‘I doubt it.’
‘Oh?’ He leaned in closer still, and Dawn’s breath hitched, caged in her chest. ‘Then why,’ he whispered, ‘is your heart betraying you?’
She spun on her heel, shoving him back, but he only laughed, catching her wrists with ease. His fingers curled around them, pinning her hands against the warmth of his chest, and he held them there, even when she struggled to pull free.
‘Why is it,’ he whispered, his voice roughened with something dangerously close to reverence, ‘that I can no longer stop looking into those purple eyes of yours?’ His grip on her wrists softened, loosening the moment he felt her yield.
‘They’re not so frightening anymore, commander?’ she asked, her tone sharper than she intended.
‘Oh, they’re still terrifying,’ he replied, a wry smile touching his lips. ‘They haunt me in my dreams each night. I find myself wondering…’ He leaned closer, his breath brushing her skin, ‘what it would be like to drown in them while you’re in my bed, naked, glistening and undone.’
Dawn forgot how to breathe.
‘They’re just eyes, commander,’ she said, though her voice betrayed her with its tremor.
‘Perhaps,’ he said, his lips almost grazing hers, ‘but they’ll be my damnation.’
Dawn longed to close the space between them, to surrender and let him make real whatever wicked thought had taken root behind his eyes. Yet, with a sharp breath and a force she did not feel, she slipped free of his grasp and stepped away. She braced for annoyance to darken his gaze, perhaps even confusion. Instead, only amusement lingered there, and a promise, unspoken yet certain, that one day the distance between them would vanish entirely.
She followed Kai from the chambers, the cool hush of nightembracing the palace. Silence reigned but for the soft scurry of a few late-working servants hurrying to finish their tasks. They kept to the shadows as they slipped into the streets, unseen, until the marble and sandstone gave way to endless dunes. There, beneath the desert moon, the dragons waited, their scaled hides glimmering like burnished armour.
Alina stood ahead, flanked by Isla and Arena, already tightening their straps and fastening weapons. Dawn averted her gaze when Alina’s brown eyes met hers, sharpened with suspicion and something colder, unreadable. The drakonian princess was clad in phoenixian white combat leathers, as were the two Dunayans. Their curved desert swords hung loose at their hips, silent warnings gleaming in the starlight: one wrong move, and Dawn’s throat would open like silk.
‘We travel through the night,’ Alina instructed, her voice firm but measured. ‘By day, we rest. Less chance of being seen. It will take several days to arrive. Choose your dragon.’
‘Dawn will ride with me,’ Kai said at once.
Alina’s eyes narrowed to flint. ‘Why?’
‘She…’ His hand rubbed awkwardly at the back of his neck. ‘I prefer she rides with me.’
A pause stretched, thin, sharp, and dangerous before Alina finally inclined her head. ‘Fine.’ Her gaze shifted, narrowing upon a figure approaching from beyond the dragons.
Mareena Noor swept across the shifting sands with a speed that belied her grace, crimson eyes alight with excitement, her smile wide as the desert horizon. She reached them breathless but radiant, swinging a satchel from her shoulder and crouching low to rummage through it.
From its depths she drew forth a curious object, gleaming faintly beneath the moonlight. A glove, or perhaps a gauntlet, strange in its make and kissed with a soft, golden shimmer.
Dawn frowned, tilting her head.
‘I have weapons for each of you,’ Mareena said, her voice brimming with delight. ‘In case we are attacked during our journey.’
One by one, she bestowed her treasures. To Alina, she gave a long staff crowned with a strange, glistening stone at its tip; to Isla and Arena, slender daggers, elegant yet deadly; and into Kai’s waiting hands, a single hook sword, its metal humming faintly with enchantment. Finally, she slipped the golden glove onto her own hand, flexing her fingers until the fit was perfect.
‘Observe,’ Mareena announced, stepping a little distance from them. She raised her fist towards a far-off dune, the glove catching the starlight, then flaring with a brilliant spark. A torrent of witchfire erupted, streaking across the sands, striking the dune with a crackling explosion of power.
The group recoiled instinctively, their eyes widening.
Alina studied the staff in her hand, awe flashing in her brown eyes. She spun it effortlessly, testing its weight, before aiming the stone tip at the same dune. A surge of green magic burst forth, striking with equal force, scattering sand like shards of glass beneath a tempest’s roar.
‘What is this?’ Kai demanded, his brow furrowing like a storm gathering on the horizon. He let the golden hook sword slip from his grasp, the enchanted metal clattering against the sun-warmed stone. ‘How do you possess magic?’
‘Does it matter?’ Alina countered, her grip on the staff tightening as though it might take flight from her hands.
‘Yes, it matters,’ Kai snapped.
Alina rolled her eyes and jerked her chin towards Dawn. ‘We took a measure of her blood while she was recuperating.’
‘You didwhat?’Kai’s voice cracked into a shriek, sharp enough to startle the desert silence.
