by ReGi McClain
She shook her head. “You’re not a monster.”
His brow creased and the smiley crinkles took on a strained quality, giving her the feeling she had missed something. It looked like the same burden she felt when she let herself think too hard about her Vegas days, when she forgot to deny regret. She met his gaze and waited for him to explain or change the subject.
“Thanks.”
Harsha nodded. She meant what she’d said.
His smile returned. “How do you feel about heights?”
“Heights?” Although she expected a topic switch, Zeeb’s question deviated so far from the previous matter, Harsha needed a few seconds to process it. “They don’t bother me. Why?”
“Think you can handle a dragon flight?”
Excitement and apprehension ran at each other to clash in a battle that set her heart to pattering and her palms to sweating. “I maybe? I’ve never even ridden a horse, though.”
“Don and I are building a saddle for this flight, and I’ll be with you. If you’re willing to try, we can leave the day after tomorrow. Otherwise…” His smile faltered.
“Otherwise what?”
“Otherwise, I call a chopper and we get you back to Anchorage like I should have done in the first place.”
There he went with the should-haves again. “Why didn’t you?”
“You needed to find a fae.” He looked at his iced tea and a hint of pink touched his cheeks. “I needed to find one for you.”
Harsha decided not to notice his slight blush. So, my choices are ride a dragon and meet a faerie or go to a hospital. “I think I can learn to ride a dragon.”
With her leg throbbing from trying to walk across the living room the next morning, Harsha stared out the window. A cacophony of sawing and hammering filled the outdoors and filtered through the window to pester Harsha while she attempted to read a book. Gauri was busy preparing the nursery for the baby and Seraph was helping her. Left to herself and unable to focus on her book, Harsha watched Zeeb and Don as they worked on the saddle. She found it difficult to picture the finished project based on the pieces littering the yard, but the green on blue of forest and sky made a nice background to the rustic picture of men hard at work. Men being a loose term, of course.
About noon, Zeeb pulled off his shirt and used it to wipe the sweat from his forehead and neck, and bent to roll his pants up to his knees, giving Harsha a new reason to find contentment in watching the business. Zeeb sported far too much hair to be attractive, but not so much as to hide the enviable physique of a runner or dancer, with lean, practical muscle and none of the veiny bulges or obvious areas of neglect that plagued body builders. He circled his shoulders as he straightened. The muscles of his back rolled together and apart with the motion, defining and relaxing in slow waves.
Harsha let her eyes meander over him. Her sense of professionalism jabbed its elbow into her consciousness, but she reasoned it away. There’s nothing wrong with appreciating a well-sculpted body. It’s not like I’m drooling over him. Besides, he can’t see me.
“In good shape, ain’t he?”
Harsha bounced at the sound of Don’s voice and realized she’d missed seeing or hearing him come in. Warmth gathered in her cheeks as all her perfectly good justifications for ogling vanished in a puff of guilty humiliation.
“Wish I could keep up like that. Guy runs marathons for fun.” He pointed to Harsha’s book. “Want me to ask him to put a shirt on so he’s less distractin’?”
“No. That’s all right. I mean, unless you think he should. Because of mosquitoes. Or something.” She picked up her book and tried to concentrate on the words.
“No need to fret yourself, girly. Zeeb’s no ladies’ man, but somethin’ tells me he doesn’t mind you lookin’ him over.”
The heat in Harsha’s cheeks blazed like an inferno. She pulled the book closer to her face and buried as much of herself between the covers as possible.
“I came in to ask your favorite color. Gauri insists on everythin’ practical bein’ pretty, too, so she’s gonna paint it.”
“Pink.”
“Pink it is.”
Harsha devoted herself to her book for the rest of the afternoon. She followed it part of the time, too. Zeeb came inside for a break around three, with his t-shirt tucked into his back pocket.
“How’s the book?”
Harsha kept her nose between the covers. For all she knew, Don had told him about her staring. Without looking up from the pages, in case she found smugness, amusement, or anything else written all over his face, she pretended not to hear. “Hmm? What? Did you say something?”
