The knights are not as surprised at the nakedness as I am (I hope to the Goddess that I’m not showing that surprise, but I probably am, more’s the pity) and Tahlia isn’t, either.
Now that I think on it, Fane’s a shapeshifter—it’d make sense that she has to strip down so she doesn’t ruin her clothes.
But still!
There’s a gorgeous, naked woman before me, and when she turns, there’s her naked rump, and bless my soul, but I can’t help the staring. Talis glances my way and raises a brow, and I take her hand, even across the little space between us, and I squeeze it to tell her “I love your rear more.”
“It is perfect, that rear,” says Lellie, and she chuckles a little, but I can’t help but notice…is it possible? Is Lellie blushing? I’ve only known her for this evening, as much as the other women in the group, but she never struck me as the type of lady who would blush—and here she is now, her fair face as red as a beet.
Well. I suppose that’ll make two of us.
Fane leans forward in a graceful curve, and then…it’s odd, really. It’s almost as if the ground is made of hot stones, and they’re giving off heat, making the air in front of us waver and distort. That’s the best way I can think of to describe it, but I can assure you—it’s not a particularly hot evening, and it’s only the forest floor beneath the basket’s bottom, and beneath Fane’s bare feet…
But I think that, and it only takes a heartbeat, that thought that comes and goes…
And then Fane appears to be growing bigger.
And…it’s not really Fane I’m staring at anymore. It’s no longer the naked woman, bending gracefully down as if she dropped something small and only needs to scoop it up between her fingers.
Her skin darkens to a bold, brilliant viridian, the deepest green I’ve ever seen. It almost makes me shiver, it looks so cold, that color. It’s beautiful, gem-like, the way the scales begin to appear over her skin, rising like jewels beneath water, held in a hand and taken to the surface. Scale after scale ripples across Fane’s body, and then a tail begins to grow, curling into the air like a question…and then wings. Honestly, at this point, it’s a little hard to notice all of the changes. Just know that, in one heartbeat, it’s Fane the woman who is standing before us, and, in the next—or very close to it—it’s Fane the Draco who stands before us, her massive dragon body as tall as the trees around us.
Since there’s quite a lot of mist in Fury Wood at the present time, this means that it’s only her body and parts of her wings and tail we can see.
Her head is far above us in the fog and obscured from view.
“Are you ready, friends?” The rumble sounds like the beginnings of an earthquake, but there’s a warmth to that dire, low voice, and I realize that it’s Fane speaking from high up. I gulp down air, looking up and up and up, but no matter how I try, I can’t pierce the fog with my gaze and find the dragon’s head.
The light from the magelamp glitters off her scales, and I catch my breath—there’s an iridescence to those scales, like an inner fire is blazing within.
“All ready when you are, Fane!” calls Tahlia, and then, to us, with a much lower voice: “just…hang on. Tightly.”
“That’s not alarming,” murmurs Lellie, sarcasm dripping off her words as she loops an arm around the basket’s handle.
There’s one enormous whoosh, and Fane leaps into the air. From this vantage, I can now see her claws and talons quite clearly, and they are…um. Extraordinary.
And very, very sharp. And terrifying. But also extraordinary.
Thank the gods that Fane is a friend. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be on the receiving end of those natural weapons. But I don’t have to imagine. For Fane is our friend, and those claws are used for good. Hopefully good, anyway, as she grasps the leather-bound portion of the basket’s handle, and with a few huge surges of her wings, she…lifts.
And we ascend into the air.
We ascend so quickly that we clear the fog in a few heartbeats. Higher and higher into the sky Fane pumps her mighty wings, and we soar. I can’t help but look up at the large dragon above us, her bat-like wings curving like sickles and slicing through the clouds, the starlight and moonlight glinting on her scales with such a pure, cold fire of iridescence.
Honestly, it’s breathtaking.
But then I look down.
