I’d been propped up on my elbow before, but now I sat up fully. “How?” I asked, skeptical. The fae only wielded elemental magic, not spells—they didn’t have the same power that the Radiant used to put me into that eternal sleep.
Not that it turned out to be eternal,I groused. I was going to have a word with the Radiant, if I ever saw him again.
“My mother,” Adara said. “She’s a powerful healer, and she makes some of the most potent potions and remedies in the kingdom. She’ll be able to fix you a sleeping draught that can keep you asleep for a very long time. And probably give you a few extras, in case you wake up sooner than you’d like,” she added with an arched brow.
I grumbled under my breath. That wasn’t quite the same as eternal sleep…but it was something. The longer I remained awake and mobile, the greater the chances I could be killed, and that was a risk I couldn’t take. Not when my life was the only thing keeping the portal sealed.
“What do I need to do to get my hands on this potion?” I asked.
Adara smiled. “Just take me back to my village.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “I have a feeling it’s not that simple,” I said dryly. “You said before that you needed to get back to the village to find out whathappenedto your mother. What exactly did you mean by that?”
Adara’s eyes clouded with worry. “That’s a bit of a long story, and I’m not sure I want to tell it to you.” She tilted her head up to look at the sky, allowing silvery moonlight to spill across her face once more. “The important part is that my mother and I were attacked by one of King Aolis’s soldiers, and that she used earth magic to send me away from him. That means she faced him all on her own, and I need to know what the outcome of that was. Whether she defeated him, or, or…” her lower lip trembled.
My heart wrenched with pity for Adara, but my brain was too caught up with the implications of what she’d said. “You told me your mother was a healer. How could she have used earth magic to send you away? That’s not within the purview of herb lore, unless there’s a teleportation potion I’m not aware of.”
“That’s one of the things I need answers about, because I don’t understand it either,” Adara said crossly. “I don’t understand anything right now—why I have fire magic, why the general came for me and my mother, why she lied about being a Greater Fae, any of it! When I woke up this morning I didn’t evenknowI had fire magic.”
I stared at her. “You just found outtoday?”
“Yes!”
“Well that explains your lack of control over it,” I said, and her cheeks turned pink. “All right, all right.” I held up a hand before she could respond. “I agree that sitting here arguing and talking when neither of us have any idea what is going on is not a productive use of our time. But I also fail to see why I should take you back to the village when you can’t guarantee that I’ll get the sleeping draught.”
“Because you have nothing better to do,” Adara said flatly.
I opened my mouth, then closed it. “You have a point,” I grumbled, flicking my gaze skyward. The moon sat high and full in the sky, which was good for visibility, but there was also heavy cloud cover, which meant any fae still awake would be unlikely to see me. “Very well, I’ll take you. Just make sure to hold on tight,” I warned as I began to shift. “If you fall off, I can’t promise to catch you.”
That was a lie, of course. Until I figured out how to get rid of the mating bond, I couldn’t harm Adara. But she didn’t need to know that, and it would be better for both of us if she had a healthy dose of respect and fear where I was concerned. As a female, she wasn’t compelled by the mating bond the same way that I was—she could easily ignore any emotions from the bond, and they would diminish the more I acted like a cad around her.
The last thing I needed was for her to feel safe around me, because that was the next step toward developing feelings. And if Adara began to care for me in any way, my chances of severing the mating bond between us were doomed.
11
Adara
“I’m not sure I can do this.”
Einar growled low in his throat, thrashing his spiked tail impatiently. The motion kicked up dust into the air, and I coughed, shielding my face against the sudden onslaught. A chilly gust of wind whipped through the air, and I wrapped my arms around myself, unusually cold. As a water fae with an affinity for ice, I rarely noticed the cold. It was my nerves getting to me.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I said as he glared balefully at me out of one eye. “You’re a giant, twenty-foot-long lizard with spikes jutting out of your spine. If I make one wrong move while we’re in the sky, I’ll accidentally impale myself.”
That large, gold-rimmed eye rolled skyward.“Stop being such a coward,”he’d chided me when I’d said almost the exact same thing to him when he’d still been in bi-pedal form. He’d taken great pains to explain to me exactly how to climb on and where to hold so that I wouldn’t hurt myself.“We have a deal, and unlike your kind, dragons never break their word. I will see you safely home to your mother. You just need to get onto my back.”
Sucking in a deep breath, I approached the dragon. I placed a hand against his golden scales, and I paused, taking a moment to savor the novelty of the situation. I was touching a living, breathing dragon, and he wasn’t trying to tear my head off. Had any fae before me enjoyed such a privilege? Had any fae ever ridden a dragon before? The idea that I might be the first was exciting enough to push my fear away, and I wedged my foot into the spot behind Einar’s foreleg, then grabbed a spike and used it to pull myself onto his back.
Einar rumbled his approval as I got myself situated. There was a large spike the size of my torso at the base of his neck, perfect for grabbing onto, and about a yard of spike-free space just above and between his wings. I laid my body flat along that space and wrapped my arms around the spike.
“Are you sure I’ll be able to stay on?” I asked, anxiety creeping into my voice. “If I accidentally let go of the spike while you’re doing some kind of fancy flying—”
Einar flapped his wings, cutting me off, and I screamed as the sudden motion nearly sent me flying off his back. Burying my face into his scaly hide, I held onto the spike for dear life as he took a running start, wings flapping once, twice, then three times before he launched himself into the air. My stomach bounced in time to his wings as he beat them furiously, and I swallowed hard against the gorge threatening to rise in my throat.
But soon enough, we stopped climbing, and Einar’s wings slowed from a staccato beat to the occasional flap. I lay still for a long moment before I gathered the courage to lift my head and risk a look around.
The sight took my breath away.
From the ground, the sky had been one giant, steel-colored blanket of clouds. I’d thought the view from up here would be dreary, but Einar had flown us above the cloud layer and caught an updraft. We coasted above a sea of puffy clouds, the moon shining high above us, endless midnight stretching for miles in every direction. Little gaps in the clouds allowed me to glimpse the ground below us, and every time I caught sight of the forests or glens, a rush of giddiness swept through me.
