Before I can knock on the door, it swings open, and slitted, blue, luminous eyes meet mine.
Unlike our previous encounter, she is now fully clothed in her white, almost see-through robes. Even the scarfs that wrap her head only make room for her eyes. None of her reflective scales are on display. She even hides her tail within the long material.
Giving a slight bow, she greets me in her rolling sounds. “Rithern.”
“Moyrie.”I don’t know how I will explain this to the princess, but I am hoping she might understand my predicament. Hopefully, she has a lover of her own back home.
She moves to leave the room, and I move my head from side to side. “Talk?”
I repeat the word a few times until she shakes her head, too. “No.” She sleuths around my statuesque body and starts stalking down thehall.Right, of course she’s not going to make this easy, not after I pushed her advances away last night. She’d kissed me and the bond sent shooting pain through my chest. After that, I’d pushed her away and prayed to the Goddess she didn’t approach my mother.
With no other choice at present, I follow Moyrie up to the platform where she is meant to meet her dragon.
I have greeted Moyrie and her dragon before on this very mountaintop. Seeing the majestic creature land on the rocky cliff, creating its own wind tunnel, wings flapping without measure is always mesmerising to witness.
Looking around, I see no dragon.
Moyrie paces, her robes swelling in the strong breeze. Back and forth, along the edge of the cliff, she keeps her eyes trained on the lightening sky above.
She makes a rattling whistle sound towards the sky, to no avail.
Out of nowhere, a bronzed object comes flying towards me, and I have a moment to grab the thing before it pricks me in the neck.Thank the Goddess for my reflexes.
“Saffff?” The blue-eyed Silver Sands princess hisses as she stalks towards me and unexpectedly leaps on my body. Her legs grip firmly around my waist as a sharpened blade finds my throat.
Shaking my head, I question, “Who is Saff?”
The guards manning the entrance are primed to move, but I stop them with a flick of my hand. I do not wish to anger the princess straddling my body any further.
Sensing her scowl beyond the wrap covering her mouth, she seethes, “Drrraaagooon,” her eyes thinner than usual.
So, she thinks we did something with her dragon.No one has the capabilities to hold a dragon in Terra, so I shake my head again and use a word she understands with finality. “No.”
Hissing under her masked face, she releases me and effortlessly slides down my body.
The dragon could just be late—
If not, there goes my ride to find Dove. I was thinking that if I tried to explain things to Moyrie, she would show some compassion for my situation, but if her reaction just now is anything to go by, I’m not sure I should tell her Dove exists, especially by how willing she is to consummate our pairing.
Moyrie parks herself in a seated position in the middle of the platform and starts to chant in her language.A call to the missing dragon? I can only guess at this point. I barely know the customs of my arranged bride’s land.
“Princess, where are you?” I whisper to the suns.
Solen has not returned, and I have a tether directing me in the opposite direction of Haven, towards the void.
“What are you doing?” My voice travels along the wind, hoping it will find purchase on a human female made of grit and fire.
thirty-eight
Dove
Through some trial anderror, I find myself on the back of Saff.
“Trust,”she says. A word that holds so much weight.
Surprisingly, I do. As my intimate, I trust the sharp-scaled red dragon with my life, especially since she hasn’t fried me up. That has to count for something. I just don’t trust that I will be able to hold onto the behemoth of a creature.
“Feel my body move,”is her only piece of advice as I’m catapulted into the sky on the back of the inferno that is Saff.
