“You collapsed on me at one point.”
“A close-up view is not the same.”
He was teasing her. The same way he’d learned her body, he’d learned how best to push her buttons. Despite herself, her smile transformed into a grin. “You want to transformhere? Like you used to with your sister.”
Lance cleared his throat. “Now that the way’s clear—”
*You asked me how I wanted to remember her,*he told her. *This is how. By remembering the joy we knew here.*
Silver glimmered between them, and he shared a memory—the excitement of speed and agility, air and magic whipping past his wings as he spun down, down, Adria’s laughter in his mind and her dragon’s shrieks deafening him.
He transformed as easily as breathing.
Francine stared, the breath shocked out of her. “You’re healed.”
The dragon glanced down at itself, then fixed her with emerald eyes. *Perhaps the magic restored more than the enchantment here.*
The others had stepped back as Julian transformed. Francine stepped forward. There was plenty of room—she was right about the fortress being designed at dragon-size.
But that hadn’t prepared her for what dragons looked like.
He was sleek and powerful, a creature from myth designed to ride the winds and blot out the stars. A long neck and tail, huge wings tucked carefully to his sides, and spines that began on his skull and stretched down his back. He was black as night, glossed with the oilslick changing colors that all his stolen scales had. But so much richer. So much more alive.
And he stared down at her from gleaming green eyes with the same expression as he did in human form.
Absolute love.
*Climb aboard,*he said, extending one foreleg.
*You’re not going to snatch me up in your claws this time?*
*Only if you beg.*
She stifled a snort and climbed up onto Julian’s back. His spines were flexible and not sharp, so she could settle herself between two of them on his shoulders and hold on for balance. “How are we going to—”
He leaped into thin air, and the rest of her question was lost in a shriek.
The walls whipped past, too fast for her to see. She clung to Julian, digging her heels in and fighting the urge to close her eyes and scream more. This was too fast. The stairwell was enormous, but he was practically spinning on one wing-tip to race down it without crashing into the walls, and if he made one mistake—
She reached for his mind, and joy engulfed her. Yes, it was reckless. Yes, he was well aware his mate would give him a tongue-lashing or worse once they reached the bottom.
But it was worth it. To be free like this. To remember all the good things of this place, not only the pain.
And with that joy, magic rolled from his wings, repairing the damage to the enchantment. The shattered edges that risked letting the outside world in closed over, leaving nothing but polished stone.
Still, by the time he flared his wings to slow and land, her fingers were white-frozen claws. She let go of Julian’s spine with difficulty and half-clambered, half-fell to the floor, where he was already in human form to catch her.
He took one look at her and smiled apologetically. “Next time I’ll carry you.”
“You’re assuming there will be a next time,” she grumbled, then slipped her hand into his. “Of course there will be.”
Even if she had to bribe her lioness to step off solid ground ever again.
The passageway to the ice-bound prison was just as she remembered it. Her feet tried to slow as they approached the light at the end. “How much of this did you have to repair just now?”
“I couldn’t tell.”
The Soul-Eater might still be in there. Alive or dead. Whole or in pieces. And Eloise—
