Page 1 of The Fires of Longest Night
CHAPTER 1
RIA
Isiridion, a dragon as blue and green as the sea, lands with characteristic grace.
See? Enough carrying on about when I tripped. It was a one-off. Nothing to be making a big deal about.The dragon’s voice, echoing in Ria’s head, is half-laughing in self-mockery and half-indignant. It makes Ria grin as she unhooks the two big bags from Isiridion’s spikes and throws herself out of the slim leather saddle. She slides swiftly down the dragon’s scaled sides to hit the ground with a little bounce.
I’m not sure I’m the one going on about it, to be honest, dragon. You feeling a little self-conscious?She teases, her grin wide and white in a tan face, dark eyes crinkling in amusement.
Ria is broad and strong, with an axe jutting above her shoulders. She’s just good enough with the blade to earn little more than a stern look from the Warlord for her maverick ways. Today, she’s got a skip in her step as she hauls the bags—gifts from another warlord in celebration of the turn of the year—down the narrow rainforest path to the encampment. Tonight is Longest Night, and she has a plan for Nissa. A plan she’s been dwelling on, longing for, for months. She’s even in the Warlord’s good graces in time to push her luck with his daughter.
Their courtship—if she can even call it that—has been a slow one, cautious and joyful. She’s known for years that she wanted Nissa, but the unfurling of their relationship as they have danced around the fire, sat side-by-side on logs with first their knees touching and now the length of their sides pressed into each other… it makes her blood sing.
She hasn’t wanted to rush Nissa. It’s not just that Nissa, apprenticed to their healer, is the warlord’s daughter, or that the warlord’s gaze flickers between approving Ria’s skills and disapprobation over Ria’s cheerful disregard for the hierarchy and courtesies that govern the clan’s fighting force. She still can’t believe that Nissa, who for so long she’d thought of as a goddess who walked the earth, would even look twice at her. A sigh escapes her lips as she thinks of the fall of Nissa’s long plaits over her finely-carved shoulder.
It took a near-death experience—well, actually, a death-and-dragon-revivification—for her to gather the courage to even make clear her interest. She’d been ready for rejection, and when it hadn’t happened, it felt like her world was remade around the impossibility that she might actually have a chance.
Nissa’s face, serious-eyed and with that slow smile and swinging braids, recurs in her mind, and she sighs. How the fuck did she get so lucky?
Are you forgetting that I had to practically shove you against her to even get that much to happen?Isiridion’s snark breaks into her thoughts.You humans!
I would’ve gotten there. And I did.Ria’s response is all dignity. She hauls the bags higher on her back.
Uh huh. In another dozen moons, maybe.
Pft.
And tonight… tonight! She plans to dance Nissa through the woods, kiss her slowly against a tree until she gasps, and then ask her to leap the flames with her… and let Nissa decide whichflames she was willing to grant Ria. Ria knew that she would give her life over to Nissa in a heartbeat if she asked for it, leaping the flames in the spring when life pairings were made.
But she also knew that Nissa took her healing and her position as the warlord’s daughter seriously, and maybe that meant things for her choices that Ria couldn’t see. She would offer herself, for the night or for the year, and let Nissa decide.
You’re aware that, however unlikely this might be, she could choose neither?
I won’t have your doom and gloom clouding my Longest Night, dragon,Ria tells her dragon firmly.Besides, I know the place on her neck that makes her lose the ability to speak. I may not have kissed her, but I have touched that place.
She has a vivid memory of gently stroking that stretch of flesh with a gentle fingertip until Nissa fell into silent desire so profound Ria thought she could probably have taken her right there beside the fire, with all the clan watching. Not that she would do such a thing.So, I think I will be able to make a convincing case.
She swings the sacks she carries off her shoulder and into the doorway of the supply building.
“Bartleboy!” she bellows. “There’s fresh crayfish in here, and while it’s chilly out, they’d likely do best in the cooling room. Has Scalivin fetched water for you yet today?”
“He has not,” says Bartleboy, wiping his hands on a cloth as he emerges blinking into the sunshine. “Would you be so kind, Ria?”
She gives him an easy grin, leaning against the doorframe, her tattooed arms crossed. “What’s in it for me?”
Bartleboy rolls his eyes. “Oh, I don’t know, axe-wielder. Maybe crayfish that won’t make your belly ache?”
“Hmm. Not enough,” Ria says in a bargaining tone. “What about giving me a sneaky early drift-cake? Before the flames, instead of after?”
Bartleboy gives a long-suffering sigh. “Very well. I don’t know why I put up with your continual circumnavigating of the rules.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ria replies, giving him a grin. She picks up the oilskin bags designed for carrying water. “But I’m off for some water now, unless you want to complain at me some more?”
CHAPTER 2
NISSA
Nissa, a round-hipped young woman with braids to her waist, watches Kaderlyn’s swift fingers as they weave the strips of bamboo around the lantern’s frame. She sighs, wishing she had half the older woman’s dexterity. Even now, Illima, their healer, complains about how long Nissa takes to wind a bandage.
