“Have you not seen him until now?” I asked softly. “As angry as you are…have you missed him?”
My vision shifted back to normal. I drew in a deep, shocked breath, feeling as if I’d just been blinded. How did anyone live switching between those two worlds? I’d only tasted a flicker of what it would be like to have a dragon’s senses. I wanted more.
Fieran’s dragon swooped up along the wall, seeming for a moment as if he’d crash through the window. Then he folded back into himself midair, landing in human form with a crunch of boots on the sill and a grin that said he knew all my secrets.
“Well?” he asked, damnably pleased with himself once more.
“I think she wanted to watch her mate.” I said it before he could, which took the smugness out of it somewhat. “Don’t look like that. I’m just reporting what happened.”
His grin deepened anyway. Insufferable. “You were leaning out the window to watch.”
“I know.” I looked back out at the sea where he’d been tracing loops across the sky. “It felt as if…she wanted to fly. I wanted it, too.”
“Sometimes our feelings influence each other.” Fear regarded me seriously, not cocky for once. “You think it is Lightbringer? That she sees her mate?”
“Yes, but she can’t stand either of you,” I added, which was true in a way, but even as I said it I was aware of the thin layer of the joke.
“I didn’t realize your dragon would be as much of a scaredy-cat as you,” he said, because he was constitutionally incapable of not being obnoxious. “But I suppose it makes sense. Your traits influence each other.”
I lunged to pretend to shove him out of the window, but he threw himself backward first, laughing as he shifted midair. His dragon flashed past the window, wings outstretched and catching the sun, and I could’ve sworn Shadowbane wore the same damned insufferable look as Fieran on his scaled face.
Out over the sea, his dragon rolled on one long wing and began to trace loops through the sky.
Then he dove low, skimming the water and sending it flying in a glittering arc. I felt a thrill of longing, and gods damn it, he was right. I was leaning out.
“Say your name,” I whispered into the wind that whipped around me, calling to her. “Tell me your name, and let’s fly.”
I got the distinct feeling she didn’t like being told what to do.
So I closed my eyes, remembering yesterday’s smoke curling in my lungs. I was so afraid this dragon and I would never connect, that I’d never be what I was meant to be. That everything I’d hoped for would turn out to be nothing but ashes drifting away in the wind.
So many moments had slid past me, fast as a current, while I laid my hands on the stone and waited to be claimed. I had come so close to dying. She had saved me, I didn’t doubt that.
“Thank you for claiming me.”
From the feeling of being trapped, I had the feeling she had claimed me as a kindness. Not because she had wanted to be part of this world.
A faint turn of emotion answered. Curiosity, perhaps.
“If you come,”I promised,“we will work together. I’ll listen. I won’t ask you to be small for me.”
Heat bloomed in my chest. My palms tingled against the stone.
Maybe she couldn’t speak to me because I was mortal. Maybe she wasn’t choosing silence—maybe she couldn’t. Maybe I’d never been meant to have a dragon’s claim at all.
If that was true, then I was still grateful she’d saved my life.
Rees whined and pressed his weight against my side, nudging at my stomach as if to push me back.
I opened my eyes. The world was dazzling: edges bright, colors sharp, everything alive.
I’d leaned out so far that my balance shifted toward the drop. I gasped and clawed at the stone to steady myself.
Fear landed lightly, looking disappointed. “I thought you were going to let yourself go and fly.”
My heart was pounding in my chest at what felt like a near fall. “She’s still not speaking to me. I’m not going to throw myself out the window without us having a conversation. ‘Don’t worry, Cara, I saved you from burning; I don’t intend to let you perish on the rocks.’”
“Sound logic. Why would she let you die now?” Fear agreed.
