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“We kill the King.”

On opposing sides of the table, they remain unmoving. Dawsyn wears only a tunic – his tunic. Her clothes were washed in the stream and are lying before the hearth to dry. The collar sits low on her shoulders, and the hem covers a small portion of her legs, which rest between his, and by God, it is difficult to look away. Her hand reaches across the table, and he automatically flips his to welcome it. When her palm comes to rest in the cradle of his, there is a reverence that floods his chest. He believes this is what it must be to belong. He thinks of how he would break anyone who tried to take her hand from his.

“If we go,” Dawsyn tells him, her voice as unflinching as ever, “we do not leave until the people on the Ledge are free.”

Of course. He will fly each one off that precipice himself if he must. Each one of them is her.

“You speak like a queen,” he tells her.

She does not drop his hand as she rounds the edge of the table or as she comes to sit in his lap, her legs dangling on either side of him. She is bare beneath the tunic, and he hardens immediately. The feel of her warmth on top of him is difficult to ignore. He places his free hand to her thigh and slowly runs it along her skin, but his other hand is trapped in hers, and she brings it to her chest, holding it over her heart.

“Do not leave me behind to do this yourself.”

How could he? He is no longer sure he can face another dawn without her. She speaks of the misplaced nobility in men who see more glory in sacrifice than union, and leave their lovers behind to live on as they themselves die. But he hasn’t had a speck of control over her since they met. She has never needed him to choose her path, and he will not start paving it for her now.

“I’ll never decide anything for you, girl. You can have what you want – I’ll make sure of it.”

There is an intensity in her eyes as she lets his hand fall down her front. “Good,” she tells him.

Then, slowly, she lifts the linen hem of the tunic over her body, first revealing her stomach and then her breasts. She tosses the tunic to the floor and gazes into him like she wants to drink him, absorb him, and it is almost his undoing.

“For now,” she says, “I only want one thing.”

Her lips come down on his, and with a fever he has come to associate only with her, he grips the back of her head and holds her face hard against his. He wants to devour her.

His lips slide to her neck as his hands find the curve of her ass. He drags her closer until he can feel her centered on top of his length. She moans, and her hips move.

All he can do is watch her. She grabs his hands and presses her chest into them, letting the hot flesh rest in his palms. She moves herself on him maddeningly, torturously, and eventually, he bites out a curse and stands, lifting her with him.

He softens her fall back onto the table, its legs creaking a threat. His head comes between her thighs, and he hears her breath hitch, feels her legs widen in welcome. It feels as though he has waited for this, waited to take her this way, for an eternity. His dreams have been preoccupied with this very image – her spread before him. With his tongue, he explores her, finds all the ways he can elicit those gratifying sounds from her throat, and once she begins to call his name like a prayer, he uses his fingers, too, and feels her come apart like lightning splitting the sky.

He kisses and licks his way back up her body, and she rears upward like a creature awakened. She shoves him back, and he helps her, settling back into the chair all too willingly. She is atop him in an instant. Her entire weight crashing down on him barely elicits a grunt. She is small in his hands but not in his mind, where she takes up every crevice, every corner, filling him entirely. She pants an order at him, impatient. With one hand, he loosens his trousers and lowers them, and with the other, he runs it all over her body, wondering which god created her.

When she lowers herself onto him, he has to bite her shoulder to keep from cursing. The feel of her decadent heat encasing him is nearly unbearable. And then she begins to ride him, at first languidly, her salacious tongue whispering into his ear, promising him a world of pleasure, endless ecstasy, and he grips her waist with both hands. He pulls her closer and angles his hips, rewarded with the sight of her eyes widening, her head thrown back in renewed frenzy. They collide together the way a tempest finds land – explosively, uncontrollably. Ryon feels the tight coil of desire build in him with a fury, and as the girl pushes her forehead to his and trembles with release, he follows with an intensity so powerful that, for a moment, he is blinded.

He’d promise her anything. Everything. All of it.

Take it all, he thinks.

Take it all.

CHAPTERTHIRTY-SEVEN

Dawsyn feels hours pass like water through her fingers. There is only so long they can stay, wrapped up in this pretense, acting like they aren’t hunted, like death does not leer at them from its corner, biding its time. The worst is ahead of them. Dawsyn feels it within each cell.

And in every slow, gentle moment, she hears Baltisse’s voice break her peace. “I am glad you are alive, Dawsyn Sabar. Though I doubt you will remain so for long.”

Dawsyn doubts it, too.

She wants to spend the day entwined in him. No matter how long she looks and touches his magnificent form, it isn’t enough. There is so much of him, so much that is new to her, and she wants to know it all. She wants to trace lines from the tips of his black wings to his spine and onward. She wants to pull her nails through every pathway of his stubble, through each valley between muscles. She likes the way their skin contrasts so brilliantly and yet melds when their limbs tangle.

But there is plotting to be done, plans to be made. So, she must settle for stolen touches until the gravity of what lies ahead lifts – or obliterates them altogether.

When the day is relieved by nightfall, they will go.

He tells her much of what he knows about the Glacian King and his palace. He describes how the palace cannot be entered from the sky. There are no windows, no doors. He describes the network of tunnels beneath the palace, protected by magicked portcullises. Dawsyn remembers them well.

“Tell me how the Pool of Iskra works,” Dawsyn asks Ryon as they forage under tree cover.