Chapter 8
Kai
owan and I stand alone in the commandant’s office, the light
flickering through the window gleaming off the polished mahogany
desk and playing over the neat stack of parchment that I should be
taking the opportunity to read through. Instead, I’m staring at her. At the
alchemist.
“Where is the commandant?” Rowan asks, her rich auburn hair spilling
in luscious locks onto her shoulders. The blend of deep reds and warm
brown tones whisper promises of what the curls lower on her body must
look like. She wears my uniform shirt, the one I pulled off to give to her.
It’s big and it slides over a bare shoulder, showing off glowing skin. She
wears no pants. No boots. Just my shirt and that penetrating, infuriating,
gorgeous look on her face.
Stars. The sight of her is already making me painfully hard.
“Not here yet.”
I stalk around the commandant’s desk to where Rowan is standing. Her
eyes are large and she smells of fear and honey and citrus. Of me and
Kyrian. The chill is hardening her nipples, which tent the fabric of her shirt.
My shirt. I stop in front of her, and look down. She barely reaches my
shoulder. I listen for footsteps, but no one is close.
I should send her away. To stand outside the office until the
commandant comes. So I can stay inside alone. And do what I should be
doing. Reading intelligence reports. Memorizing maps. Doing whatever it
takes to undo what’s been done to Lilith. And to so many draken. And yet, I
don’t. Instead I’m standing here like a stars’ damned adolescent, unable to
tear my attention away from the way Rowan’s lush lips part slightly. I want
to devour them, to plunder her sweet mouth until she’s breathless and
trembling.
“So what should I do?” she asks. She wraps her arms around herself.
She is here for discipline and she’s afraid. “Should I come back later?”
“No.” I swallow. “I can start your punishment now. What reason is there
to wait?”
“W-what are you going to do?” Her voice hitches. She is afraid, yes, but
she can’t keep her eyes off me. The scent of her growing arousal is escaping
from her thighs, which she closes quickly.
This isn’t real. I know it isn’t. But I don’t care.
I step closer, pinning Rowan between my body and the commandant’s
desk. I grip her hips, filling my hands with her delicious curves. Her skin is
like silk, warm and inviting. I sit her atop the desk. A sweep of my shadows
and all the books and papers fly to the floor, leaving the surface behind
Rowan clear.
She gasps, a shudder running along her throat. The tip of her tongue jets
out from between her lips.
My cock twitches in need.
“What punishment do you deserve?” I demand. I brace my hands on the
edge of the desk, on either side of Rowan’s hips. Her thighs are parted
slightly, her pupils wide.
She leans back slightly, strands of arousal weaving in with her fear and
apprehension. She is at my mercy. So why does it feel like it’s me who is at
her mercy?
My voice drops, becoming gravely. “You left without leave. Without
asking my permission.”
“Would you have given it?” There goes that terrible mouth of hers, not
backing down even when a wiser being would.
“No.” I put my knees between Rowan’s, pushing her thighs apart. She
resists, her cheeks blushing furiously when her flesh opens with a wet pop
and heat pours from her, mixing with my own.
My cock pulses painfully inside my britches.
“Please,” Rowan whispers. Her plea is breathless.
“Please what?” I question, enjoying as her color rises again. Her mind
and body are begging for very different outcomes. “Please don’t punish
you?”
Another small delicious gasp.
“Too late for that.” I reach beneath her shirt- my shirt—and growl in
approval as I find her bare beneath. With a rough pull, I yank Rowan’s
backside to the edge of the table, and grip the inside of each thigh with my
hands. The intoxicating scent of her arousal makes my heart pound. I lower
my mouth to her slick folds, right atop the sensitive bundle of nerves at the
apex for her sex and –
The flap of draken wings yanks my mind back to where it belongs. I
step back, giving Kyrian and Arianda more space to land in the clearing.
Arianda’s dark green scales blend easily into the night forest, but still,
Kyrian shouldn’t have taken the risk of riding without a good reason—and I
don’t know of any right now. Eryndor’s forests and cliffs are as hospitable
to draken as flame is to fish. It’s not just the thin high-altitude air, the
murderous air tunnels, or the damn weather that goes from clear to thunder
to fog within an hour. It’s the wards themselves. Not only do they strip the
draken of basic magic to defend themselves, they mess with the ley lines,
disrupting the draken’s sense of direction and balance.
