He reached between them, one hand at her hip to steady her, the other angling his cock for her pleasure.
She sank slowly upon his length, and he matched her pace with a slow thrust.
If this was all they had between them…
The last time they shared between them…
Ven closed her eyes.
This world, this oasis, was a fantasy they could not hide away in forever, no matter how they might want to.
She had to face the truth.
She couldn’t stay.
Her mother lingered in the city, the khan, the phai’s, threat that she would be killed, echoed in Ven’s mind.
How many days had already passed in which the king or his son could have murdered her mother for Ven’s actions?
How could she live here in this sanctuary when her mother’s fate was unknown? She hadn’t free Ouros for his benefit.
Selish, or the Storms, or whatever gods listened, forgive her, but she hadn’t freed him to spare him an eternity of imprisonment. She hadn’t done it to save her own life from the soldiers at her back.
Her people, her mother’s people, grandmother’s people…
A drop of water fell from her cheek against her hand on his abdomen. She shook her head when he reached to brush away the trail of her tears. Easier to lean forward, to kiss him, to focus on the pleasure of his body moving with hers, the moment, no troubles to borrow, tomorrow would come soon enough.
She had to leave him.
She had to convince the khan and the Khanastani that the dragon they feared had been falsely accused. He wouldn’t hurt them; he could save them.
She’d have to convince him of the same too.
Her body tightened, pleasure threatening to overwhelm her despite the pain in her heart.
Ven cried out, back arching as the fire of his release speared through her, the dragon filling her, part of her, please, forevermore.
He held her as they calmed. He didn’t ask after her tears.
In the morning, he’d know.
Come the dawn, she’d have to go.
Chapter Forty-Two
Ouros roared, claws sunk deep into the soft earth beneath him, wanting to rend and tear and destroy, knowing the winds were ripping across the landscape in response, bringing with them a storm that would be unlike any sandstorm these humans feared when it struck.
He could not feel her in the tempest.
He’d taught her well to use her magic, to protect herself from the elements he could command.
She would move with the rains, return to the city that had outcast her, find the mother she was determined to rescue, never return to him.
It should have been an easy thing to let her go.
She was nothing to him. She meant nothing to him.
“Come with me. Help me. Help my people. There is so much that you can do, Ouros—”
He didn’t care about her damn people!
He didn’t care about the drought or the floods or the rains or the snows or the thrice-cursed sands!
He hadn’t meant to shift. His emotions had gotten the better of him and she’d had to turn aside, the hand she’d held to his chest, cradled against her own when he stood before her covered in scales, his wings widespread across the grotto, and she an ant staring up at him.
Her hand was burned from touching him.
She’d swallowed, nodded, walked away.
She was not his concern!
Ouros tipped back his head and howled to the black clouds above, screamed to rival the thunder clapping in the skies.
He refused to look back into his cave, to the bed that she’d shared with him, the memories that lingered there, of not just her but the woman who had come before, the chance at a changed future than what Amece’s betrayal had promised him.
This was just another act of betrayal.
Another human taking advantage of the dragon.
Another one who Ouros had fallen prey to and who now left him, alone and caged, only this time it was his own will that held him back.
The tornado struck the grotto.
The trees that had been his Storm’s Cursed haven for years before humans had stood upright on his land, were torn from the ground, ripped and shredded and the shrapnel of wood that struck his scales burned in the fire he spewed to match the wind.
He closed his eyes and let the flame in his breast consume him, let it reshape his form into that of the human male that had walked the forest paths with Amece, with Havence, that had found new life in the world he’d thought lost to him.
His shape changed, and where the storms could not scratch his hide as a dragon, his flesh was not so strong, and he relished in the pain of the debris striking against him, a match to that in his heart.
The tornado struck the mouth of his cave.
He could not control the storm once let loose by his emotions.
His horror at the wind tearing apart that which he’d claimed as his own meant nothing to the force of the gale.
Shreds of fabric, chunks of rock, bowls carved from sandglass that he’d crafted as gifts to the woman he had taken for himself centuries ago…all of it, destroyed, and he stood breathless at the eye of the storm unable to stop it, waiting until his sorrow and his despair changed wind to rain, and the sky wept to match the tears on his face.
Havence was gone.
A fragment of the bow he’d taught her to wield was wedged into the ground at the mouth of the cavern.
All that remained of her, was gone.
The rain soaked his skin, fell over him in waves. He slipped over the rocks uprooted and overturned from the tornado, scrambled through the wreckage on human legs and with unscaled flesh.
Cut and bruised and bleeding.
Gone.
He fell to his knees at the mouth of the cave, shivered as the rain beat down behind him and he knelt in the remnants of the only home he’d ever claimed as his own, the one he’d shared with the woman he’d been too wary to keep as his.
