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I suck in a breath. The sight is a dream come true.

“You like the view,” Aruan says.

When I look at him, I catch him studying me. “I’ve always loved dragons. Since I was a little girl, I had pictures and toys of them in my room. I read every book about them I could get my hands on.”

The light in his eyes is both soft and sad. “Maybe a part of you remembered where you came from. Even though your power wasn’t developed, it was always there.”

“I suppose that makes sense.” I stare back at the picture in front of me, unable to believe that it’s real. “On Earth, we call them dinosaurs. Only there, they’re extinct. They lived millions of years ago before an asteroid caused major climate changes that caused them to disappear altogether.”

“You’re passionate about this subject.”

“It’s that obvious, huh?”

“You’ll have to tell me everything about your dinosaurs.”

“Why?” I search his eyes. “I thought you didn’t want to talk about Earth, seeing that it’s a forbidden subject.”

“Everything that’s important to you is important to me.”

I’m stunned into silence, contemplating the meaning behind his declaration. Could he actually care about me for who I am and not just because I’m his mate?

The breeze picks up, blowing wisps of his hair that came loose around his face.

Glancing at the horizon, he says, “We’ll have time to come back here.” He pulls me behind him toward the white cliff. “The eastern wind is rising.”

I recognize a few of the creepy-crawlies from Lona.

A long line of the same spidery ants I saw in the jungle cross our path.

The giant tube worms are everywhere, but I’m not worried, knowing I can control them.

Anyway, Aruan will melt them if they snap their fanged maws in our direction.

A colony of those prawn-like insects are hard at work in the trees, cutting larvae from their cocoons.

As we round the foot of the cliff, a gap appears like a dark distorted mouth in the rockface, giving the impression of a grimacing mask. We go inside. Light comes from the other end, so it must be some kind of tunnel running through the mountain.

Hissing reaches my ears. I access the map in my mind, but there’s no animal life around us. I’m about to ask Aruan what’s making that noise when my gaze falls on movement in the shadows. When my eyes adjust to the dark, I almost jump out of my skin.

A creature that looks like a giant snake slithers from behind a rock.

Beady little eyes shine like black marble from a triangular head.

It pushes up onto two front paws, observing us slyly.

I nearly fall onto my back when the human-sized snake opens its mouth and speaks with hissing and clicking sounds.

I cling to Aruan’s hand as he listens attentively. When the creature falls quiet, I whisper, “What the hell is that?”

“They’re one of the intelligent species on Zerra. We call them Slitheax. They’re stealthy assassins.”

The Slitheax says something, its red forked tongue peeking out as it spits and hisses more foreign words.

I suppress an urge to jump behind Aruan’s back as it slides through the sand toward us. “What did he say? Or is it a she?”

“They’re hermaphrodites. It was asking what our business is here. Your aunt employs them as guardians for the palace. That way, the Alit and Slitheax live together in peace.”

A whole army of Slitheax crawl out from behind the rocks, hissing and clicking their tongues as they surround us.

I swallow. “What did you tell them?”

“They know who I am.” Aruan pulls me closer with an arm around my shoulders. “They’re curious about you.”

Unable to stop myself, I yelp when they narrow their circle around us.

“Just keep still.” Aruan’s tone is reassuring. “They only want to get to know you.”

It’s difficult to stay still when “getting to know me” means licking my face with their sandpapery tongues.

“It’s their way of smelling you,” Aruan says with a grin I can’t see, as I’m currently being blinded by tens of licking tongues and snake-ish saliva, but that I can hear clearly.

They’re only happy when my entire face is covered in glob, and sticky slime is dripping from my chin.

Wiping a hand over my eyes to clear the muck that glues my eyelashes together, I swallow down the need to throw up and ask with sarcasm, “Do they know me now?”

Laughter is thick in Aruan’s voice. “They’ve certainly made your acquaintance.”

“Great,” I grumble, wiping my sleeve over my face. Long dregs of slime stick to the fabric. “Eww.”

The Slitheax who addressed Aruan first says something in its lisping language, and then they retreat to let us through.

They push up onto their front paws, watching us with their long tongues flicking from their mouths.

In the light spilling from the exit on the other side of the tunnel, I can make out the vibrant orange scales on the undersides of their otherwise black bodies.

