Page 46 of Flight of Fate

Myron gently sets me down, his mouth never leaving mine as his fingers trail my sides, the curve of my hips, along my back where I braced myself against the wood as if searching for injuries.

That costs me a chuckle. “I’m a real Crow now,” I simply say as I run my hand over his arm, guiding his own to meet it, lacing our fingers when his palm slides against mine. “I’m no longer that breakable.”

It’s not entirely a lie but not a truth either. My legs are wobbly from the force of my release, and I can feel the tingle of my healing skin where my spine rubbed against the door. But my bones, my muscles, my very essence is that of an immortal Crow now, and if anyone can break me, it surely isn’t the male who would wreck himself for me. Over and over again.

Myron’s breath heats my neck as he sweeps my hair aside, turning with me as I guide him away from the door to the chair beckoning in the corner of the room. The emerald velvet cushionis still where it last was when he sat me down and pinned me against the high backrest carved from dark wood.

Myron’s grin turns wicked as he takes in the chair, and he makes to gently shove me into it when I twirl so fast even I am surprised, pushing him into the seat instead and landing on his lap with my legs astride but catching myself with one hand against the backrest.

“A real Crow indeed,” he purrs, lifting his hands to my shirt and tearing it clean down the middle so it exposes all of my chest, my stomach, lower where my spread legs graze the outside of his knees. He spreads them wider, drinking in the sight of me as I brace one knee beside his hip, then the other.

Slowly—so painfully slowly, he drags a finger across my abdomen, up my chest, between my breasts, along my collarbone, up the side of my throat, along my jaw, gaze following where he touches until he ends at my mouth. For a split second, his eyes find mine, his finger gliding along my bottom lip. My core turns liquid all over again at his silent request, and my mouth falls open, allowing him entrance. I moan as he slides in, the pad of his finger both rough and gentle along my tongue, and it’s his turn to moan as I close my mouth around his finger, taking him deeper, then slowly pulling back until his fingertip rests on my bottom lip once more, tugging it down. His finger isn’t enough.

I’m about to tell him when he grabs my hips, pushing down until he’s poised at my entrance, and not even the best of intentions can keep me from lowering myself onto him, luxuriating in his growl of approval as he sinks into me.

My mate. I don’t wait for him to start moving but pull back up before plunging down again so hard I take him in to the hilt. Myron swears, eyes shuttering and closing as he rests his head against the carved wood.

“You’re fucking perfect, Ayna,” he murmurs, fingers tightening on my hips. The muscles in his abdomen quiver with every time I slide up his shaft and drop back down again, and I can’t help the smile spreading on my lips as I trace my fingers over his chest, and a deep, hungry breath heaves beneath my palm. But it’s not there that my eyes catch on.

It’s the palm-sized cluster of glowing lines appearing on Myron’s skin, right above his heart where my own hand was lingering before, when we were both still dressed and our breaths even, our hearts beating as one, not the frenzied hummingbirds they are now.

Like starlight beneath his skin, the lines weave together, alive with each motion, becoming symbols and formations I have never seen in my life.

I want to pause to take a closer look, but I can’t get enough of the way our bodies fit together, the way each stroke brings me closer to the bliss that’s our joined release, so I keep moving, thighs shaking, not from the effort of lifting myself after each deep plunge but because of the pleasure coiling in my belly, the tightness of my core where Myron fills me so perfectly I can barely remember my own name.

“Myron—” His name is barely a breath falling off my tongue as I place my palm over his heart, covering the mark that could mean our demise or our salvation, something I can’t worry about now when I ride him into oblivion.

A few hard thrusts meet my hips, and I splinter, genuinely falling apart at the seams as Myron climaxes with me, his roar filling my entire being like an awakening call. I don’t know how long I tremble around him, don’t care. All I need is right here with me, and I never want to let go of this complete satisfaction.

“Mind, body, and soul,” Myron whispers as I slump against his chest, palm still covering the spot above his heart, and I kissthe side of his neck as he cradles my head with his hand, the other wrapping around my shoulders as we catch our breath.

Only when the sun reaches its highest point do we finally pull apart, my fingers tracing the glowing lines on his chest, and Myron notices them too. I lean away to get a better look at the mark when Myron catches my right hand and turns it over to reveal a matching one on the inside of my palm. And as Myron guides it to his face, brushing a featherlight kiss along the pale, shimmering lines, I feel his love pouring into me through our mating bond, strengthened with this new body, and and just as immortal.

Twenty-Nine

Herinor

“Areyou ready to tell us more?” Royad says with that stony expression I’ve rarely seen on him, the one that makes me want to scream if something is wrong with his usually good-natured self that can’t be solved with a mug of ale and a pair of tits. But this isn’t about one friend making another friend feel better. This is me being a complete ass by casting aside the importance of Ephegos’s words and forgetting all about them.

“I didn’t keep anything from you purposely,” I repeat the same words I’ve been telling them for two days.

“Recienne said we can keep you locked in here forever.” The scar running from his brow to the corner of his mouth tugs the grin he flashes me into a grimace; his brown waves are bound at the nape of his neck, too tidy for a Crow.

Two days. It’s already been two days since they brought me to this joke of a dungeon.

“If you lock people up, at least do it in a place that doesn’t feel like the next best living room.” It’s meant to be a joke, but there is a kernel of truth in it. The space isn’t any less hospitable than the chambers we had at the palace in the Seeing Forest and is definitely much better than some of the places we called our home over the centuries of finding a new place to stay. BeforeCarius the Cruel occupied Flame territory and killed most of their people. A growl rumbles in my chest that has nothing to do with my being chained by one ankle—a symbolic restraint when everyone knows I could easily break free—just not from the magically reinforced cell made of smooth stone with a simple bed in one corner. It even has a pillow and a heap of blankets against the chill air streaming in from the high-up window barred with thick iron.

“Recienne offered the lower levels, but Myron decided this is good enough until he decides what to do with you.”

“Where is he?” He didn’t come down to see me after he ordered me locked up. “Anything special happen up there?”

The flash in Royad’s eyes tells me something did indeed happen that has nothing to do with me and my unintentional betrayal. At least, the bargain with Ephegos won’t kill me and everyone around me for it.

“Is it Myron?” I try to read his face, but it turns back to stone. “Ayna?” My chest aches at the thought of anything happening to my king and queen, or worse… “Kaira?” I don’t even try to keep the panic from my voice as I inquire about the only Flame in this world I care for.

She hasn’t come to visit, and that look of disappointment in her eyes when she realized what secrets I’d unwittingly kept from them all—it will haunt me until the end of my days.

Royad gives me nothing.

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