The chest that Havence had rescued, the waterlogged pictures of a father lost to the sea, the few things she’d stolen away with her, loved and cherished as her only possessions, shared with him the emotions they carried, were scattered across the rock floor, as unrecognizable as the rest of his grotto that he had destroyed.
His hands trembled as he reached for a piece of wood, the frame once holding the image of a smiling man dancing with an equally joyful child.
The frame, intact even as its treasure had been destroyed, intact but for the corner of the wood that had broken off in the storm, ancient vellum peeking through the ruin.
Ouros frowned.
Blood magic stained the scrap of paper, wrapped itself around the whole of the frame, preserving it through time, as old as the house that Havence had taken it from. An object passed down through the centuries, those who held it never knowing what rested inside the wood.
Even human, his nails were sharp enough to pry at the splinters, rend the last of the frame to pieces to reveal the full secret hidden within.
His nostrils flared, blood whose scent he’d not known since the day she bound him at her altar, assaulted his nose.
The spell soaked into the paper sang his name, called to him.
A last betrayal.
He wanted to rip it apart. No, he wanted to open his mouth and spew fire against the parchment and watch it disintegrate into ashes, blown away by the last of the winds left by his storm.
Ouros unfolded the note and stared at the swirling script that Amece had painstakingly taught him before a fire during a winter snow.
He traced a finger over his name.
Not Ouros, not the storm dragon. The name she had called him alone in this place, safe from the world which feared her and was terrified of him.
My Love.
A claiming he had thought would last a lifetime. That had faded when she bound him to the sea.
My Love,
If you are reading this, then I have failed yo
u. I do not know what will have happened to me, I can guess, but if this letter is all that remains, then, please, forgive me for what I could not save.
There was a coup, my Heart. When I returned to your temple to light the pyres, the khan was waiting for me.
He stood with his goddess, Ouros. High priest and sorcerous together at last.
She cast me in irons, said that it would be better if I died than risk my freedom.
I am sorry.
I did what I had to do to survive.
I thought that if I lived, then there was a chance for us to restore what Selish sought to destroy.
She had a spear, Beloved. She said that a dragon was mighty, but even he could be felled if the weapon was placed in the hands of a true believer.
I remember the snake bite. The way its venom ate at your skin, worse even than for a man.
I could smell the same on the iron tip.
She said you would die, and I could not allow you to pass from this world if there was something I could do to spare you.
Please forgive me for what I have done, but it was done for your own good.
If you were safe beneath the seas, then she could not strike against you. No one could touch you but me and I thought…
I believed that she would turn her gaze from me once you were gone. That she would not care what a witch could do when she was a god and she ruled that which she had stolen from you.
If you read this, then I was wrong.
Know that I meant to return to the sea. That I would have freed you and we could have run from this island, far away where no snake could strike with poison fang against us. If you read this, and it is not delivered by my hand, know that it was not by my choice that I did not come for you.
I have left instruction, my Love.
If I die, then my body is to be committed to the sea. My blood will set you free. If you are reading this, I pray my instruction was heeded. And I pray you might find peace and a kernel of forgiveness for what I have done.
It was my greatest of honors to have been able to stand by your side for even a moment of time.
Know that what I have done, I have done for love of you.
Please let that love have been enough to set you free.
Your heart,
Amece
Chapter Forty-Three
She hadn’t expected him to offer her any aid, not after the way he’d looked at her when she told him she had to leave, that she understood if he had to stay.
Her mother…but he hadn’t wanted to hear it.
So she’d fled, wrapped herself in her great grandmother’s stolen clothing, whatever spell had protected the grove having protected everything within it from the weathers of time as well, and fled down the mountain.
It would have been nice if he’d told her which way to go.
She hadn’t asked though, not after he’d changed, the man she’d slept beside, given herself to, returned to his natural form, the dragon burning brightly before her, teals and blues and blacks staring at her with fire encased eyes.
He told her to flee, so she obeyed.
She’d taken some of the fruit she’d passed along the way, a hank of the remainder of the deer, the meat dried over a low fire into tough jerky, though it filled her belly. Only one skin of water, but she’d lived her life with less. She’d make it work.
Ven just had to reach the city.
News of the dragon’s emergence had to have reached Alaluat by now. The soldiers come to fetch her, lost to the sands, watching when Ouros rose on the winds and carried her away – they had to have returned to the Citadel, passed word to the khan that the dragon was coming.
If she were lucky, whatever preparations the king was taking to prepare against the dragon meant that her mother was not as well guarded.
She refused to believe any other fate had befallen her truest support in this world.
Mercy, but she’d fled the city without looking back.
How long had it taken her to remember the woman who had raised her? Left to suffer when Havence escaped?
Her foot slipped, the sandals she’d found ill-suited for climbing down rock faces.
