Then I am nothing but craving. My constraints disappear within my mind, my form becoming endless. No more boundaries. No more limits. No consequences.
Nothing but pure pleasure until I’m screaming for release. Wanting it. Needing it. Welcoming this destruction as he thrusts into me, a pounding rhythm that beats in time with my heart.
His fists bury in the blanket on either side of the bed, and his hair falls across his eyes. Eyes black with desire.
He drops his lips to my cheek, pressing a kiss to the wound, the lightest touch, a feathery contact that defies how hard he’s pounding into me.
That nudge, that gently gifted kiss, tips me over the edge.
My foundations shatter. My heart and my mind tear apart, a rending that rips at my soul.
A crash that sends me into wanton oblivion.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Maxim
Agony strikes through my entire body.
I regain consciousness to find myself lying in cooling lava, the indent of my body sticking as I test my limbs. My fire may have healed my shattered bones, but it hasn’t helped my bruised flesh.
With a groan, I focus past the glare of the late afternoon sun to my serpent, who circles the air above me, his hisses agitated.
He’s smart not to try landing near me.
The ground around me is still too hot for any creature to touch without injury. The lava has spread for a hundred feet in every direction, making the ground appear like blackened rock.
Judging by the sun’s position in the sky, it’s been hours since I fell from my serpent’s back, my mind overcome by powerful magic that had, somehow, shown me the oracle.
I jolt upright as memories rush back at me.
She was reading from a book whose illustrations could only have been drawn by the Ferocie Scribes.
The memory of her voice rages across me, sending my heart into a thudding rhythm.
To break the curse, break the…
What?
Breakwhat?
Wildly, I search the dunes around me, as if I’ll find the answers within the endless amber grit.
A futile search.
Forcing my aching muscles to function, I focus my fury into action, racing toward the edge of the lava.
My serpent follows above me in the sky, landing at the top of the nearest dune.
I reach his side within moments, retrieving the satchel containing my spare clothes and quickly pulling them on, covering myself as fully as I can once more, leaving only my eyes visible.
I need to move quickly now. Before the city beneath the dunes awakens and Ember Fae emerge back to the surface. I can’t let anyone know where I’m going. Certainly not my sister, Zenaida, or she’d try to stop me.
The last thing she wants is a war with the Tol-Dakri, the warrior tribe who won’t willingly offer me their help.
Launching myself onto my serpent’s back, I urge him into the air, and within minutes, we’re soaring in the direction of the southern coast where the Tol-Dakri live.
The only tribe that would welcome a fight with me to the death.
