“I know.” She turns back to the edge, takes a deep breath. “I trust you.”
Three words. Simple. Devastating.
I move to stand beside her. Our shoulders brush. The wind whips her hair around her face, red strands catching the sunlight.
“On three?”
She reaches down and takes my hand. Her fingers are warm, her grip steady.
“On three.”
We count together. Our voices blend with the roar of the falls.
One.
Two.
Three.
We jump.
She screamsthe whole way down—a wild, exhilarated sound that has nothing to do with fear.
The wind tears at us, gravity pulling us toward the churning pool. I shift mid-fall, wings snapping open, claws catching her waist. But I don’t pull up. Not yet. I let the freefall continue foranother heartbeat, letting her feel the rush, the weightlessness, the pure adrenaline of surrender.
We hit the water together. Cold crashes over us—shocking, bracing, alive.
I surface first, shifting back to human form. Scan for her?—
She bursts up three feet away, gasping and laughing at the same time. Hair plastered to her face, clothes soaked through, eyes blazing with joy.
“AGAIN!” She’s grinning so wide it looks almost painful. “Rurik, oh my god, again! That was—I can’t believe—why didn’t anyone tell me—AGAIN!”
The dragon roars its approval.MATE HAPPY. MAKE HER HAPPY MORE.
“As many times as you want.”
We do it six more times.
Each jump, she gets bolder. By the third, she’s spreading her arms wide during the fall. By the fourth, she’s doing a running start. By the fifth, she grabs my hand and pulls me off the ledge before I’ve finished counting.
“That’s cheating!” I yell as we plummet.
“That’s winning!” she yells back, laughing so hard, she can barely breathe.
By the sixth, she doesn’t scream at all. Just closes her eyes, tilts her face toward the sky, and smiles the whole way down.
When we finally drag ourselves onto the rocky shore, both of us are shivering and exhausted and thoroughly soaked. Aisling collapses onto a sun-warmed boulder, still laughing in breathless bursts.
“I haven’t—“ She shakes her head, trying to catch her breath. “I can’t remember the last time I felt like that.”
“Like what?”
“Free.” She turns her head to look at me, and there’s something open in her expression. Unguarded. “Like nothingmattered except the wind and the water and—“ She waves her hand vaguely. “Everything.”
“That’s why I come here.” I settle onto the boulder beside her, close enough that our arms touch. “When you’re falling, there’s no room for anything else. No noise. No fear. Just the moment.”
“You have noise too.” Not a question.
