She barely noticed the trip back to the guest suite.
Grier carried her to the chair and sat her down. “Help me with this.”
Payton and Grier loosened the vest, and he pulled it over her head.
Salena gasped for air, and with it, tears trailed down her face. The pain in her chest was too much.
“Salena—” Grier began but Payton put her hand on his shoulder.
“Let her breathe a moment,” Payton said. “She just needs to breathe.”
No one spoke as Salena regained control of her panic.
“What can I get for you?” Payton asked.
“Old Earth whiskey?” she answered, trying to make a joke.
Payton went to the wall by the fireplace and pressed a tile. A compartment opened to show a food simulator. “Do you know the code for it?”
“I was joking. I’ve never had it.” Salena tried to smile. She rubbed her eyes. “I’m better now. I don’t need anything.”
A knock sounded before the door open.
“Are you in here?” Roderic called.
“Yes,” Grier answered.
“I stopped by my father’s office. He said you’re leaving tonight, Salena?” Roderic asked. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Me too,” Salena answered.
“It’s for the best.” Grier knelt beside her chair and placed his head on her lap.
Salena touched the back of his hair, stroking him.
“We’ll be back when it’s time to meet the ship,” Payton said. “Come on, Roderic.”
Salena pulled off her boots and then slid off the chair to join Grier on the floor. She lifted his head to kiss him softly. When she pulled away, she whispered, “Make love to me again, Grier.”
Grier swept her into his arms and carried her to the bed. He stood her at the end where the curtains were parted. She took off her shirt and tossed it on the floor before pushing her pants from her hips. Naked, she inched back onto the bed. Grier followed her lead, disrobing before he joined her.
Salena lay on her back, watching as he crawled over her. The light from the room haloed his body. Every muscle, every movement, was a seduction.
He made love to her slowly, taking his time. He explored every facet of her body, touching and kissing her from head to toe. His tongue trailed from her knee to her inner thigh. By the time his lips met her sex in the most intimate of kisses, she was beyond reason. The pleasure was unlike anything she’d ever felt.
Grier brought her to release with his mouth, seeming to enjoy the trembling he caused. When she could take no more, she pulled on his hair to get him to come over her. He entered her slowly, tenderly.
His gold-tinted eyes held hers. Each thrust, each soft breath, was in unison. Time had no meaning in these moments. It was a second. It was forever. It was infinity.
It was hers.
Salena’s thighs tightened on his waist as the climax built once more. As her body clenched his, he also found release. His body stiffened, and his mouth opened in a light moan of ecstasy.
They stayed frozen in the abyss of release for a long time. Every bone in her body felt as if it had turned to liquid and she wished the bed would soak her into it, so that she could stay forever in this room, in this very spot.
“Whatever comes, this is our moment,” he whispered, as if reading her soul. “This is the moment I will hold until I find a way to bring you back to be my queen.”
She wanted to believe. She wanted to hope. She wanted him.
Salena nodded. “If you don’t—”
“I will,” he put forth.
“But if something happens and I do not return, I will understand if you find…” She couldn’t finish it. How could she tell him to move on? To find another woman? She knew what he believed about the gods, but the idea of his never having a family pained her.
“I already told you. The gods will only bless me once, and they have with you. A lifetime, a second, I will take all that they will give me, and I will spend the other seconds remembering each moment we were together. This is our moment, Salena. Yours and mine. None of our enemies can take this from us.”
She nodded. It was a nice thought and she would not ruin his words. He said them, so he believed them to be true. Maybe that is what he needed to move forward, and to keep going.
He pulled out of her, lying next to her on the bed. She knew they wouldn’t dare sleep.
“Where do you think you will go?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” she answered, snuggling next to him. “Wherever I think I can find a clue as to my sisters’ whereabouts. I’ve been looking for them so long. I’m not sure what else I can do. Maybe staying with the ESC is the best bet. I can stop at each place and inquire. But I don’t want to think about any of that now.”
Grier ran his hand over her leg. “I put that shard we pulled from your leg on the floor over there, so it wouldn’t get lost.” He gestured behind him.
Salena pushed up from the bed and climbed over him. He smiled as she maneuvered over his waist. She leaned over, blindly feeling around on the floor.
“Can you find it?”
“I think…” Her fingers bumped something, and she heard a faint tinkling noise. She felt lightheaded for a moment and assumed it was because her head was angled down off the side of the bed. “I think I dropped it.”
She swung her legs around to sit up into a better position and pushed at the curtains until she found where they parted. She pushed them open and stepped down to search the floor.
Grier’s bracelet lay on the floor. Tiny shards surrounded it.
“Oh blast,” she swore.
“What happened?” Grier appeared next to her.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to.” She stepped off the platform and grabbed his bracelet. He turned it over to find the crystal was shattered, and no longer glowed. “I broke your stone.”
Grier smiled. “You only finished what could not be undone. In my heart, you were already my mate. Now it is official. You broke my crystal.”
“Did I just accidentally marry you?” she asked.
“According to dragon custom, you’re my wife,” he affirmed.
