He touched her then, curving his palm around her jaw. Leida opened her eyes slowly, and within their depths, he saw a near-dead hope. It twisted him in knots. He wanted to say no, that any child born of her body should have been his, and no others were allowed into his family. But he’d seen the determination in her gaze, believed her words when she’d told him she’d kill herself trying to escape and return to her daughter.
“It’s near dawn. We’ll leave soon and travel by foot during the day. Gersel’s page says your village is three days’ journey by dragon flight.” His eyes narrowed as she smiled, a true smile of great joy and relief. For a moment, he thought she’d throw herself into his arms, but the moment passed, and she stared at him with a more somber expression.
“Thank you, my lord. I have no right to ask for your trust, but I want you to know I will abide by my sentence. I will be the perfect servant.”
Magnus gazed back at her, taking in the small changes that time and maternity had marked upon her. His emotions remained twisted with resentment, hurt and the painful knowledge that someone else had loved her as he did and shared a child with her.
He ignored the small voice warning him not to ask the question hovering on his tongue, the one whose answer he both dreaded and hungered to know. “Do you love your daughter’s sire?”
Her stricken look caught him off guard, and there was no mistaking the anguish in her voice. “Oh yes. Besides the child he gave me, he is my most beloved.”
Again, she’d crippled him with her words, and he regretted not listening to that inner voice. The black jealousy returned full force with nausea hard on its heels. He rose, staring down at her with what he hoped was a blank expression.
“He is lost to you now, Leida.”
She curled in on herself, as if the position somehow helped contain her emotions within her. “He was never mine to lose.”
Chapter Three
Leida heftedher pack over her shoulders, adjusting the weight so that it fit comfortably against her back. They were in for a grueling walk through underbrush too thick to ride horses. Years of dragon magic had transformed this woodland into a thick, tangling maze, hard to navigate, easy to get lost in, nearly impossible to escape. She looked to Magnus, watching as he slung his own pack across his back, seemingly unaffected by its weight. He carried the majority of their supplies, including a sharp scythe and a leather harness he’d don for when he flew at night, and she rode on his back.
Gersel spoke quietly to him, words Leida couldn’t hear. But the disapproving looks he sent her way spoke volumes, and she could guess at his argument. Leave her to her own devices. There were other human women to take as favorites, younger women with fairer faces and voices spun from sacred fire. She wondered if Gersel knew Magnus already had another favorite, a lovely girl named Sivatte.
Leida didn’t fault the dragon lord for trying to convince his kinsman she was not worthy of such trouble. Dragons were prideful creatures and while generous with their servants, most often considered humans and other races beneath them. They kept them as servants, sometimes elevating them to the status of favorite. And in very rare instances, a dragon lord would bond closely with his favorite, fall in love with her and make her his mate in all things. She became the equivalent of a wife well-loved.
Magnus himself once told her of an ancient Dragon King who took a human woman to wife. When she died of old age, his grief over her passing ultimately destroyed him. He followed her along the Shadow Roads two years later.
The dragons were fond of that story. It represented a conundrum for most of them, a riddle of emotion, of gentler love and an abiding faith that they, even with their vast storehouses of knowledge and lives long-lived, could hardly comprehend. As a race, they only tolerated each other for short intervals.
Leida loved that story as much as the dragons, if for a different reason. She understood the devotion between the Dragon King and his human wife. She envied it, and wished to the depths of her being that such a story could have been hers and Magnus’s. But fate and dragon nature intervened, leaving her in a place far below and more desolate than the one she’d left four years earlier.
“Are you ready, Leida?”
Magnus’s question snapped her out of her reverie. She nodded and came to stand next to him, bowing to Gersel as he passed her. The dragon judge frowned at her, shook his head, and disappeared back into the cave entrance, his entourage of retainers close behind him.
They started out at a brisk pace, but soon slowed as the underbrush grew thick and tangled. Magnus cleared a path for them, swinging the scythe in a smooth, continuous arc to hack his way through twisting vines and thorny bushes. He sometimes used a spell to free them from the clutching weeds, but kept the use of magic to a minimum so as not to alert any human wizard who might be in the vicinity. By midday, they had gone a fair distance, and Leida was both thirsty and hungry. They came to a small, clear stream, one fed by the snows of the nearby Parcius Mountains. She smothered a sigh of relief when Magnus turned to her and called a halt.
Leida shrugged off her pack and made quick use of the water. It was icy, a shock to her skin, but felt heavenly as she bathed her face and neck, her fingers skirting the silver choker. She paused in her ablutions to watch Magnus as he dropped his pack and scythe and divested himself of the harness as well as his tunic and shirt.
She caught her breath at the sight of sun-burnished skin and hard, lean muscle glistening with sweat. He was even more beautiful than she remembered, graceful and sinewy as he bent to the water, letting it cascade from his cupped hands so that it raced in shining rivulets over his shoulders, chest, and belly.
“You will attend me, Leida.”
Once again, his voice pulled her free of her bewitchment, and with numb fingers, she took the small cloth he offered her. He sat on the stream bank, facing her with an expression both scoffing and challenging. He’d agreed to take her to her daughter. She had promised to obey him without question. Now it was her time to prove her words held true.
This was familiar territory, a ritual performed between them during the years they spent together. The nostalgia nearly brought her to tears as she dipped the cloth in the water and wrung it out. Whether she washed lustrous scales or smooth, heated flesh, it was the same as it had always been, a pleasure to serve him in such a way.
He smelled of sweat and sunlight as she knelt before him, keeping her gaze level with his chest, even as she felt the weight of his stare on her. She bathed him with leisurely strokes, running the cloth in a long path over his shoulders and down his arms, passing over his narrow waist and the hard, flat abdominal muscles. His nipples tightened, sensitive to her touch as she lingered, gliding her thumb across each one in a seductive caress.
The rhythm of his breathing changed, quickened in pace, and Leida risked a quick glance at his face. He continued to stare at her, unblinking, his features still and expressionless. Were she not so close to him, touching him, she might not have thought her touch affected him.
She licked her lips, flushing as his gaze lowered, focusing on her tongue as it glided across her lower lip. She ached to have him kiss her, open his mouth over hers so that she might taste him again, feel the slick heat of his tongue as he filled her mouth. But he stayed still beneath her hands, watchful and silent as she leaned to dip the cloth into the water once more.
Magnus bent his head, leaning into her as she rose higher on her knees to reach his back and nape. He’d tamed his hair with a leather tie, and she pulled the dark mane over one shoulder, exposing the back of his neck.
Water sluiced down his spine as she continued to bathe the heat and sweat from him. Her fingertips tingled, sensitive to the feel of his skin. He felt good, better than good, and the temptation to lower her head and follow the path of the cloth with her lips was great. She knew the taste of him, remembered the flex of corded muscle as she sucked and bit gently along his neck, the way he shivered and arched his torso when she laved him with her tongue.
Birdsong and the stream’s bubbling laughter faded as the world narrowed to just her hands, Magnus’s broad back, and the feel of his breath as he leaned closer and placed a light kiss on the swell of her breast above her thin bodice. Leida dropped the cloth, reaching to clasp his dark head in her hands.
