Elsbeth moaned. She tilted her head back to encourage more of his nibbling and caught sight of the wyvern egg in the corner of her eye. “Alaric,” she whispered, brought back toearth.
“Hmmm?” Alaric dipped his tongue into the hollow of herthroat.
“The egg, remember? You’re supposed to warmit.”
He halted his worship of her skin abruptly and lowered her to the ground. Elsbeth clutched him for a moment, trying to steady legs gone more wobbly than an old loom. “You are a dangerous distraction,” he said, his expression caught between a frown and asmile.
“And you are no less guilty of that than Iam.”
He bowed once more before nudging her toward a large boulder at one side of the cavern. “Stand there. It’sprotected.”
“Againstwhat?”
“A very largefire.”
He stripped where he stood and gave her his clothing for safekeeping. As when he’d first revealed himself to her, Alaric invoked a silent magic, shape-shifting from man to wyvern. The cavern, with its canopy of stars, burst into movement as frightened birds took flight and circled the opening, protesting the wyvern’s presence with loud whistles andchirps.
Alaric arched one of the bony ridges above his eyes and favored Elsbeth with one of his odd smiles. “I’m not so welcomed here in thisshape.”
Elsbeth watched as the displaced aviary settled slowly back to Maldoza, perching along the cave’s spired top. “If they only knew they are in more danger of me shooting and eating them than of you feasting onthem.”
A huff of laughter was his response. “Indeed. I haven’t much use or appetite for something no bigger than a fly is toyou.”
He approached the cave housing the nest, and she marveled at the grace of a creature so massive. Alaric checked to make certain she was still safely behind the rock. Satisfied with her position, he faced the cave, took a deep breath and blewhard.
“Gods’ mercy!” Elsbeth yelped as scarlet and orange fire jettisoned from Alaric’s mouth, and smoke flumed from his nostrils. Her first instinct was to scream for him to stop, that he’d literally cook his own offspring. Then she remembered a comment he’d made about wyverns. Only the male’s fire was hot enough to keep the eggwarm.
He blew on it twice more, sending back drafts of scorching air into the main cavern. Elsbeth huddled behind the rock, grateful for the shelter and happy not to have her eyebrows singedoff.
When he finished, his chest heaved like great bellows, and residual smoke poured from his snout and mouth. His voice, smooth and resonant, was now hoarse. “That will be enough for another day or two.” He arched his long neck, peering at her from his far height. “Are you well,Beth?”
She crept from behind the rock, clutching his clothes. “I’m fine.” She shook her head. “What madness makes men challenge creatures like you? We stand no chance against you in afight.”
Alaric shrugged his wings and recited the spell that changed him to human form. Elsbeth wordlessly handed him histrousers.
“It is because you fight us that you lose.” He slid the trousers over his legs, pausing to leer at her as she watched him dress. “There is a recent legend amongst both dragon and wyvern kind of a dragon who took a human woman, a singer renowned among her people for her wondrous voice, as his favorite. He was killed in a territorial battle by a rival—a firedrake even larger than the greatest wyvern. In revenge, the dragon’s human lover seduced the drake with song and slew him in his sleep. We call her IrenyaFirekiller.”
Elsbeth almost forgot to hand him his shirt. “What was hername?”
He pried it out of her fingers. His voice was muffled as he pulled the shirt over his head. “Irenya. She’d be an old woman now. The knights who came here to challenge me might have learned a thing or two from her on how to battle a dragon—or wyvern—andwin.”
“I know a little aboutdragons.”
Irena’s face, care-worn and etched by the numerous lines of more than sixty years of living, rose in her mind’s eye. Elsbeth had thought her statement strange, but hadn’t dwelled on it, too caught up in the heat of her own crisis. Now, when she thought back on it, the elder had said that with a secretive smile and a distant sorrow in her gaze. Was Irena the Elder also the Irenya Firekiller dragon kind spoke of withadmiration?
“Beth?” Alaric’s still hoarse voice interrupted her musings. He was fully dressed and shod. He held a hand out to her. “Are you ready? We should leave. It’slate.”
She gripped his hand and let him lead her past the nesting cave. They halted briefly so she could take another look at the egg. The cave was too hot to enter now, and the egg glowed like an enormous sapphire on its bed of heated rock. “May we come back tomorrow so I can seeher?”
His gray eyes lit with a combination of delight and desire. “If youwish.”
They picked their way across the rock floor to the tunnel leading back to Alaric’s lair. Behind them, the cavern darkened until all that remained was a crimson patch of smoldering rock nestled in a cleft of cliff wall and the rush of wings as birds returned to theirnests.
They made love twice,and Elsbeth was reminded of her two days with Alaric in Ney. There had been an aura of desperation cast over their time, and it was here again. She didn’t fall asleep until very late and stirred restlessly on theirpallet.
She awakened in the blinding dark, struggling to breathe as a strong arm slowly crushed the air out of her. Alaric twitched in his sleep next to her, muttering incoherent words until he said, “Not yet, Beth. Not yet.” He squeezed herharder.
“Alaric,” she wheezed, praying he’d awaken before he suffocatedher.
