Bris, and put that monstrosity away.”
Tenebris catches the trousers and unravels them. “I will never understand you humans and your customs. Hiding behind humiliation and concealing your natural forms—so archaic.”
Don’t look. Don’t look. Not even a peek, Nova.
Too late.
My eyes blink toward his hips, and I damn near choke on my own saliva. A monstrosity is absolutely the correct term for what swings between his stark white legs. At least his anatomy in this form is consistently human, but gods above, no wonder he’s proud.
Tenebris slides on the trousers and cinches the waist before meeting Jace at the entrance. “Be careful in there, rider. It would be a great inconvenience if you died.”
“I love you too, Bris,” Jace says.
With a whisper to Astora that’ll most certainly go ignored, I follow the others as one by one we slip through the tomb entrance, leaving the rumbling storm outside to thrash and boom undisturbed.