Page 76 of Burdened Bonds

I’m going to find Spencer and then together we’ll find our girl.

30

Renzo

When I was a kid,I wanted to be a bird. I spent a fuck load of time trying to turn myself into one. My mom said it was dumb. Flying away? From all that shit? It didn’t seem dumb to me.

One time I got far enough that I sprouted feathers all along my fucking shoulder blades. It looked awesome.

Didn’t work though. I didn’t lift one inch off the ground. All it did was make my mom’s face ugly and then she set to screaming. Said I was a freak. Plucked every single one of those feathers out.

Fuck that hurt. Probably more than all the knives plunged into my gut, magic crashed against my body, nails dragged down my cheeks, teeth sunk into my skin.

I gave up after that. Thought my mom was right. Flying was stupid. I was fucking stupid.

Yeah, she was wrong. She was wrong about a lot of things.

Flying is …

Flying makes you feel like the king of the world. Makes you feel like you own the fucking heavens. Flying lifts you above the ground with all its pain and its torture and its confusion and takes you right up into the clouds, coats your face in a fine moisture that tastes like dew on your tongue, paints rainbows in front of your eyes, takes you through and up to where the sun was hiding all along.

And flying withher, flying with my arms wrapped around her waist, flying with her body pressed up against mine is …

Little rabbit screams as we plunge back through the clouds again. But it isn’t one of her terrified screams, or one of those screams she makes when I wind her body up tight and then let it go. It’s a scream like kids make when they’re happy. I can feel it in her magic, her body vibrating with it under the grip of my hands.

“This is incredible,” she gasps, wiping the fine cloud droplets from her eyes. But I don’t think incredible gives this feeling true justification. This is freedom. Another life altogether.

“You’re a natural at this, little rabbit,” I say into her ear.

“Me?” she laughs, “I’m not doing a thing! It’s all her.”

I don’t know about that. The dragon reads the girl’s desires, taking her where she wants to go, like they’re talking to each other without saying any words.

“I could stay up here forever,” she sighs, as the dragon catches a current and we skim below the clouds, riding the breath of the wind.

“Let’s,” I say. “Let’s stay up in the sky forever and never go back down to earth.”

She laughs again like I was joking. Then she shakes her head. “I need to get back to Pip. I need to …” She hesitates. Then leans down, lying against the dragon’s neck, resting her cheek against her scales and gazing down at the ground below us. “Can you even tell where we came from?”

I peer down at the land below, so small I could smash it with the heel of my boot.

“No,” I say, even as I spot the gap in the rocks.

Unfortunately, little rabbit is eagled-eyed and spots it too. “There!” she cries, pointing below us. “But how the hell do we–”

She doesn’t finish her words, the dragon is already swooping down, spiraling through the air, making me fucking dizzy, until we’re right above that crack in the rocks.

“We’ll never fit through!” little rabbit cries, closing her eyes. But the dragon masters it with ease, gliding through the gap and landing on the rocks below like she doesn’t weigh a fucking thing.

The little pig’s still laid out on the rock. He lifts his head and makes a feeble squeak.

“We’re back,” I tell him, sliding off the dragon’s back reluctantly and landing with a thud that shakes the ground.

I hold up my hand to my little rabbit and, without a hint of a pause she takes it, sliding from the dragon herself.

Little rabbit isn’t afraid to touch me anymore. The idea doesn’t repulse her. It makes that thing in my gut spin like a whirlwind, has the cold blood in my veins warming.

She lands on her toes, and bounces straight up into my arms, flinging hers around my neck.