Page 56 of Wings of Cruelty and Flame

A smile pulled at my lips. “You’ll have to carry me, because I’m not budging.”

“I’m content to carry you everywhere for the rest of our lives,” he said with a glimmer of that mad obsession I saw on our wedding night. My smile grew as he secured his hands under my ass and stood, still inside me. Every step he took jolted his cock until my muscles fluttered around him, coating him in slick arousal.

“This room,” I said when he walked down the hall, my head rested on his shoulder, the fortress still hushed around us.

“I do have my own room, you know,” he said, closing the door behind us with a nudge of his hip.

“Feel free to go find it,” I replied, knowing he wouldn’t. “This is my room now. I like the view too much to give it up.” Mostly because I’d sat in the window for hours watching the skies for him and Mak.

“Are you saying you like the view of the grounds more than the view of your handsome husband?” He sounded affronted. I snorted—at least until he laid me down on the bed and covered my body with his, heat bleeding into me again. The weight of him over me was sinful, waseverything.

“We can sleep later,” I suggested.

His grin was little more than a flash of teeth in the moonlight. “My thoughts exactly, dearling.”

When he withdrew for a deep thrust, we both gasped.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

AMEIRAH

The legion weren’t too happy that Varidian and I were riding off alone, but my husband refused to let them come on such a personal, intimate trip. Marriage marks were between a husband, wife, and the mark-scribe. Judging by the look on Zaarib’s face, he was calculating how fast he could train as a scribe.

“You almost died in the storm,” Aliah pointed out, frustrated but not surprised that Varidian was leaving so soon. I was getting the impression my husband struggled to stay still, always busy, always fighting. “At least rest here for a day, Varidian.”

“I rested all night,” Varidian replied a little petulantly, his long hair pulled into a knot on the back of his head, his leathers scrubbed free of dirt and blood. He strode across the lawn that was still soaked with stormwater—rain kicked up around his boots—and began checking the bags strapped to Mak’s back.

I folded my arms across my chest and watched him, fully on his legion’s side in this point.

“Stay until dhuhr at least,” Zaarib tried to coax him. “Don’t be a fool, Varidian. You must be exhausted, and only god knows how many illnesses you picked up in the storm. Some can be delayed; you could drop off Mak’s back.”

“Ameirah would catch me,” Varidian dismissed, patting Makrukh’s thigh. “And Mak wouldn’t let me fall.”

Mak’s grumbling reply could have been agreement or insult. His eyes drooped as he lounged on the lawn, his huge scaled body expanding with slow breaths. He looked disinclined to move.

“Don’t make us lose you, too,” Aliah murmured, her arms wrapped around herself as she watched Varidian. The blood had drained from her face when I told her Fahad hadn’t made it, and she’d been sallow since. I knew that pain, knew how grief numbed at first before cutting so deep there was no recovery. “Let one of us come with you, Varidian.”

“I am,” he replied, too flippantly. I gave him a reprimanding scowl; Aliah was hurting and afraid, the least he could do was reassure her. “Ameirah will be with me.”

“I’m no use on a wyvern,” I pointed out, earning a grumbling remark from Mak who apparently overestimated my skills. “It couldn’t hurt to have someone come with us.”

“I need ink,” Nabil informed us. “Wyfell’s souk is as good a place to get it as any.”

“So is literally any other souk,” Varidian huffed, shaking his head in amusement. It didn’t reach his eyes, and the smile was brittle. My heart pulled tight. “We’ll be fine. I’ll send a message when we’re back to the Red Star.”

“We’ll be there waiting,” Shula said, storming out the front doors with a stern expression on her face that left little room for disagreement. She thrust a wrapped parcel at me and muttered, “Don’t let him brush off his emotions. He’ll try to pretend they don’t exist.”

“I heard that,” Varidian grumbled, coming closer. “What’s in the bundle?”

“Food and water for the flight. So you don’t die.” Shula met and held his stare, a command in her steely eyes.

Varidian ran a hand over his hair. “I’m not going to die.”

“You scared the shit out of us,” she informed him, punching his arm. “Don’t do it again.”

“I don’t plan to.”

Shula’s grunt was less than satisfied but she backed up with a scowl, clapping my shoulder with significantly less force than my husband’s. The touch should have burned—no matter the days we’d spent in the same fortress, they were still responsible for Naila’s death—but for some reason it didn’t. Maybe because Shula loved her too. Or maybe because the time I’d spent with the legion forced me to see them as more than killers. I’d spent most of my life trying to be seen as more than a killer; it was hard not to project sympathy on them.

---