He chuckled and mumbled, “Guess that answers my question.”
To her great relief, he spent the rest of his break tapping at his phone and ignoring her.
Chapter 13
The finished saddle, a crude, oversized contraption that reminded Harsha of a motorcycle seat, lay in the yard waiting for Seraph to put it on. A pattern of delicate pink flowers, for which Harsha failed to remember the name, adorned the sides, giving the saddle a curious look of compromise, as if an attempt to unify masculine and feminine fell a step or four shy of neutrality. Harsha sat in a chair waiting for it to be ready.
She jerked her head twice in a double take when Seraph emerged from the house. “You’re wearing your, erm… nightgown?”
Harsha scrutinized the nineteenth century get-up Seraph wore. It looked like the same one she wore to bed every night regardless of the temperature.
“It’s part of my human form. I packed all my clothes. I can’t wear them when I mist.”
Part of her human form? Unwanted images of what might or might not be underneath the chemise and corset popped up. “Erm, but…” The rudeness of the question on the tip of her tongue shamed her. She shifted her focus. “Mist?”
“Transform. Watch.”
Seraph strode to the middle of the cleared space in front of the Yazzies’ house. A sunbeam highlighted coppery specks of dust that sparkled and danced around her. The dust increased, expanding outward from Seraph until it hid her. It spread until it filled the yard, a coppery cloud floating just above the ground. All at once, the glittering mist coalesced into a shining dragon, tail curled around it like a cat.
It had a serpentine head, with a wide, smiling mouth and vertical pupils. Ridges above its eyes mimicked eyebrows and protrusions shaped like seahorse fins stood in for ears. Although scales covered most of the beast, the wings it held tucked against its side sported soft-looking feathers. Shallow, smooth bumps lined its spine from the top of its head to within a few feet of its spade-shaped tail.
In her dragon form, Seraph’s eyes shimmered as if the flames of her fire danced behind her amber irises. She stood as high as a bus. How she managed to fit all those cells into a package as compact as a human woman defied Harsha’s reasoning. The reasoning behind her jewelry choices became apparent, however. The hoop earrings that hung too low on a woman’s shoulders were delicate loops adorning the dragon’s frills, the jeweled studs mere glitter. The over-long pendant hugged her throat like a choker necklace, an exquisite piece rivaling diamonds.
This close to the dragon, with no walls between them and no heavy painkillers to blame, Harsha wanted to bolt for the house. Or the woods. Or anywhere. She clapped to hide the jitters trying to find their way out of her limbs.
Seraph’s reptilian mouth stretched into a wide, closed-mouth smile. “It’s nothing really. All dragons can do it.”
It talked. The dragon talked. It spoke with a voice deeper than Seraph’s but unmistakably hers. Harsha stretched her mouth in a wide smile, mimicking the no-teeth version her friend favored. It failed to keep the nervous giggle from escaping her lips. She kept her eyes on Gauri and tried not to think while the men tied the harness on Seraph and loaded the backpacks.
Gauri tucked a massive bag of cheap bulk-store candy and a beautiful Himalayan shawl into Harsha’s bag. “Never visit a fae without gifts.”
�
�I’m ready!” Seraph called.
Harsha looked at the dragon. Her leg thrummed as her blood pressure increased. Rubbing her clammy hands on her jeans, she swallowed again and again to wet her dry throat.
Zeeb appeared beside her. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “She’s still Seraph, just bigger.”
Before Harsha formed a protest, Zeeb scooped her up like an infant and lifted her into the saddle. The motion sent a wave of nauseating pain washing over her. The world spun and darkened. She felt herself falling, tumbling over and over through space. Then arms wrapped around her waist and held her tight. The soothing pressure alleviated the pain and drew her back into reality. Her vision cleared to reveal a quiet forest, as stable as ever, and herself sitting upright.
