Surging back to his feet, lochaber raised high. His eyes catch mine for the briefest instant—fierce, blazing—and then the blade comes down.
It bites deep, cleaving scales, severing flesh. The creature writhes, tail lashing, but he drives the weapon deeper, forcing it into the bone beneath. The sound is wet, terrible, final.
Still, it thrashes. Claws rake the rock, screeching. I lunge again, stabbing into its exposed throat seam, raw fury carrying me through the stench, through the blood.
Together, we break it.
It shudders, collapses, and everything stills. Only the wind moans above, sand hissing down in thin streams.
My chest heaves, lungs clawing for air. I can’t let go of my knife. My whole body trembles, but I’m still on my feet. He stands beside me, lochaber dripping black ichor, steady as stone despite the blood seeping from a gash across his side.
We look at each other in the half-light. No words. No sound but the wind—but something has shifted, as surely as if the earth cracked beneath us.
Blood runs down his side, dark against the deep crimson of his scales. It’s not pouring, but enough to make my chest clench. His eyes are scanning around us as if expecting another strike.
“You’re bleeding,” I whisper, voice rasping.
He doesn’t answer, but he shifts, lowering the blade at last, and in the silence he is giving me permission.
I drop to my knees at his side, fumbling with the pouch at my hip. My hands won’t stop shaking, but I manage to tear a strip of cloth, soak it with a quick splash of my precious water. Rising, I press it against his wound. The blood is cool under my touch, seeping between my fingers.
He jerks once, a sharp hiss escaping between his teeth, but he doesn’t push me away.
“Hold still,” I murmur, breath catching as my palms press to the hard planes of his stomach, tracing over scars older than I can imagine.
The muscles tense beneath my touch, cool scales shifting under my fingertips. I feel the sheer power in him, coiled and leashed, and still—he lets me touch, and I feel what that means. Trust.
I glance up. His eyes lock onto mine and heat floods through me, drowning the tremor of fear. My chest presses closer, almost into his. My lips part, the air between us thick with everything unsaid.
His hand moves—slow, deliberate. Sharp claws graze my jaw, cupping my cheek. My pulse trips, my whole body aching, leaning toward him.
The silence stretches, alive and electric. His thumb brushes the corner of my mouth, and I forget how to breathe.
“Kara,” he rasps, my name grinding from him like it costs everything to say it.
I lean in, helpless. Shoulders touch, breath mingles, the promise of a kiss burning hotter than the suns ever have.
But he stops just shy. Our mouths hover a breath apart, neither of us breaking, both of us caught in the pull.
Waiting.
23
KARA
His thumb lingers at the corner of my mouth, rough and careful all at once. My whole body tilts toward him, helpless against the pull. If I close the space between us—if I lean just a fraction more—I’ll know the taste of him.
The thought burns through me hotter than the suns.
His forehead dips, scars brushing my temple, breath mingling with mine. My pulse thrums in my throat, in my fingertips, in every part of me that aches to give in. The silence around us sharpens, every sound waiting on this single, impossible second?—
Then a noise tears it apart.
A scrape, low and deliberate, drifting up from the bones below. Not wind. Not storm. The sound of weight dragging across stone.
We both still.
His hand doesn’t leave my face, but his eyes flick past me, down into the graveyard. In an instant, he’s no longer the man who almost kissed me—he’s the warrior again. Every line of his body coils tight, his wings partially opening, tail raising, poised, listening.
