Page 44 of Aria's Desire

Aria was a city girl. She’d never ridden a regular horse in her life, and damn sure nothing as…toothyas the mounts they had there.

When she said as much to them, they looked at her as if she were crazy.

“Sarasha…you ride Sin. A dragon, as you say, with a great many teeth,” he said haltingly, as if she hadn’t been aware of it when she rode a thirty-foot dragon.

“That’s completely different,” she argued, giving him a look. “I know him. He’d never hurt me. Those look like they’d bite my damn arm off just for looking at them sideways.” She didn’t think of what she said until Sin’s gaze sharpened on her face, and a slow smile curled his lips.

Rellik was smiling, too, when she looked back at him, though for a different reason. “They are not so fearsome as that, I promise.”

She eyed the beasts again. She’d thought them beautiful when she first saw them, but up close, they were more than a little intimidating. They had the forward-facing eyes of a predator, a whole hell of a lot of sharp-ass teeth, and they were huge. The shortest one stood at least seven foot tall at the shoulder. And Rellik wanted her to sit on one? Ha! She’d sooner face off against a dozen enemies barehanded.

...right up until she caught the badly hidden amusement on the faces of those tending the beasts.

Spine snapping straight, she gave them narrowed eyes then steeled herself and approached the least snarly one in the stables. Rellik, thank fuck, moved with her, whispering directions too low for the tenders to hear.

“Approach slowly, hands held out to your sides. Stop just out of biting range, then stare it down. You will know when it decides it will not kill you if you go closer.”

Before she could ask how, exactly, she would know that, he moved away to stare down his own beast.

Swallowing hard, she met the ikkar’s electric green eyes and stared. It’s bright blue, leathery neck crest immediately snapped up, the webbed, spike-tipped thing almost vibrating with aggression as it bared those sharp teeth in a spine-tingling hiss. A fucking hiss. Like a snake.

Okay, that’s creepy as fuck.

A thought had her snorting. Vee would be tickled fucking pink at being able to ride one of these things, hissing be damned. Hell, she’d probably make it fall in love with her and take the damn thing home to add to her growing collection of deadly pets.

Oddly, that thought helped settle her. If Vee could tame one of the lethallupka, the wolf-like animals her mate Vi’kail trained, surely Aria could out-stare what was essentially this planet’s version of a horse or donkey.

Holding the animal’s gaze unflinchingly, she straightened her back, and shoved any sign of fear way down deep so it didn’t sense it and bite her face off.

A few endless minutes later, it’s crest slowly lowered and it stopped hissing. Stretching its neck out toward her, it made a rapid, high-pitched giggling sound like a goddamn hyena, which was infinitely worse than the hissing, but she was also pretty sure that was the sign Rellik mentioned.

Blowing out a breath, she glanced to the side to find Sin already seated atop one of them, looking as comfortable and at ease as if he were relaxing on a fucking couch or something.

Catching her shocked look, he shrugged. “We had similar mounts on Thrarion, though much more aggressive. These are pleasantly docile. It did not even try to kill me,” he said, bending to pat the beast’s neck then giving it a hard scratch on the scales behind its very large, pointy ears, much to the animal’s delight.

Eyeing the ravaged carcass in the corner of his beasts’ stall and remembering the numerous scars that were clearly from being bitten the animals’ keepers were all riddled with, she raised a dubious brow.

“Docile. Right. Compared to a fucking tiger, maybe,” she muttered.

Rellik’s assurance held true, thankfully. After the unnerving giggle, the animal was calm and affectionate, letting her approach then rubbing its face on her shoulder as she saddled it, sniffing her hair, and all but demanding pets.

It still took a long while of riding before she actually relaxed, but the ikkar, which she learned was female, was surefooted and didn’t require much in the way of steering. She picked the safest route over the often-steep rock, moving with the sureness of a mountain goat, leaving Aria to focus on staying atop her and not falling to her death down the sheer cliffs.

* * *

They visitedone village and farm after another, stopping in each long enough for the inhabitants to gather so they could talk. In every one, they were initially greeted with wariness, the gaunt-cheeked people eyeing them suspiciously. Females met with them first, all the men and children kept out of sight. Eventually, after speaking with them and answering their questions honestly, they relaxed, allowing their families to come out of hiding.

Aria shared a look with Sin and Rellik as they left the third village. All of the ones they’d visited so far were showing signs of struggle, and those were closest to the palace. She could only assume it was going to get worse the farther out they went.

There was something going on here, something worrying. These people shouldn’t look so… haggard, not after seeing the feasts they held at the castle, and nothing in her dealings with Ishtal told Aria why they were behaving so skittishly.

She could’ve asked these people directly, but not only was there no guarantee she’d get honest answers, being that she was an outsider, but it could very, very easily create a wedge between herself and Ishtal, both in the Queen’s eyes and in these people’s.

Aside from that, asking about their troubles came with an inherent expectation that she could and would fix them. Much as she’d like to promise that this early in her visit, and not knowing the problem beforehand, she just couldn’t.

So, much as it rubbed her the wrong way to leave a mystery unsolved, and a problem unaddressed, she didn’t ask.

She’d expected to encounter more than a little xenophobia, to have to deal with them having an issue with her being an alien, but surprisingly, very few cared about that. Most of their misgivings were centered around the inaccurate assumption that there would be some kind of draft into military service.

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