Gamble’s arms tighten around my neck. “Sarak?”
“Hmm?”
“I’m glad you’re my Daddy.”
My heart stumbles mid-beat. I press my lips to his hair.
“And I’m never letting you go, little elf,” I roar. “Not for Revaster, not for curses, not for all the fire in the nine hells.”
Gamble smiles against my scales, warm and trusting, and for the first time in two centuries, the dragon in my chest is utterly, perfectly at peace.
We fly west, into the setting sun, toward blood rites and ancient debts and whatever the future dares to throw at us.
Let it come.
I have my hoard now.
And I will burn the world before I surrender him.
Chapter 5
Gamble
The snowstorm hits like the gods themselves decided to bury the world. It truly is winter, and it feels like it could be on the edge of turning into the great winter that was spoken about for so long, the kind that the elder sin my village spoke of in hushed tones so often.
But still, I cannot dwell on such things. Not now.
One moment we’re soaring above the treetops, Sarak’s wings cutting through the last of the twilight, the Emberfall Glades glowing green on the horizon. The next, the sky rips open. White swallows everything: sky, mountain, dragon, elf.
Wind screams.
Ice needles bite through my cloak.
Sarak banks hard, fighting the gale, but even dragon strength has limits.
“There!” I shout over the roar, pointing to a black scar in the cliff face—a cave mouth barely wide enough for his wings. “Daddy! Down!”
Sarak folds his wings tight and dives. We tumble inside in a tangle of limbs and snow. The impact knocks the breath from me. Sarak shifts mid-roll, human arms catching me before I hit stone.
The entrance seals behind us with a roar of wind and drifting powder, plunging us into near-darkness lit only by the faint ember-glow of his eyes.
For a long moment we just breathe, pressed together on the cave floor, snow melting into puddles around us.
“Well,” I pant. “That was dramatic.”
Sarak growls, low and dangerous. “You’re soaked. Strip. The last thing we need is you catching a fever. I know how sensitive you elves can be to such things. I’ve seen elves relieving their guts at both ends during such a fever and I do not wish to see it again at such close quarters.”
“Romance lives,” I mutter, but my fingers are already fumbling with frozen laces. My cloak hits the ground with a wet slap. Sarak yanks his own jerkin off, spreads it near the back wall, and starts gathering deadwood from a pile left by some long-ago traveler. Within minutes he has a fire crackling, dragon-hot and steady.
To my relief, and Sarak’s too, warmth floods the cave.
I peel down to skin, shivering violently. Sarak’s gaze rakes over me, possessive, worried, hungry. He crooks a finger.
“Come here,” my dragon Daddy commands, the severity in his voice making my breath hitch.
I go.Of courseI go.
He wraps me in his still-warm cloak, pulls me down onto the spread jerkin, and tucks me between his thighs, back to his chest. His arms band around me, palms splayed over my belly. The fire stone, tucked in its pouch at his belt, pulses sluggishly against my spine.
