I feinted right as she got close and threw a wing, trying to catch her with a ragged edge. She dropped under it, feet kissing the bridge rail. She pushed off a chunk of broken stone and flattened her palm around my forearm, fingers finding the seam between my scales. Venom hummed at her fingertips as she pushed it into me through skin-to-skin contact.
It wasn’t a bite, and the shock of her venom entering me wasn’t pain or anything like it.
It wasrecognition.
My knees slackened from the way her touch and magic pressed against me.
Snarling, I drove a claw into the bridge to anchor myself as my wings faltered.
Rune didn’t retreat. She vaulted off the bridge railing, twisting midair. In a shimmer of magic, her normal form enlarged into her basilisk form. She was an incredibly long and thick serpentine with gold-sparkled scales that caught light like stardust.
The sound of her was a whispering rasp as her scales hissed over the cobblestone.
She raised the front part of her body with effortless control. Her eyes, still the same golden color in her regular form, found me through the slit of a predator’s pupil.
Fates help me, she wasbreathtakingin this form.
She wrapped around my chest in less than a second, exerting pressure at the right angles. She hissed before she sank her fangs into me, injecting her venom again. This time at the inside of a forelimb, where I was more sensitive.
Heat bloomed through me, not pain but that same resonance as before.
Mine.
Could she be?—
My wings folded, and my body lowered of its own accord. Every trained instinct yelled at me to break away, but another instinct overpowered me to submit to her.
I let her bring me down.
Her coils loosened just enough for her to shift back. In one smooth motion, she had the enchanted restraint collar off her belt and snapped around my throat.
It glowed and set.
I could have shattered it, but I didn’t.
“Subdual achieved,” Rune announced, breath a little fast, crouched over my breastbone like a victory she didn’t trust yet.She shouldn’t trust it.“Target contained.”
The simulation fell away.
I pushed my magic down and let the collar force my shift. It wasalwaysworse when I rushed it. My wings sucked toward my ribs as my bones shortened too quickly. Magic collapsed through itself until the world throbbed in red and black.
By the time my vision cleared, I was flat on my back on the simulator floor, council-issued suit damp with sweat, and steam rising off my skin. The collar had shrunk with me and hummed low against my throat.
Rune was still there, kneeling over my chest, hand half-curled where scales had been a moment ago. Touching me like she didn’t want to stop.
I didn’t want her to stop.
I lifted my head and met her eyes. The wild thud of both our hearts were loud.
“You bit me,” I said hoarsely.
Her lips curved into a smile. “You asked for it.”
A breath scraped out of me that could have been a laugh.
She didn’t move.
Neither did I.