Which, now that I’m thinking on it, perhaps I shouldn’t have done, for heights and I don’t get along, and we’re suddenly very, very high up… It’s unthinking, the motion that I do then, but I reach across the little space that’s between Talis and I, and I grip her hand.
She glances at me in surprise, but the surprise fades from her face quickly, replaced with a softness I quite like. I gaze at her, my nerves calmed a little, and then we both look out together, out over the edge of the basket.
For we’re higher than the clouds that were low and brooding over Fury Wood.
We’re up among the stars now.
I try to focus on that, instead of the sheer, staggering height we’ve gained in so little time. And it’s an easy thing to focus on, for there’s beauty all around us. On the ground, the stars have always looked a certain way, and you could only see so many of them. People have told me that Arktos City has a lot of light, and that makes the stars harder to see, have said that they’re much lovelier out in the country. But I didn’t quite understand what that meant. Not until now.
For now, it’s almost as if I could reach out, reach out over the edge of the basket, and my fingertips would touch the silvered edge of a star, twinkling close enough to kiss. I take a step closer to the edge of the basket, almost as if lured by a siren song, and then I’m leaning out over the edge, my fingers trailing in starlight.
There are strong hands at my waist, just then, and I can feel that strength in them, and I turn and look over my shoulder at Talis. At Talis who’s watching me, her eyes soft, gentle.
“I’ll…hold you,” she tells me gruffly. “Maybe…maybe you can catch a star.”
I lean back into the basket, and I wrap my arms around her neck, cocking my head just a little, a cheeky grin crossing over my face. “Maybe I already have, my dear,” I murmur to her, pitching my voice soft enough so that only she can hear it. My mouth at her ear, I can taste her warmth when I whisper those words, and I’m rewarded by a little shudder that seems to move through the knight.
“Lady…you flatter me,” says Talis, her voice low. She ducks her head and then she’s found my mouth with her own, and she’s kissing me.
Up here among the stars, there seems to be a different weight to this kiss than there was before, down there upon the world. Here, here there’s a lightness to the both of us. We’re on an adventure! A dragon is carrying us to a distant land! Is this real, or am I dreaming?
Talis kisses like a goddess, like a star made real, made human, and I taste something celestial in her. There’s starlight, outlining the armor of this fair knight, and when our kiss ends, when we break away for air, I can’t help but pant as I look up at this woman I didn’t know existed a few hours ago.
How could I not have known? How could I have gone about my life, not knowing that something so lovely, so good, was out there? Out there, so close, in the same city, my city. She was there, and all this time, I didn’t know it. All this time I’ve gone about my daily tasks, made the same bread and cakes and pies, and she was out there, and I never knew. There’s a poignant pain to that fact, one I can’t sit with too long.
This night has already changed me. Already, there’s a sweetness to life that wasn’t there before. Before, there was longing and wishing. But, right now, I have this knight in my arms, I have a shawl of starlight lingering over my shoulders, and I’ve never felt more alive, I realize.
I feel alive.
And it’s beautiful.
Just like her.
“Thank you…for all of this,” I manage, then, emotion making my words catch in my throat as my gaze traces her curves
in the starlight. Her brow furrows for a moment, and she shakes her head.
“What are you thanking me for? My sister kidnapped you…I feel terrible about it,” she begins, but I reach up, and I press a soft finger to her mouth. She stops speaking, her mouth slightly open, and the heat of her breath against my skin makes me shiver as she pins me to the spot with those beautiful blue eyes.
“It was wrong of her to do that, and I’m still quite pissed about it. I may never forgive her…give or take a few centuries in that ‘never.’” I grin up at her. “But that had nothing to do with you, her action. No…it’s just that tonight…tonight I met you. And you were the seed of an adventure. And my whole life I’ve wanted an adventure, and I never went on one. But I could have. I know that now. I could have always done this.”
“Ridden in a basket carried by a dragon?” asks Talis, her mouth turning up at the corners. We both laugh a little, and I shrug.
