Page 28 of Storm of Blood and Shadow

“I wish I could come inside you,” he murmurs. He keeps rubbing against my back while his breaths grow rougher, heavier. “I think it’s going to happen. Fuck…” He shoves his length along my spine once more, then springs off me. I hear the splatter of his release hit the rock wall, and I listen to his thick groans as he returns to me, comforting his softening length against my warm skin.

After a few minutes he tells me he brought water in a clay pot from the lower caverns. He retrieves it from where he left it, near the mouth of the cave, and I drag myself to the edge of the bed to drink some of it before crawling back to my warm hollow. Varex settles in carefully beside me, folding his huge frame around my small one. With his teeth, he drags part of the flag over my body to cover me.

“Rest well, darling,” he breathes into the gloom.

9

I take Jessiva to the cavern just before dawn. She does not want anyone to know that my cum and arousal have slicked her skin. She does not wish to smell like me.

I understand. After all, I am a great clumsy beast with a spiked tail and vicious claws that could easily slice her tender flesh. I am a killer of her people, an enemy. She is beautiful, graceful, and sharp-tongued, with the eyes of a huntress, hair the color of blood, and the inner strength of a hundred males.

We land in the enclosure outside the cavern, then creep past the sleeping women to the back of the cave, where there’s astream and a shallow pool. Jessiva slips down from her perch on my back.

“Wait a moment,” I hiss before she steps into the pool. I open my throat and let some of my lightning fork out between my fangs, striking the water. It sizzles on the surface, producing steam.

“It should be warmer now,” I tell her. “Careful. Test it first.”

She waits a moment, then puts a toe in.

I want to bite those tasty little toes.

“It’s hot,” she says, looking up at me in delight. “Just right.” She steps in, then sits down and scoops the water over her body. She uses something called “soap,” too. Only a little, though, because it is apparently in short supply.

The night we took the women, my brother sent two dragons, Ashvelon and Fortunix, back to the mainland to kidnap the sorceress Thelise, the one who might be able to turn humans into female dragons. Kyreagan told Ashvelon and Fortunix to fetch some supplies for the women as well. Hopefully they will bring more soap, since our captives seem to require it often.

When Jessiva has finished bathing, she walks out of the cavern naked and stands by one of the dying campfires to dry herself. I don’t want the dragon guard who’s circling overhead to see her naked, so I fly up to him and order him to go hunting for the women’s breakfast.

I return to the enclosure and find Jessiva raking her fingers through her tangled hair.

“I wish I had a comb,” she says despairingly. “Here, you help me. Work your claws through itgently, until most of the tangles are gone.” She plants her bare ass on a rock and keeps working on some of the crimson locks, while I clumsily try to help with the rest.

By the time the sun rises, she’s more or less satisfied with the state of her hair. She braids it tightly, then puts on the same dress she wore yesterday.

The guard dragon, Gosrik, returns with a pig. Jessiva rouses a few of the women to help her prepare the animal, and the other captives begin to stir as well.

I can smell my own cum on myself—a rich, heavy, musky scent, and I’m afraid someone will notice it. I kept downwind of Gosrik when I first spoke to him, and when he returns with the pig, I leave him to guard the women while I go to bathe in the sea. The salty scent of the ocean will purge any telltale odor from my hide.

I land on the beach and hesitate there, watching the glow of the pink dawn sky fade into the yellow of morning.

My sister Vylar loved playing in the surf, from the time we could leave the cave until the very day before we left for war. Skilled commander and strategist though she was, she turned into a joyful hatchling whenever her claws struck sand. She would dive straight into the center of enormous waves that made Kyreagan and I flinch. And she always fought her way free, no matter how viciously the sea tugged at her wings and tried to claim her with its currents.

It’s unbearably cruel that she was brought down by the spell of a distant enemy, one she couldn’t face head-on. The Supreme Sorcerer of Elekstan was a fucking coward, and the most cowardly part of his spell is that it killed him. We learned of his spell and his death from one of Vohrain’s spies as we flew from Guilhorn to the capital.

His demise meant that we could not be directly avenged upon him. But we can use his daughter, the sorceress Thelise, to partly repair the damage he did… provided we can persuade her to comply.

I plunge into the sea, lowering my body into the surf, letting it wash away the traces of what Jessiva and I did last night. In the light of morning, our sexual frenzy feels like a dream. And yet it was real. Though mating season has not yet arrived, I have released seed twice with a human female.

I know I must conceal this from the other males. They would look at me strangely, shrink away from me, and wonder what sickness grips my mind. The knowledge would undermine my authority with them, and I cannot afford to lose their respect. Kyreagan needs me at his side, keeping the clan together, managing things when he cannot.

Moving deeper into the sea, I bathe my wings in the foaming water, careful not to let any powerful currents take hold of me. The ebb and flow of the sea is soothing, and I stand in the surf far longer than I planned to, imagining that I can hear Vylar’s distant laugh over the rush of the waves. When dragons die, our spirits return to the air, but if I know my sister, she would find some way to become part of the sea.

Perhaps I’ll see her again in the rays of the sunlight on the ocean. In the lightning of the next spring storm, I’ll see Mordessa, the golden dragon who would have been my brother’s mate. In the campfires of our captives, I’ll see the orange of Grimmaw’s fire.

But my mother’s spirit did not escape to the air. It was swallowed by the voratrice who killed her, trapped deep under the earth in pain and darkness, imprisoned while her bones dissolved in the monster’s belly.

I have never been able to conquer the horror of her death. It visits me at night, in my dreams, and it gnaws at me by day, under the glare of the sun. It corrodes every bit of joy I find in life, every moment of rest, every morsel of pleasure.

If only I could be sure that her spirit had managed to escape, to be free—maybe then I could find some peace.

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