Serenna dragged air into her lungs and wrenched her gaze forward, anchoring her thoughts to what lay ahead. A line of dead trees stretched across the horizon, their withered spines long since turned to stone.
Cinderax told them that lush jungles had once claimed these lands, wild and alive with color. A thousand years ago. A memory of a memory, before the desert claimed the plains below.
But he had refused to speak further, hissing something dismissive about the Bramblemaws—earthen dragons who tunneled in stone and soil instead of claiming the skies. But beneath the scorn, Serenna had heard the unspoken fear.
Whatever had happened still prowled his memories.
Beyond the shattered expanse, the skeleton of the forest rose, petrified trees clawing skyward toward an unforgiving sun. Serenna squinted as a pattern emerged, the spiral of trees coiling too precisely, rings tightening inward.
The work of a matriarch Bramblemaw, Cinderax had begrudgingly revealed—upheaving the land around her den, sculpting root and stone into a living labyrinth. At its heart, a sunken hollow opened, vast enough to swallow three dracovae whole.
Once, the earth had cradled a dragon’s clutch. Now it served as a grave.
Vesryn rocked behind her.
Again.
And Naru’s wingbeats swaying them together in the saddle weren’t to blame. Not when the prince’s body leaned this hard into hers.
Heat raced up Serenna’s spine, as ravenous as flame devouring dry grass.
Vesryn’s voice curled at her ear, low and amused. “Nervous? Or just trying not to melt into me?”
Unhurried, his hand drifted after the words. Spreading over her stomach, his fingers sank into leather, measuring how much resistance she still clung to.
Serenna gritted her teeth and stared ahead, but desire already simmered, hers a twin flame mirroring his.
The prince’s hand slid lower, trailing with intent she could no longer call accidental. Recklessness pounded through her pulse, a hunger fed by him, but matched by her.
“Vesryn,” Serenna hissed, the warning unheeded as he skimmed the band of her trousers.
Her breath quickened, and she arched into him before she could stop herself, body yielding even as her mind scrambled to catch up.
“We can’t do this on Naru,” she managed. Barely.
Vesryn chuckled against her neck. His palm hovered just shy of her center, taunting with a promise of touch she already ached for. “If Naru had any idea what we’re capable of up here, he’d dump us in the sand and fly straight back to Asharyn.”
“He’s not blind,” Serenna retorted.
Yet the dracovae’s wings never faltered, beats steady and sure, loyal and oblivious to the storm brewing on his back.
“Maybe not blind,” Vesryn whispered, mouth lingering at her neck, “but onlyIwill watch you break.”
He drove against her, and Serenna pushed back, hips grinding until his breath shuddered at her ear. Her pulse thundered low, body already tipping toward the edge, the fall so close she could feel the drop.
His hand dipped lower, cupping the heat between her thighs. The pressure knocked a shameless whimper from her lungs. No longer holding back, Serenna rocked against him, chasing the friction that had haunted every mile of sky.
“It wouldn’t take much,” he said. “Just this…” His palm shifted, rolling slowly with the heel. “One more push and you’d come undone.”
Thoughts disintegrating, the saddle creaked as Serenna’s hips pursued his touch. Everything else—the druids, the looming war, her two tangled bonds, finding Skylash—collapsed.
To nothing but this.
“What about you?” she gasped, jolting into him. “Planning to spend the rest of the day with your leathers sticking to you?”
“I’d suffer for hours if it meant hearing you come apart,” Vesryn said, grip roughening, hunting the tremor in her thighs.
Serenna’s breath snagged as his teeth traced her earlobe.