The saddle, or rather, the dragon back it sat atop, forced her legs into a wide stance and felt about as comfortable as a bar stool. No belt or stirrup ensured her safety, but a nob like the kind on horse saddles—a horn, if Harsha remembered her horse lore—offered itself and she grasped it. Against her ankles, where her jeans pulled up to expose flesh, Seraph’s scales felt dry, rough, and warm, like fine sand at three in the afternoon after the midday sun has done its job of heating the world. Behind her, Zeeb’s hairy presence intensified the heat until Harsha felt warm for the first time since arriving in Alaska. The sensation, while welcome, felt foreign after weeks of being cold all the time.
“Hold on, you two!” Seraph bunched her hind end, tipping her passengers backwards, and launched herself skyward.
The leap flung Harsha backward and she lost her grip on the saddle horn. She huddled into Zeeb, holding her breath and digging her fingernails into his arms, but kept her eyes open, unwilling to miss a moment of their takeoff. They swirled, corkscrewing like a roller coaster in a topsy-turvy world, and burst out of the trees.
Seraph climbed high. She leveled when the Yazzies’ home looked like a dollhouse hundreds of feet below them, allowing Harsha’s stomach and all the rest of her body to catch up with her. Harsha gasped, exhilarated from the ascent. The air was cold and thin, hungry for her breath. She fed it without reserve, delighting in the lightness. Currents of heat radiating off Seraph mingled with the chill, swirling around her in waves.
Enraptured, she laughed for no other reason than it felt right to do so. Zeeb twisted his arms to loosen her naily grip and laughed with her. Seraph joined them, her chuckles deep and rumbling, and climbed until they flew over the lowest clouds. Without warning, she plunged into one of the small puffy clouds. The moisture struck Harsha like the misty spray of a waterfall, pricking where the frigid droplets burst against her skin in microscopic splashes.
When they exploded out the other side of the cloud, Harsha, pain forgotten, soaked in the beauty of the landscape below her. Hills and valleys, lush with dense forests, rolled into gargantuan mountains. Green gave way to gray, which in turn gave way to white peaks reflecting the sun with so much exuberance, Harsha looked away to avoid the sting of light in her eyes. Here and there, deep blue lakes, like sapphires set in a bed of emeralds and jades, and wandering lines of aquamarine rivers, bejeweled the land.
“What do you think of Alaska?”
Harsha swiveled to smile at Zeeb, and he loosened his grip to allow the movement. “It’s beautiful.”
He smiled back, his eyes shining like blue ice in the sunlight. Harsha took a moment to admire them before facing forward. After the adrenalin rush of the takeoff wore itself out, her back grew tired keeping her upright. To her frustration, the saddle provided her with no seat back to rest against.
She stuck it out until her lower back ached and the throbbing in her leg returned. Fatigue overruling her inhibitions, she leaned against Zeeb. “Do you mind? My back and leg are killing me.”
“I don’t mind.”
Relieved, she relaxed and closed her eyes, taking deep breaths to help quell the pain.
“Harsha?”
“Hmm?”
“Have you ever been in love?”
It seemed like a strange question, but she welcomed the distraction from her pain. “I believed I was, once. I had a fiancé in college, but one day he sent a vague email and that was it.”
“I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “I was devastated at first, but eventually I decided I was better off without a guy who would ditch me and not say why.”
Her words hung in the air, suspended on the warm currents rising off Seraph’s back, until she realized continuing the conversation fell to her. “Have you?”
A moment passed before he answered. “Yes.” His voice sounded heavy, as though the thin air lacked the strength to hold it. He added nothing more, and they fell into silence.
The quiet freedom of the sky crept back into her mind. She took a deep breath, filling her lungs with clean air touched by the scent of spruce and fern, and enjoyed the sunshine bathing her face.
Bushy whiskers on her neck startled her out of her reverie. With a squawk, she bounced, lost her balance, and slipped off the saddle. In a single movement, as if he’d practiced for months, Zeeb lunged, grabbed her wrist, and yanked her back into place. “Are you okay?”
Harsha stared ahead and blinked twice. Then her brain caught up. She gasped in pain and pressed on her wrenched shoulder.
“Down. I want down. On the ground. Now. Get me down, get me down, get me down!” Her demand started with a calm but commanding tone of voice and ended on a shriek.