At least there was a small path she had found to follow.
Already, her hands were cut and bleeding, and she’d torn apart pieces from the edge of her cloak to make into bandages to cover her palms. Rocks and pebbles filled the cuts, sand irritated her scratched and torn flesh. If she could find her room in the citadel, if it hadn’t been purged once she was gone of all her belongings, she might be blessed to find her salve still where she’d left it.
Or maybe Shara had been allowed to take it.
If her mother had the jar, Ven wouldn’t regret losing it to the city.
She looked down the steep slope ahead of her, only sand for miles in every direction, sand and dunes and no hint of which way to walk to reach her destination.
That wasn’t, necessarily, true though. When he’d given her Amece’s bow, taught her to string the heavy wood, to bend it to her will, he’d said that blood called to blood. Amece was her ancestor. The blood between them had sang when she’d slice her palm on the arrowhead.
Her mother was a closer bond than generations apart.
A drop spilled on the winds, willed to lead Havence where she needed to go, and it wouldn’t matter what landscape washed ahead of her, she’d know the way.
How far?
And how long would it take?
Time, she didn’t have.
Rain pattered down atop her head, storm clouds filling the sky until the freshly risen morning sun was darkened with shade which turned to thunder and lightning and winds whipping over the ground.
Water, it seemed, wouldn’t be a concern either, as the storm roared, and she slipped another few feet down the path.
She was breathless when she reached the bottom of the steppe. The storm had soaked her cloak through and the wind was biting enough that she was cold, honestly, bone chillingly, cold.
At least her fingers were numb. She couldn’t feel the cuts and scrapes against them any longer.
Thunder crashed, and she flinched against the mountainside. Rocks slid around her, tumbling from high on the hill. Her breathing caught, terrified that she’d be caught and devoured by the mud, buried in the dirt and no one would ever know what happened to her.
Damnit, no!
She wasn’t a coward, and she needed to move.
Blood already welled on her hand. It was simple enough to will the crimson drops to lead a path before her.
She’d go by foot, if she had to, the entire way.
She needn’t have worried.
Or she should have worried more.
The band of soldiers came upon her as she crested the rise of a distant dune. If she’d thought the sand was bad when dry and flying in the wind, it was worse wet, having to trudge through the heavy mess, each step a struggle to free from the slip and slide as the mounds shifted with the rain.
She hadn’t heard the sounds of the camp over the cacophony of the storm.
Ven crested the rise, and they were just there, tents standing against the winds though she saw the missing places where some had blown away.
The first guard was quicker with a sword than she with any thought to the magic she might be able to command. His blade was sharper than any weapon she could bring to bear.
He squinted through the downpour.
She couldn’t make out his face either.
Who else would be wandering in the desert alone?
The man must have come to the same conclusion as she, for he pressed the edge deeper into her skin, and she raised her hands offering no harm.
“Captain! We’ve got her! She just walked into camp.”
Chapter Forty-Four
He lasted two days.
The rain continued to fall, and the trees were beginning to droop with the excess water, but Ouros couldn’t change that.
He held the note between his fingers, against his ches
t.
The last message of the woman he’d once loved, offered as a parting plea for forgiveness to one she’d never see again.
A part of him wanted to know what had kept her from her promise. Why had she not returned for him? Why not her body to the waves as instructed?
He wanted vengeance on her behalf, for he could guess at the snake goddess’ motives in keeping his witch away.
Selish should have killed them both.
Why had Amece’s line been allowed to survive?
There was a place where he could find the answers.
Surely in the city, with Havence by his side, he could find answers to questions long buried beneath sand and waves. He could force the snake king and his son to bow to Ouros’ will.
He wasn’t a heartsick dragon any more…
But that wasn’t, entirely, true.
He held the note that Amece had written him to his chest, but it was the place where Havence had slept beside him, her scent that rose whenever he turned to bury his face in her pillow, that he craved and longed for most.
Ven.
He wanted Havence back, the passion in her, the curiosity, the spark of more that he didn’t deserve but she offered willingly.
The note in his hand began to smoke at the edges where he held it between his fingers.
Amece was gone.
Better to let the woman go, the memories go, the hate and the pain and the old love…
Havence had come for him, even knowing her people would hunt her for the act, that she would be hunted down and killed when—
And she was returning to the citadel and the man who had threatened to kill her, to steal her magic in the dunes outside the city, the people who had feared and shunned her entire line throughout her life.
And he’d let her go.
Fire consumed him, rebirthed him.
Ouros spread his wings and flung himself out of his cave, beat at the air with a vengeance, the rain turning hard as it struck his scales, ice forming over his struts and talons.
If her people had hurt her, it would be fire that sealed their fate.
They feared the dragon and his storms.
Ouros would show them what they feared!
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