“Maybe. I’m sure there’s a dragon basket rental place somewhere on Agrotera.”
“I wouldn’t doubt it,” Talis tells me with a soft smile, but the smile ebbs away. “But this…this puts you in harm’s way.”
“And I know that. I made the decision to come with you, Talis,” I remind her gently. “I could have stayed behind. I know it’s dangerous. But I wanted, more than anything in the world, to continue this. To continue…us.” I reach up, and I place my hand over the armor that rises over her heart. “I didn’t want this night to end. So I didn’t let it.”
“All nights end, Cinda,” Talis whispers, searching my face. “And…what then?”
I breathe out. “Day follows night.”
“But don’t things look different in the daylight?” She’s not stopped searching my face, and there’s a poignancy to her. She reaches up, curls her fingers over my hand that rests over her heart…and she pulls it away, my fingers leaving her armor. She takes a step back from me, and she bows her head, turning away. Talis’s face in profile is beautiful, and up here, among the stars, the starlight so bright, the moon shining with such passion that it’s almost as bright as day here, I notice how very young she looks. But there’s such pain to her features. How can she be so young and have already known so much pain?
“Talis…what’s wrong?” I ask her, trying to get the words out from around the lump in my throat. “Are you…are you sorry I’m with you?” I don’t reach out and touch her, trying to give her the space she needs, but I don’t have to. She turns to me, and she curls her fingers gently at the curve of my waist, doesn’t look at my face, but looks down where her hands meet my body. Her jaw is clenched, and there’s pain etched in every line of her. For a long moment, she doesn’t say a word. But then she lifts her gaze, and she holds mine.
“Cinda…what if…what if I’d lied to you?”
I blink. “I…I don’t know what you mean? Lied to me? About what?”
Talis opens her mouth, is about to speak, but Tahlia’s there, suddenly, at her elbow, and she’s about to say something when she breathes out, notices that we were in an intense bit of interaction.
“Oh…I’m sorry. Am I interrupting something?” She looks genuinely chagrined. “I can…I can come back.”
Talis takes a step away from me, shaking her head, her face flushed. “No…no. You’re not interrupting, Tahlia. Ah…what is it?”
“I just wanted to show you both. It’s just really worth seeing. Up ahead,” Tahlia nods, pointing.
Talis and I turn, and both of us—as one—breathe out.
“Oh,” I whisper, my voice catching. “It’s…it’s magnificent.”
And, indeed, it is.
Ahead of us, far ahead of us, rises a mountain range. I’ve, of course, seen pictures of mountains in storybooks, and once I took a tour of the Arktos palace, and from one of the tallest towers, I could make out the northern mountain range of Arktos easily. But it was far away, looked like a painting because the day was very hot, and everything seemed to be wavering along the horizon’s edge.
No, this is entirely different.
For one, with the starlight and the moonlight both shining so brightly, the edge of the mountains are in stark contrast with the night sky behind them. The mountains look sharp, jagged, like an old, serrated knife that’s rusted with disuse. But this profile of sharpness ends with the tops of the mountains. What should, arguably, be the sharpest part, the peak.
But the mountaintops aren’t sharp.
Because each of the mountaintops in view hold a different city at its point.
Tahlia catches me looking with wonder and grins. “Fane told me that the Draco like to build their cities up high, so it’s easier landing for them. Every Draco city is built at the very peak of a mountain,” she explains. “It looks incredible, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” I breathe out, taking in the faraway buildings and castles and fortresses, each mountaintop brimming with sharp, peaked rooftops and towers. I guess it does look like the mountaintop comes to an unnatural, created point, because of those towers. As we get a little closer with every flap of Fane’s mighty wings, I’m more mesmerized.
And, as we get closer, I can start to make out figures.
Dragons.
Dragons, flying around each city.
