Page 61 of Storm of Blood and Shadow

With a whimper of desperation, she darts away from me, into the narrow cleft.

Thunder cracks and lightning floods the cave, as if the storm is celebrating my shift back into dragon form.

This time, as I lift my horned head and shake out my wings, my thoughts darken and condense. My mind is full of Jessiva’s image—a pale, tender creature with flame-colored hair.

Female. Her scent is everywhere.

Fuck the female, breed her, smell her, eat her.

She is in a cleft at the back of my cave and I want her.

I leap for the cleft, snarling, scrabbling along its edges with my claws. Jessiva makes a faint sound of terror and retreats further along the crack.

Female. I will dig her out. Breed her, eat her. Fuck her, bite her.

My claws delve into the rock, carving it away. It’s slow going, but I am determined. I will widen the cleft and drag her out.

Eat, breed, feed, fuck, kill.

18

Varex has gone mad.

If it were just hunger or the mating frenzy, I think he could manage it—but it’s both at once. He’s out of his mind with hunger, driven wild by the need to mate. And the Mordvorren is making it all worse, filling his head with voices and whispers. I’ve heard him answering it. I’ve seen it reduce him to tears of grief and despair.

Right now, though, he seems to be feeling rage and lust, with a side of ravenous need.

I remain deep in the cleft at the back of the cave while he growls and slavers at the entrance, clawing at the stone with rabid purpose. My own body is weak and shaky from lack of food, and my stomach feels like it’s going to devour itself if I don’t get something to eat.

But there’s nothing to eat here. I’ve hunted through every corner of the cave. There’s not so much as a mushroom, a bit of lichen or moss, or a subterranean slug. I’m starving, and so is Varex. Yet still the Mordvorren continues to wail, casting torrents of rain, rattling the mountain with its thunder.

No dragon can make it through this storm. No one is coming to help us.

Dragon claws can carve rock. Given enough hours, Varex might be able to widen this tunnel enough so he can reach me, and I don’t want to find out what he’ll do when he does. He’s muttering in Dragonish while he digs at the rock, and his tone is anything but pleasant or merciful.

I could retreat farther down this crack, but it’s pitch black in here, and anything could be slithering through the dark. I might end up tumbling off a ledge and breaking my neck, or plunging into an underground river, or falling into a voratrice den.

Perhaps I should try to talk to Varex, to reason with him. TherealVarex is still in there somewhere, I know it. At least a conversation will mean a reprieve from the grating sound of his claws grinding through stone.

“Varex,” I call.

The noise of his digging stops abruptly. The silence that follows is almost more terrifying.

Then his amber eye gleams at the entrance to the tunnel. “Female,” he growls, his voice deeper than ever.

“Jessiva,” I correct him firmly, though my pulse is racing.

“You smell like meat,” he growls. “Fresh, firm, tender. Fuck you full, then eat you alive. Swallow you up. I’ll slide into you, then you slide into me.” He snarls a laugh and keeps digging.

That isn’t the Varex I know. Not even hunger and lust could make him talk that way to me, to the woman he adores. This is the Mordvorren, crawling through his skull, poisoning his mind.

“This is more than starvation and the mating frenzy,” I call. “It’s the fucking storm. You have to push it out of your head. Don’t listen to it.”

“Come to me, morsel,” he hisses. “Come here and let me taste you.”

“No thank you.”

“Coward. Little prey, tasty fleshling, meat and bones and blood and holes. I have a hole inside me, bigger than the world. Maybe you can fill it.”

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