She found she did not mind.
“Now I have to find a way to make sure you’re safe, so that you can come home to me. Perhaps when you find your sisters, you three will all come back here.” He rolled onto his back and held up his arm, signaling that she should rejoin him on the bed. “All of you will have a home here, and family.”
Seeing the pottery shard, she picked it up and brought it to him. “Well, then, husband, I want you to keep this.” She gave a small smile. “It’s literally a piece of me, and the blue clay will bring you luck.”
“It will never leave me,” he promised.
Salena sat on the bed, gazing at him as he lay on his back in naked perfection. She felt complete.
21
Grier pressed the pottery shard against his palm so tightly that it cut into his skin.
Payton hugged his wife, whispering something just beyond his hearing. The blue-green sunlight had dimmed with the evening. They stood on an extension of the Var palace where visiting spaceships docked. The wide platform was near the roof, towered over by stone turrets and accessible only through a reinforced steel door.
The ESC ship was impressive as far as ships went. Prince Quinn had done well with his arrangements. The few scientists loading supplies appeared friendly but efficient.
“Have you seen to the funds?” he asked when Quinn came down the loading dock of the ship.
“It’s arranged. She’ll be well taken care of,” Quinn assured him. “I also have their communication bank coordinates, so that you may send her messages. It might be months before she receives them depending on where they are docked, but she will receive them as long as she is with the ship.”
Grier watched Salena. Roderic hugged her and handed her a piece of paper. Salena nodded at him.
The ship began to make a whirring noise as the engines
engaged.
Grier hurried toward his wife and pulled her against him. He held her tight. “I’ll be able to send you messages through ESC. Stay with them. The second it is safe, I’ll send for you.”
She nodded. “Don’t worry. Space travel does not frighten me. I know what I’m doing.”
He held her as long as they would let him. The sound of the steel doors opening behind him reverberated over the area.
“Grier, we have to get behind the doors,” Payton said. “The ship needs to take off.”
“I love you,” he said.
Salena pressed her face to his neck and whispered, “I love you, too, Grier.”
It was the first time she’d said the words, and they were a bittersweet sound. He held her tighter.
“Grier,” Roderic said. “We have to go.”
His friends pulled him away from Salena. She watched as he was urged to the steel doors. She lifted the paper Roderic had given in her fist and waved. She kept her eyes on him.
The door closed, blocking out the light. The metallic thud might as well have been against his chest. His heart felt tight, and he pressed his fist over it as if that could stop the pain. He kept his eyes on the door even though he could not see. His eyes shifted as he stared at the smooth texture of metal. His ears strained for each indication of takeoff. He heard the docking plank close. He heard the engines engage. He heard her leaving his planet.
“I’m truly sorry,” Roderic said. “I can’t imagine what you are feeling, but I do know what you gave up for your people.”
He wanted to slam his body into the metal doors until they either dented under his weight or he was knocked unconscious. At this point he didn’t care which.
Roderic grabbed his arm, his eyes glowing with the threat of a shift. “Whatever you’re thinking, don’t. You need to let her go. Use what you’re feeling to do what you must.”
“I’ll get her back,” he swore. “The Federation has ruined enough lives.”
“You are not alone in this quest,” Payton said. “We will all help to get her back. I promise, Grier.”
He nodded his thanks. It didn’t help end the ache building inside him. The loneliness would fill every crevice and there was only one way to rid himself of it. He needed his wife.
“What did you give her?” Grier asked Roderic. “What was that paper?”
“The marsh farmers were carrying a likeness of her with the reward bounty notice. I thought she might like the souvenir,” Roderic said. “Come, let’s get you drunk.”
“I don’t want to go.” He stared at the door, even though he could no longer hear the ESC ship.
“How about I make sure everything with their takeoff went well, and then I will come to find you?” Payton asked. “Go with Roderic. I’ll join you with news soon.”
Grier nodded. “Perhaps one drink.”
“Perhaps a dozen,” Roderic said. “Tonight we will commiserate for tomorrow we tear down our enemy once and for all.”
Grier didn’t want to leave the door as if it would open and time would rewind.
Roderic hooked his arm and pulled him down the corridor. Grier couldn’t speak. The pain inside him was too strong, building with each step. He knew it would hurt, but he didn’t imagine it would feel like this.
The dragon wanted out.
Grier had no desire to stop it.
He ripped his arm away from Roderic and ran. A stairwell connected to the corridor and would take him to the top of the turret. He felt the dragon clawing to be free, but he couldn’t shift inside an enclosed space.
“Grier,” Roderic yelled. “Stop!”
The dragon did not listen to reason. His jaw popped out of place, filling with sharp teeth. Grier’s body began to shift, his skin hardening. He skipped steps as he ran, imagining he was running after the ESC ship.
As he burst through the door leading to the open walkway that would take him across to another turret lookout, he leapt over the side. Grier barreled toward the ground, his body spinning.
