Page 497 of Kingdoms of Night

“But I am!” I was running out of breath climbing the spiraling tower steps, but it didn’t stop me. “And I don’t want to waste anymore time.”

“You know what?” Suzianna stopped at the bottom of the flight, bent over and heaving. “Just tell him I left you at the door because I’m worn out.”

“See you later.” I used the handlebar to pull myself up, persistent til I met the door.

It swung open before I could push, baring what I’d been looking forward to seeing.

Dark teal and scattered with stars, the sky beckoned me to the crystalline bannisters of the tower sill. Iltani sat coiled along the right-side curve, and her master emerged from behind the door to meet me.

“Your clothes!” I launched at him, rubbing the wine-red material. “I can see them now.”

“What about what’s beneath my clothes?” he teased, rolling and pulling at a few of my loose ringlets.

I offered him a sad smile. He shrugged it off, leading me to Iltani with an arm around my waist. “Still, this development could bode well for how the night goes.”

A saddle was wrapped to her back, like she was a gigantic, scaly, cyan horse. Something about that fact just struck me as adorable.

Climbing up behind me, he asked, “What’s so funny?”

I wrapped my palms in the reins, looking past Iltani’s horns at the city below. “I just imaginedbashmuas horses, living in stables and dragging chariots.”

“Both have been attempted and failed terribly.” He reached past me to take the reins, his chest against my back, arms enveloping me. “Is my earthbound star ready to meet her inferiors?”

Cheeks burning, I elbowed him. “Keep saying things like that, and one of them will target me out of offense.”

“Then they better prove useful first, so I can be at full-power when they do come to question my judgment.” Pressed tighter against me, bent forward to bring his lips to my ear, he whispered, “Just say the word and we go.”

Heart beating as fast as a wasp’s wings, I forced out a steady exhalation. “Ready.”

At a flap of the reins, Iltani rose to circle the tower, pace speeding up with each spin until my hair was flying behind me. On the seventh spin, she kicked off the ledge and shot into the sky, throwing me back into Tamuz’s chest, sharp wind nipping at my skin and swallowing my screams in the flaps of her wings.

I gulped down air like it was water, shivering from the sharp dip in temperature and the clash between excitement and fright at the drop beneath us. More than one city mapped the pale land beneath us, built around or within craters, by green waters and in silvery and crystalline structures that defied simplicity, bridging the circular designs of domes, half-moons and ringed structures to the twists of spirals, screws and ringlets.

The unsupported feeling of hanging this high, without a solid base like the palace, had me too aware of the gravity that could pluck me off our soaring mount, its hooks in my guts, pulling them down against the base of my spine.

A forceful flap had us shooting even further up, like Iltani had kicked off thin air, taking us so far above the cityscape, the sky changed color around us.

Soon, we were soaring among the clouds, and I couldn’t help myself. I had to know what they felt like, but the reins limited my mobility.

Tamuz must have caught on to my impulse, loosening his grip on the reins so they extended along with my reach. I hailed the oncoming cloud as we headed for it and felt…nothing.

“It’s like I touched mist,” I grouched disappointedly.

“They are similar. What were you expecting it to feel like?”

“I don’t know, cotton?”

“If only, then thebashmuwould be using them as beds.”

That was a quaint, if not adorable image.

The lunar lands were far behind us, and we had left the remains of sundown to delve further into the depths of night.

Across our upward voyage through the clouds, I grew colder and sleepier, finding it hard to hold myself upright. Slouched back against him, I fought to keep my eyes open, the effort not helped by the freezing dryness of the thinning air.

“How much longer?” I yawned, barely audible to even myself.

“Not long til we reach the barrier!” he yelled over the beat of Iltani’s wings, unaffected.

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