Page 26 of Wings of Frost and Fury
Is he talking about what he wants from himself, or is he talking aboutme? He’s looking at me like I’ve suddenly become the most important thing in his world. It’s disconcerting, and I have the sense that it’s not just because his prince has summoned me.
This dragon of the hollow, broken, frost-fire heart views me with devouring eyes, with a ravenous wonder and a fervent heat that unnerves me to my core. I’m not frightened of him, exactly. I’m flattered, I suppose. Intrigued. Weighed down by the monumental news he has brought, by the grief of Verda’s loss and my torn feelings about my father’s death. I can’t yet parse my emotions about the terrible thing my father did before he died. Nor do I understand why the eyes of the gigantic gray dragon feel like portals through which I could escape everything I’ve endured and step into something altogether new and wild and lovely.
His reply echoes in my head, and I have to forcibly remind myself that I needed the information to shape the spell I plan to cast. He wants to feel warm and bright and golden. He wants beauty and strength and confidence.
“An excellent answer,” I reply as brightly as I can, even though I feel shaken. My hand trembles as I write the spell, even more so because he’s watching me closely. The charm I cast earlier only protects me from a dragon’s innate magic, like this great beast’s frost-fire. If he wanted to carve me up with his talons or swallow me whole, he could. But he sits there on his haunches, breathing heavily, gazing at me, waiting for me to do anything I want to him.
I could kill him, and he would let me.
Why is that so alluring?
In the lines of the spell, I make him as beautiful as he wants to be, warm and golden and sweet, strong of body, with the potential for the pleasure he craves. I tell myself I’m not doing it for selfish reasons. I make an internal vow not to fuck him after his transformation.
But is a vow to myself really binding? I have a feeling that a self-promise is about as durable as frost, that it will dissolve if the human version of this dragon smiles at me.
This is for practice, a spell to be used for diplomatic purposes if I’m desperate,I tell myself as I mark the casting circle and place the crystals.
Since the spell isn’t meant to last more than a handful of hours, I don’t need much physical material from him. A bit of saliva will do.
I request him to lick two of the crystals, and he does it without question. With a diamond knife, one of my most prized possessions, I chip a few shavings off one of the rings I’m wearing, which bears a large eclipse gem. Then I seat myself in the center of the casting circle, with the spell I wrote in my lap.
The dragon watches my preparations nervously. “Will it hurt?”
“You’ll be fine.”
“That’s not what I meant. Will it hurtyou?”
My gaze snaps up to his. I’m left wordless for a moment, a state that’s highly unusual for me.
“It won’t harm me at all,” I manage to say. “Now I need you to be very quiet while I do this.”
Condensing a large creature into a smaller form is actually easier than one might think. I read the spell aloud, moving the elements to their correct places along the casting circle as I reach the applicable lines of the spell. Tendrils of glowing purple light unfurl from the center of my chest, joining with each of the crystals in the casting circle. Drawing upon that exuded energy, I fold away his dragon self, with all its powers. His personality and his mind will remain the same.
His new flesh takes form in an instant, following the rubric I wrote into the spell. My imagination and my intent fill in the gaps, creating wholeness, firmness, completing his face with features I find appealing. He resembles one of the first men I ever slept with—an innkeeper I met during my travels, not long after my banishment.
The innkeeper’s name was Haljax. He and I bonded because he was also banished from Court. He once served the Queen as a palace guard; in fact, he used to be one of her favorites. When I met him, he’d been running a shabby country inn for several years.
I was only nineteen. I didn’t care that he was ten years older than me. I preferred his experienced touch to that of younger men who would clumsily paw at my pussy and expect me to orgasm from their awkward ministrations. That night with him was the best sex I’d ever had. But the next morning, when I archly suggested that I might like to stay awhile, Haljax told me I should move on.
“Your presence here could bring trouble,” he said. “I prefer my life like it is—quiet. I don’t want to draw any attention from the Court. We made a good memory. Let’s leave it at that.”
His rejection hurt more deeply than I let on, because at the time I was newly banished, aching for somewhere to belong and someone to trust. The pain of Katlee’s death was an infected wound that had turned my heart tender and feverish. I was desperate for relief.
Now as I stare at the dragon’s human form, it’s as if I’m looking sixteen years into the past, seeing the face of that handsome blond innkeeper—except there are slight differences in the angle of his brows, the bridge of his nose. The dragon’s jawline is better, and his eyes aren’t green—they’re the color of a stormy sky, a perfect shade of deep, smoky blue. He’s taller and better endowed, with a cock of the exact shape and length that I find most appealing.
There’s something else different about him, too… something indefinable. The spirit inside the body and the soul behind the eyes do not come from Haljax—they belong to the great frost-fire dragon, the gentle giant who has obeyed every order of mine and who sat quietly while I performed my spell.
“Hello, there,” I say softly.
The man I created stares at me… and then he topples over.
“It will take you a few minutes to adjust,” I assure him, dropping to my knees at his side. “Breathe. Not so fast. Take a few slow breaths, deep ones if you can. Good dragon. You said your name is Ashvelon, yes?”
“What have—” His words slur through his teeth, and he moves his tongue around, frowning at the new shape of his mouth. “What have you done?”
Thank Fate he has the same deliciously deep voice, even when he’s in this form.
“I’m giving you a new experience and conducting a test at the same time,” I explain. “I thought it would be rather nice if wecould speak on equal terms, physically as well as mentally. I would have transformed myself into one of your species, but I couldn’t be sure it would work right, and if it didn’t, I couldn’t very well cast a reversal spell with dragon claws, now could I? So I’m sure you understand why it had to be this way.”
