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Vampire healing abilities could go hang; he’d wear his trophies for a while, thank you.

His hands also seemed unwilling to finish their task, and he found himself doing more stroking than lacing, wanting to prolong this. There were problems waiting in his world, and stresses and dangers and all sorts of things that he had no cause to rush back for. But in this place, they seemed distant, almost imaginary.

He was in no hurry to leave.

“We have to go,” Gillian said, her own voice reluctant. “The fey don’t allow anyone to stay past dusk, and we’re losing the light.”

“Not yet,” Kit said, for the day wasn’t quite done. “And the portal is near enough.”

She looked over her shoulder at him. “Aye, but Rilda will be looking for us ere long, and be none too happy if she has to roust us out.”

“And can you not handle Mistress Rilda?”

Gillian huffed out a laugh. “No one can handle Mistress Rilda.”

And, given what he’d seen, Kit supposed not. He did speed up then, and finished returning the lady to her clothes. But afterward, he gave into temptation and pulled her back against him, his arms going around her, both of them facing a view that he might not see again.

It never got old. He had the feeling that he could sit here forever, until his body fused with the rock, making him just another outcropping of stone on the mountainside, and that would still be true. Especially now, with the clouds pink and yellow and the sun’s rays streaming through them like the beams in St. Peter’s in Rome, which he’d seen once whilst on a mission for the queen.

They had poured through the opening of the rotunda that Michelangelo had designed like the breath of God, and lit up the papal throne in gold dust. He wasn’t a religious man, far from it, but at that moment, the sheer beauty had overtaken him. He had almost believed.

What did he believe now?

He couldn’t have said. Except that life was far stranger than he had imagined growing up. And every dream of dragons he’d ever had fell so very short of the reality.

The creatures remained far away, making it difficult to judge size. But given the distance, they must have had many times the bulk of the biggest shire horse. Or even the elephant he had seen at the Tower, the largest animal he had thought to encounter.

And they flew.

It did strange things to his mind, and seemed impossible for something so huge. He had felt the muscle on just the juvenile version, and the heft behind that tail, which had hit like a hundred men all at once. Kit was faintly surprised to have only struck the tree; he would have expected to explode in a cloud of flesh on impact, something that seemed even more likely with the larger variety.

And yet fly they did, with a swiftness and an ease that Earthly birds could never hope to match. They were magic in the fullest, most tangible meaning of the term that he had ever seen, magic made flesh. And left St. Peter’s in the dust.

He suddenly wished that he could see more of them closer up, instead of as smears of red, green or silver that flashed in and out of the clouds. But the closest was still a distant gleam on the horizon, a massive creature of what looked like pure gold, whose head and neck poked out of the clouds as if scenting the air. Kit marveled at the unearthly beauty, grace, and savagery of the beast.

Which was wearing a collar?

He leaned forward in confusion, willing his eyes to see better. And see they did, with that disturbing forward lunge that his kind could do, as if throwing their vision outward in order to view distant things close up. It always surprised him when it happened, as he had yet to master doing it at will, but this time that was even more true.

Because what he could see didn’t make sense.

Not just the color of the beast, which was far flashier than anything else in the sky, shiny and bright, as if forged out of plates of precious metal. But the fact that it was also wearing some scrap of material around its neck, and a gauzy, sparkly scrap at that. It was pale blue shot with silver, and looked like silk rather than a leather collar or harness, not that those would have made sense, either.

For who could tame a dragon?

He didn’t understand it, but it made him nervous.

Like the beast’s eyes when they abruptly turned his way.

They scanned the cliff face, as if sensing the fact that someone was watching. Kit told himself that he was being fanciful, that the coven’s magic was strong and the strangeness of the day had merely addled his thoughts, which was very likely. And yet, the creature had started this way, and was coming fast, the great tail thrashing out behind it, the huge black wings tearing up the air, and the speed like a golden arrow—

Shot straight at them.

Gillian swore under her breath, and hurried back to her feet, brushing down her skirts for some reason that Kit couldn’t imagine. And then pulling him up as well, and attempting to dust him off. Before looking at him with what appeared to be panic on her face.

“Let me do the talking,” she said bizarrely, right before a different face was suddenly in his own.

It was far bigger than Kit’s body—not the entire creature, just the head. The rest of it was a flying mountain, stirring up what must have been gale force winds outside of their little bolt hole as it hovered just beyond the concealment charm. Which was concealing exactly nothing, as the monster was literally feet away and looking right at him.