The moonlight shines down on us as we approach the dragon cities, as we approach the tallest mountain of all, the city on top of this, the largest of the peaks.
“That must be the capital city,” Talis murmurs into my ear. “Mount Verlit.”
The dragons fly across the moon, sharp shadows falling over us, the closer we get, and I grip Talis’s hand, nervous and excited, all at once.
I forget, of course, that she was about to tell me something important.
There are too many dragons in the sky to think of anything but wings.
Chapter 15
TALIS
I was about to do it. I was about to tell her the truth: that I am no knight. And she seems much taken with knights, so when she found out, she was going to say that it’d been a lovely time tonight, but.
But I didn’t get it out. My sister interrupted, and I’m sorry to say that I was glad of it. Now, as we approach Mount Verlit City, as I grip Cinda’s hand tightly, my heart rises into my throat as I think, perhaps clearly now for the very first time (the cold night air far up in the sky has a habit of doing that to you) what, exactly, we’re about to attempt.
We’re flying toward Mount Verlit City, capital of Bright Coast, land of the Draco. Right now, Lellie and I are in armor with no specific insignia of Arktos City, which is a very good thing, because if we’re caught, attempting to rob the head general of Bright Coast’s private horde, and Arktos is implicated…that would be fairly terrible. Also, say goodbye to ever, ever having the possibility of becoming a knight of Arktos if we get caught.
But what if Arktos is implicated anyway? What if we’re caught, and questioned, and we reveal that Lellie is an actual knight of Arktos?
I swallow, trying not to think of all the terrible things that could go wrong. My sister gives me a sidelong smile, and then she slings her arm around my shoulder.
“This is why Talis left us, you see,” Tahlia tells Cinda, her brows raised. “Can’t you see it on your pretty knight’s face? She’s already guilty for the crime before we’ve even committed it. You were never thief material, sister.” Tahlia sounds sad as she takes a step back from me. “It’s good that you found what you were meant to do. You make a good knight, surely.”
Lellie, still leaning against the edge of the basket, shares a quiet glance with me before looking away. Earlier, when Lellie thought it might be best if I and my sister attempt the heist another day, I whispered to her that we don’t have the time. That I must get this armor back and Rane back, too, before anyone notices. I must be back by morning, or risk being caught.
Rane noses the back of my leg from her position, uncomfortably lying on the bottom of the basket. Her ears are slicked back, and when she snakes her head at me, I know it’s goin
g to take quite a fair deal of carrots to make this up to her.
“I wanted to go out for a nice night on the town,” she hisses at me. “I didn’t sign up for this. What if you get caught? I’m going to be fed to the dragons for sure.”
“You’re not going to be fed to the dragons, my friend,” I tell her quietly, sinking down into a crouch beside her head and itching behind her left ear. She allows me to do this, and relaxes a little into the scratchings, but keeps her ears flat back.
“You don’t know that. Draco eat horses. I’ve heard the stories. And if they see me, they’ll know I’m an Arktos warrior mare. Have you thought of that?”
I sigh for a long moment. “No,” I tell her truthfully. “I didn’t think of that. Maybe you should stay outside of the city.”
“And hide in a bush with this ass?” asks Rane uncharitably, angling her nose at Cossie. “No, thank you!”
“It’s not an insult if I’m actually an ass,” Cossie says, his voice prim, “which I am. We actually take it as a compliment.”
“It wasn’t given as a compliment.”
I look at the mare, the way she’s snaking her neck in annoyance, her tired expression on her face, and alarm starts to rise in me. “Rane,” I tell her quietly, running my hand over the parade blanket nestled over her belly. “Are you…are you feeling all right?”
“No. I’m cold and tired and I want to be in my nice, warm stall with some nice, warm mash,” says Rane, and she heaves a breath, her mouth open as her sides rise and fall.
“Do you feel…anything different?” I ask, looking pointedly at her very, very large belly. “Your foal, do you think its time for—”
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