The dragon needed to fly. The pressure brought on a shift. His clothes tore as his body expanded. The dragon inside was desperate to be free. It felt like all his bones fractured at once. The cracking sound in his mind was as loud as his thumping heart, and as wild as the urge to set fire to everything he gazed upon. But not nearly as strong as his need for Salena.
As his wings flapped, he knew what the animal wanted to do. It expressed that innate part of him that did not listen to reason and duty. It was pure emotion, and right now his feelings were on fire with rage and heartbreak.
Fire erupted from his chest, and his stomach contracted, not giving him a choice as he spouted a long flame into the sky. The fire was carried by his agonizing roar. His wings flapped harder, and he shot upward like a missile after the ship. He had found his mate, and it had taken everything in the man to let her leave. The dragon was not having it.
His taloned hands clenched, and he wanted to rip the spaceship from the sky. He saw its lights as it broke through the safest layer of the atmosphere for a dragon. The air became thin, and it was difficult to breathe. He pushed his body harder. He tried to roar, but the sound was choked. His lungs burned.
He remembered thinking that in all the long moments of his life, the one outside his wedding tent would be the worst. That was before he saw her. That was before he knew just how painful true heartache could be.
Grier followed the ship with a stubborn determination, forgetting about his safety. And with each inch of Qurilixen atmosphere he passed through, he came perilously close to the mesosphere where he could not return from.
The awareness of where he was and what would happen to him came crashing down on his tortured soul at once. If it were not for the fact that he was fully shifted and in dragon form, his humanoid form would not have sustained his broken heart.
Grier followed the ship for as long as he could until the air did not give him oxygen and his wings were so fatigued they could not beat. And just as quickly as he’d gone into the heavens, he was sent back to the planet’s surface. The dragon was instantly repelled from the border of the mesosphere, sending Grier hurtling back toward the planet. Shifting as he fell, his body spun as he plummeted headfirst.
The ship powered through to space as ships do, taking his heart with it. Blackness threatened him, and he fought for consciousness, knowing this was not a battle he would win.
22
I’m sure that we should run, Fiora’s voice whispered.
I can see that we should stay, Piera’s countered, in one of the rare contradictions of their abilities.
Salena? both voices demanded at the same time.
Salena pressed her back to the wall and kept her eyes closed as the ship moved through Qurilixen airspace. Her heart beat hard, each thump painful.
“Piera’s right. We should have stayed in the pit,” Salena said to herself. That was the true moment all of this started. “I shouldn’t have hesitated. I should have made a decision and stayed with it.”
Salena clutched the paper Roderic had given her. It felt like it had a life of its own and had become a living, breathing thing she had to hold on to. She felt it pulsing against her hand, keeping time with her rapid heartbeat.
Logically, she knew it was her hand that pulsed and not an inanimate force, but still she kept her fingers balled as if the paper could connect her to something beyond.
“We have to run now,” Salena said, repeating her sister’s words, invoking the memory as she kept her eyes closed. She didn’t want to look beyond her thoughts.
She held the paper tight, the pulsing in her hand reminding her of the moment she’d clutched Fiora and Piera. She had held on to them so determinedly, thinking they could never be torn apart.
We have to run now. Fiora’s whisper followed hers as it surfaced from within.
Like now, Salena hadn’t wanted to run. She hadn’t wanted to leave.
The darkness was safe. The monsters couldn’t find them in the
dark. Salena let herself slip into that moment, remembering each instance of fear and pain.
The clay pit had been a favorite playground where they could draw pictures in the dirt and pretend they were somewhere else—miners on Bravon pulling ash from the tunnels, before the planet had burned itself up, or scientists on Sintaz excavating alien ships. Their father had told them a great many fantastic stories.
Salena curled her toes in her boots, recalling how she had been barefoot that night. The sound of the villagers’ attack had awakened them from sleep.
We have to wake up now, Fiora said. Salena, we have to wake up.
“We have to wake up now.” Fiora’s insistent shake woke Salena from her dreams.
The sound of footsteps overhead was nothing new. Her father moved over them, which meant it was still early enough in the night that they didn’t need to be up. The sound of his feet was comforting in its familiarity. It meant their parents were close, watching over them. Next to her, Piera sighed in her sleep. The room smelled of wet clay, some from the walls, some from the storage of processed wedges of clay ready to be made into pots.
“Salena, we have to wake up,” Fiora insisted. The bed they shared shook. “Piera.”
“What is it?” Piera mumbled.
“Something is coming,” Fiora whispered. Tiny streams of light from the room above came through the narrow openings in the floor slats. “I can feel it.”
“It’s only nightmares,” Salena dismissed. “I should never have told you the men from the forest wanted us gone. Their not appreciating the truth and their doing something about it are two very different things.”
“I didn’t like their colors when I looked at them,” Piera said. “They are not good men.”
“Their constituents probably tied them to a tree and left them for the animals after the sins they confessed,” Salena tried to comfort her sisters. “It’s like mother said. Monsters can’t find us in the dark.”
“It’s not a nightmare,” Fiora insisted. A glint of light reflected off a tear. She was terrified. “Something bad is coming. I can see fragments.”
Dragon Prince Page 18