It’s dangerous. Too dangerous. Not that a lecture would stop him.
“There ye are.” Kyrian dismounts with his usual grace. “Have ye been
waiting long?”
Long enough to stop thinking with your brain, Ulyssus’s mental voice
chuffs in my mind. So, yes.
I shift my weight, trying to discreetly ease the pressure from the bulge
pressing against my britches. Fortunately, draken can only mind speak with
their bonded riders, so even Kyrian—who has an empathic gift with the
creatures—gets none of Ulyssus’s overt commentary. “It’s fine.”
Ulyssus chuffs again, and I tighten my mental shields to keep the nosy
draken out.
“Logan here yet?” Kyrian asks, giving Ulyssus a wide berth as he
moves around the clearing. If Arianda blends with the forest, Ulyssus is the
night sky—black scales soaking up the darkness. Ulyssus tolerates Kyrian
and Logan, but it’s never wise to push his goodwill. Especially since his
wing was damaged getting into Eryndor two years ago. It healed fine, but
his disposition soured. Not that he was gracious to begin with.
“He’ll show,” I say. Logan always does, even when it seems unlikely.
“Probably found a way to slip into the Gloom.” The wards around Eryndor
make contact with the Gloom—the shadow version of the world—nearly
impossible. But Logan has unique talents. Ones he doesn’t always use
wisely. “Why the unplanned flight?”
Not being able to soar through the sky together has been one of the
mission’s harshest sacrifices. Not that I don’t deserve to suffer for what I’ve
done. But the distance hurts Ulyssus too. That’s just part of being close to
me—I hurt everyone who gets in my orbit.
I touch the pendant around my neck, Lilith’s smooth iridescent scales
reminding me of the stakes. She was the first dragonling to hatch in
centuries, and she soars no more because she trusted me. She is why I’m
here. I have to fix things. For Lilith, I have to.
“Arianda thought she saw a draken get taken down near the Raven
Raveen,” Kyrian explains. “Northeast quadrant.”
My jaw tenses. The auric alloy Eryndor put on their arrows doesn’t kill
draken—it paralyzes them. Permanently if the arrowhead isn’t removed in
time. Worse yet, the Spires have been sending covert contingents of soldiers
to retrieve the downed draken. Retrieve them alive. I’ve seen the orders.
We’ve not been able to work out where they bring them. Or to what end.
We’ve been doing what we can, when we can. Especially Kyrian and
Arianda.
“Find anything?” I ask.
“False alarm. But there is movement at the wards. Flurry looks like it’s
gathering another host.”
I run a hand through my hair. I can’t fault any draken rider or shifter for
wanting to wipe Eryndor off the map, but an attack now would be
inconvenient to the mission Kyrian, Logan, and I started two years ago.
Not that anyone in Flurry, or elsewhere, knows what we are doing.
“Little to be done about it now,” I say bluntly. “We’ll deal with it if we
must.”
“Aye,” Kyrian agrees, rubbing Arianda’s nose. The draken leans eagerly
into the touch. Ulyssus, thankfully, isn’t nearly as tactile. Logan’s draken is
worse, not letting anyone but Logan even come near her.
“So,” I say, tired of waiting for Logan to show. “We have our alchemist.
And she’s an Ainsley, of all things.”
“Rowan isn’t what I expected,” Kyrian says. I wish he didn’t use her
name. I don’t need another reminder of how real she is.
Your problem isn’t her name, Ulyssus informs me. It’s your cock.
Don’t worry about my cock, I send back to him.
It’s one or the other for you lot. Cock or brain. Can never use both at the
same time.
I don’t honor that with a reply. Rowan might wake me inconveniently,
but I know why I’m here. We’ve spent two years living and training among
humans just to get to the alchemist we’d heard would be in this year’s
enchanter class. I’ll do nothing to jeopardize that.
It’s just that things were simpler before the alchemist had a name. And a
face. Rowan. Gorgeous, mouthy and stars-damned suicidal.