Seraph dropped a few yards at a time. Harsha clenched her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut against a flood of nausea. A small eternity passed before she felt the dragon land. Zeeb said something about helping her down. She ignored him and slid to the ground. She remembered her leg injury a split second before the impact. Agony splintered consciousness.
The faint lasted mere seconds before her stomach took control of pain management and jerked her awake with violent heaves. She braced herself on her good arm and leg and begged every deity she knew of to wake her from this nightmare.
A pair of hands pulled her hair back from her face. “Are you okay?”
She jabbed her elbow into Zeeb’s gut. “Get away from me. Leave me alone.”
She wanted to stand and make a dramatic exit, not that she had anywhere to go except behind the next tree, but the pain in her leg drove the idea from her mind. She contented herself with scooching away from him.
“I’m sorry,” he pleaded. “It’s just… I just… no one’s ever… but you…”
“Bug off! I don’t speak fragmented idiocy.”
“Please let me try to explai Ow!”
“Dunce,” Seraph snapped at him, dealing him a swat on the rear with her tail.
The angry, petty part of Harsha wanted to guffaw over Seraph’s insult, but she set her face in a grim pout, determined to ignore the slightest shred of humor in the situation. After all, if Zeeb hadn’t caught her, she could have died—again—and she wasn’t sure being alive made up for the throbbing in her shoulder compounding that of her leg.
Seraph’s long snout dropped to Harsha’s level. “Do you need help? Or do you just want a minute?”
Harsha gazed into Seraph’s eyes and watched the fire dance, letting it soothe her while she assessed her injuries. Her shoulder ached and felt loose in its socket, and blood seeped from her leg wound. Now that she sat with her legs close together, she noticed soreness along her inner thighs and groin, too. Not to mention the pain-induced nausea and a rising headache, probably from stress.
“I just need a couple of minutes.” Much as she needed help, she loathed the idea of Zeeb touching her at all and felt ashamed to ask Seraph to go through the trouble of de-saddling, misting, ministering, re-misting, and re-saddling. Her logical brain scolded her for being a prideful bonehead. She convinced it to hush by promising to ask for help once a couple minutes passed.
“Hmmm.” Seraph’s eyes narrowed. For a moment, Harsha thought the dragon intended to make the decision for her. She decided not to mind, under the circumstances.
/> Instead of arguing, Seraph swiveled her head to Zeeb. “Come on, Zeeb. Straighten this saddle. I spotted the fae’s house a mile or so ahead.”
Harsha snapped to attention. “You spotted it?”
Seraph’s reptilian mouth curled in a grin. “I believe so. There aren’t many English gardens in Alaska.”
Harsha tried springing to her feet. She managed a quick struggle onto her uninjured knee, with help from her uninjured arm. “Well, what are we waiting for?”
Seraph lifted a ridge of cartilage that shaded her eye like a brow. “Just for Zeeb to get the saddle adjusted. Don’t try to fall off this time.”
Harsha glowered at Zeeb. If he could have put his tail between his legs, she was sure he would have. His eyes looked like a puppy’s. She crossed her arms and focused on her pain to strengthen her resolve to stay angry with him under the onslaught of those sweet, innocent-looking, apologetic eyes. His skill in forming the expression rivalled Jason’s. With the advantage of genuine remorse behind it, she found Zeeb’s version difficult to resist.
Not difficult. Impossible. She threw her hands in the air. “Fine. Truce. Let’s go.”
Seraph refrained from twirling and hopped into the air without fancy tricks. Zeeb gripped Harsha’s waist with his hands rather than wrapping his arms around her and she held the saddle horn with fierce determination to rely on it instead of him. Her lingering indignation and embarrassment throttled conversation and the view warped, no longer a display of the awe-inspiring wonder of nature, but an array of deadly versus survivable landing places in case she fell. After a short flight, she spotted a blue-tiled rooftop hiding among the evergreens. Seraph circled down, giving Harsha glimpses of a white picket fence and a garden bright with flowers, and landed in front of the house.
