Page 159 of Deadly Maiden

“And your Anathema would love to see Asher-Kyvin-Madlin. What a mouthful. I can fly to Vancourter in a few hours, you know?”

“Yes. I do know.” I smile up at him and move nearer so I can rest my head against him, my big, bad, beautiful soulmate. “Seems like we have many things to keep us busy in the future.”

He stretches his hands before him and silently counts to three on his fingers. “And four, visit my hoard. Five, make love to you on the mountaintop there, after I tie you up and make you come a thousand times.”

I snort and poke his ribs.

“That’s ID’s idea. You don’t like it?”

I wrap both my arms around his biceps and squeeze him there and lean in again. “Anything. I just want to try anythingand everything, but with you. We can fly around the world a hundred times, if you want to.”

“Good answer.” He sighs and leans into me. We remain there, together, looking out across the mist-drenched Maw while the sun descends the rim. Soon it will be below where our fae eyes can discern it and night will fall.

The first firefly bobs and weaves into view.

Epilogue

Garrex

Something drags at my heart, as if a steel hook has been punched through my tired body, to be slowly winched in.

Come. Come.

Light filters through my eyelids and I open my eyes. Blue light flutters, waning into a paler gray as my head breaches a barrier.

Gasping, aching in mind, bone, sinew, and muscle, I crawl upward, fingers crooked to angle into the stony crevices.

Come. Come.

Air is here. Rocks crunch and roll beneath my hands, abrading my skin.

Staggering, I rise and open my mouth to inhale the night I’ve been gifted.

Though I know not where I was, I was elsewhere for eons.

I fell, once, did I not?

Agony afire in my dragon body, a sword forged of evil my immortal form. The thrust was lethal and pierced my heart. I was dying.

I look down upon my nakedness to trace a white scar on my chest, above where my heart thuds. I am whole and in man-fae form. Arching my spine brings a cracking and crunching as the small bones realign.Life! I have life again!My roar of joy results only in a harsh rasp that barely travels past the nearest rocks.

I know this place. Above and around me soar miles-high rock walls. This is a chasm dug into the earth of Artreos, and I am at the bottom.

I am in the Maw.This…this is where I fell in some convoluted, confusing battle.

The crash of steel, the whistle of arrows, and flash of spears. The complexly wrought syllables and the plumes of twirling etharum as mages cast their spells. The screams. What reason for this battle, though? Why was I there?

I know not why we fought.

My fist makes a pleasing shape, and I hold it aloft. As I do so, I study the surrounding funnel of the Maw’s tremendous walls.

The yearning that hooks my heart pulses again, leaving a taste for more on my tongue.

With my arms stretched taut and straight to either side, my body forms a cross as I prepare for the change. I search for thehowsof shifting and begin the process.

It comes swiftly, ripping through my body, pushing, pumping, accelerating metabolism, rending me into a not-man shape, instead I become…

DRAGON.

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