Outside, I shake the hand I cleaned my eyes with, trying to dislodge the slime, but it only stretches like melted cheese before bouncing back to my splayed fingers.

“Come here,” Aruan says, chuckling as he guides me to a pond in a hollow of the rock slab.

He crouches down in front of me, pulling me with him onto my haunches. He scoops up a handful of water and gently rinses my face. I don’t miss the quirk of his lips as he tries hard to suppress his laughter.

I narrow my eyes. “You think this is funny, don’t you?”

He flashes me a grin. “Don’t worry. The price is worth the gain. They never forget a scent. Once they’ve smelled you, they’ll never mistake you for an enemy. You’ll always have a guaranteed passage through their terrain.”

“Did Kian give you the ability to understand them?”

He nods.

“So there are Slitheax in Lona too?”

“No.” He pauses. “On one of my visits, I crossed one that was injured. A dragon had chewed off his tail before he managed to get away.”

I shiver at the mental image. “What happened?”

“I took him back to Lona in the hope that Vitai could heal him, but he’d lost too much blood. His injuries were extensive, and he didn’t survive the shock.”

That’s sad. “So Kian transmitted his language to you.”

“We needed to communicate if I were to find his family. They deserved to know what had happened to him.” The look in his eyes intensifies as he says, “There’s nothing worse than not knowing.”

Oh, Aruan. I place a hand on his arm. “Is that what you went through when I disappeared?”

He continues to rinse my face, his lips pressed in a hard line.

Just when I think he’s not going to answer, he says, “When my mother told me you were dead, I didn’t want to believe it.

I kept on feeling your existence the way the mind tricks one into feeling a severed limb that’s no longer there.

And then it was just gone. Dead.” His silver eyes grow hard and cold.

“I had no choice any longer. I had to accept what the severed connection told me.”

“I’m so sorry,” I say, squeezing his arm. If I could, I would’ve taken that pain away from him.

“But you’re here now.” He brushes the hair back from my forehead. “And that’s more than I could’ve ever hoped for.”

“I’m staying,” I say on the spur of the moment, willing to give my soul to make right all the wrongs that have been done to him.

I can’t explain my impulsive need. I only know I can’t bear his suffering. Not from the past or the present. Even if it means giving up everyone and everything I love, I’ll do it. For him. Because it’s in my make-up. It’s part of my DNA.

Despite the heaviness of the moment, the possessiveness I’ve become so familiar with passes over his features. “I know, my sweet.”

We fall quiet as he takes care of me, each of us wrapped up in our own thoughts, but thanks to the bond, none of those thoughts are completely private.

He knows I’m mourning everyone I’ve lost to find him, and I know he knows that a part of me will always long for the people I left behind and that my heart isn’t one hundred percent here.

He cups my face when it’s clean and wipes the water from my cheeks with his thumbs. “Better?”

Trying to lighten the mood, I say, “I won’t say no to a bath.”

He straightens and offers me a hand. “It’ll have to be a shower. They don’t have pools in Marikanea.”

“Why not?”

“In Lona, the Water Palace is fed from an underground source. Here, they have to rely on rainwater that accumulates in large containers.”

We leave the tunnel behind and round another cliff.

A gasp catches in my throat. The scene in front of us is like something from a fairytale.

The rock formations are carved into a myriad of canyons.

Towers and turrets shaped by nature create a giant sandcastle.

Great pans of water in dams with clay walls shine like mirrors in between.

The pointed stone cones that rise like giant termite heaps from the ground are reflected in the flat surfaces of the water.

A few windows are visible here and there.

“If Lona is known for its palace that reaches the sky,” Aruan says, “Marikanea is known for its palace that touches the belly of Zerra. The royal family constructed their new palace here when the volcano eruption destroyed the old one and half of their city.”

We walk to the edge of the cliff. A deep canyon runs like a moat around the palace, making access on foot impossible. The cliff is too steep to climb down, and there are no bridges.

Aruan holds out a hand. “Shall we?”

I sense his intention to create a portal for us.

A cryodrakon is hunting for lizards between the rocks.

It would’ve been nice to see the palace from his back.

I bet the aerial perspective makes an impressive picture.

I’m a lightweight, much lighter than I should be thanks to all my childhood diseases.

But a pterosaur won’t be able to carry the weight of a normal full-grown Alit, let alone Aruan’s.

So I take his hand and hold on for the sensations that come with going through a portal.