The rage that swept through me at the Wishing Well Inn, when I
realized our alchemist was at the center of murderous chaos, rushes back
with a vengeance. That moment, right before Kyrian threw himself over
her, when some burly human boar aimed his booted foot at her head, flashes
in my mind again. An imprint, frozen in time. Because after that, I started
killing. Anyone who so much as looked Rowan’s way fell within heartbeats
of their mistake.
Two years of work infiltrating Eryndor would all be for nothing if that
stubborn, reckless girl got herself dead.
“Doesn’t matter what we expected,” I tell Kyrian harshly. “She’s an
alchemist. She’s why there’s auric steel. Don’t lose sight of why we’re
here.”
“I’m not losing sight of anything, just saying I was expecting someone
more like her mother.”
“It would be easier if she were. For one thing, we’d have less chance of
her deciding to jump head first off a cliff to save a stranded kitten, or
whatever else she’s planned for an evening adventure.” I sigh. “The plan’s
not changed. We’ll need her cooperation, so get her trust as best you can.
We both know I’m not the male for that job.”
Kyrian snorts his agreement. “Just wait until Logan meets her. Five gold
says he’ll be between her thighs in under a week.”
“I’d rather you were that confident Logan won’t fail mathematics,” I
say, pinching the bridge of my nose. It’s the one thing I haven’t been able to
drill into his thick skull. The humans will kick him out for failing
academics, destroying everything we’ve worked for. We’ve come to blows
over it, more than once, with no result.
It’s not like Kyrian or I could take the exams for him—glamor magic
barely dulls our pointed fae ears.
“Speaking of the devil,” Kyrian says, nodding toward the forest. A pair
of golden eyes blink from the darkness, followed by the whisper of rustling
brush. A large gray wolf prowls forward on silent paws.
“Glad you could pause your rutting long enough to join us,” I nod at the
wolf, who sighs dramatically before shifting into his fae form.
“When there’s no quality, I go with quantity.” Logan stretches, hands
interlaced behind his head. “Which one of you idiots was flying? Because if
we can take to the skies—”
“Talk to Kyr. He’s the suicidal one today,” I say.
Kyrian flips me off. “We were talking about the alchemist. The one
running a slum clinic under her mother’s nose.”
“And making a mess of it.” A small growl escapes. Reckless. So
damned reckless. “Keeping the girl alive might be the hardest part of this.”
“Saving a few humans doesn’t make up for what she’s doing,” Logan
says to Kyrian, but doesn’t come closer. It’s still strange, seeing a wolf
instinctively seek distance instead of proximity they usually crave. One of
my fathers is a wolf shifter from Flurry, so I know more than a little about
them. Paying Logan’s pack back for what they did to him is on my to do
list.
“I don’t think she knows what she’s doing,” Kyrian says.
“She should,” I reply. “If you make a weapon, you better know what it
does. Ignorance isn’t an excuse.”
Shadows leak around me, pooling at my ankles and around Ulyssus’s
wings. Even with the wards muting my power, the forest hums with energy.
Kyrian gives me a warning look.
Guilt lashes at me, and I make no move to shield myself. Lilith. Brighteyed, energetic Lilith. The first dragonling to hatch in centuries—and the
first to consume my heart. She should be soaring through the skies, scaring
her parents with her antics. What happened to her is my fault. That I never
intended for things to go down that way doesn’t matter. All I can do now is
make it right. I have to.
“I’m just saying, it’d be easier if it was Collin Chambers who turned out
to be the alchemist instead,” Kyrian says, holding up his hands.
“She’s an Ainsley. It’s not that hard.” Liar, I think to myself. You’re a
damn liar. “Two more months, at most, and this is done.”
“I vote we grab her now and go,” Logan says.
“Which is why we don’t take votes,” Kyrian says with more patience
than I’d have. It’s tempting to grab her now. We know exactly who she is,
and we have her in our grasp. But we’re as deep in Eryndor as you can get
without sitting in the queen’s lap. If we try to take off with Rowan now, we
won’t make it to the city’s edge. Thankfully, Eryndor’s command is going
to solve the problem for us soon enough when they send the cadets beyond
the wards.
“Here’s what we do next,” I say, laying out the plan that will keep us
moving toward our goal. “Get the alchemist’s trust if you think that’ll help,
rut her if that’s what it takes—but don’t ever forget the truth. Rowan
Ainsley is not our ally.”
