“Let’s just put it like this.” With his hand still around my throat, he leans down and slants his lips over mine. “When this war is over, I’m going to handcuff you to my bed and fuck you into the next century.”
Pleasure rolls down my spine, and my core throbs. Sliding my hand around the back of his neck, I pull his mouth the final distance to mine and claim his lips in a possessive kiss.
“Good.” I smirk against his lips. “I’ll hold you to that.”
Black smoke washes over us as Lyra shifts into a dragon.
In the brief darkness, Draven cups my cheeks with a sudden tension. “Come back to me.”
My heart clenches. Tightening my grip on the back of his neck, I press my lips firmly to his. “Always.”
The smoke blows clear as Lyra flaps her massive wings and lets out a low rumble, urging us to get on. Isera, Alistair, and Orion start moving towards her.
I give Draven one last kiss. “I’ll see you on the battlefield.”
“See you on the battlefield,” he echoes.
Then I tear myself away and run over to Lyra. But my heart is beating hard when I climb onto her back and settle myself on her spine with the rest of my friends, because I suddenly have a really bad feeling about this.
I don’t like leaving Draven like this. But he needs to lead theattack on the battlefield in order to draw out Jessina. And I need to go to Frostfell since I’m the only one of us who has met Hector and Kath and everyone else from the human resistance in person.
But as Lyra takes off and I watch Draven remain there on the ground as she flies us out across the thorn forest, I can’t shake the feeling that something bad is about to happen.
And with every beat of Lyra’s wings that takes us away from the Seelie Court, that sense of foreboding only gets stronger.
We need to make it through this. All of us.
But now, I’m no longer so certain that we will.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Smoke rolls through the forest as Lyra shifts into her human form the moment we’re all back on solid ground again. Through the trees, I can vaguely make out the city of Frostfell. Silver dragons are circling the gleaming Ice Palace and flying restlessly back and forth across the buildings that spread out below it. If everything goes to plan, they will all start flying off towards the battlefield soon.
First, Draven needed to meet up with the rest of his clan and the Unseelie fae they should now have bonded, and then they were all going to fly towards the battlefield while the Dryad Queen led her people there from the Unseelie Court. The only one who is staying in the Seelie Court is Lavendera, who needs to be close to the thorn forest when we give her the Soul of Trees.
Since the battlefield is closer to both of our courts than the Seelie Court is to Frostfell, Draven and the rest of our army should already have reached it by now. Which means that Jessina and the Silver Clan should have already gotten word of it. Which in turn means that they should leave the city soon.
Should.
Goddess above, I really hate that word.
“Alright,” Lyra says, and sweeps her gaze over the four of us. “I’ll circle around in that direction,” she points to the right, “and get as close to the city as I can without any humans or Silver Clan soldiers seeing me. I’ll try to get close to the Ice Palace so that we can get out of here and join the others on the battlefield as soon as possible.”
We all nod. She flashes us a smile and then takes a step back.
“Be careful,” Alistair blurts out.
Surprise flits across her features as she stops mid-step. Then her orange eyes light up and a grin spreads across her mouth. “Careful? Never met her.”
A small cloud of black smoke appears as she performs a half-shift. Her black wings flare out to her sides as she spreads them wide and flaps them.
“Ah, this is so freaking convenient,” she says, that smile still on her face.
Then she winks at Alistair and flies off between the trees.
Alistair watches her disappear, a strained expression on his face. His mouth is still slightly open, as if he wanted to say something else but never managed to get it off his tongue. With a sigh, he tears his gaze from her rapidly retreating body and instead focuses on us.
He jumps when he finds all three of us watching him.
