Page 29 of The Sun God’s Prize (Child of Scale and Fire #3)

How many times can I orgasm? While they stroke my folds, lips on my mouth, tongues on my clit and nipples and fingers pulling my hair, stirring gooseflesh from soft strokes of my lower back and inner thighs, the backs of my knees, soles of my feet, the soft flesh between beneath my breasts tingling, aching for more.

The buildup of passion is a never-ending wake that spins out into infinity, because they’re touching me everywhere at once, an overload of sensation that can’t possibly feel any more but does.

No matter the release that comes in bursts of sparking joy, the sensations only increase, the spiral of ecstasy carrying me higher and higher until I’m floating in an endless spasm that will never end.

Please, don’t ever let it end.

Remi , Atlas’s thrusts are as sweet as they are deep and hard, the way I love him to take me.

Remi , Zenthris pants over my neck from behind me, throbbing inside me, one hand cupping my pussy with Atlas sliding between his fingers, the other pulling my hair, arching my head back to him so he can kiss me.

How? I shove at the question, not wanting to know, terrified the answer will break the spell, but it’s there, it’s done its work, and we’re tumbling back into the cushions together. We’re in a bed I don’t know, in a quiet room filled with shadows, and everything feels soft, misty, and I know how.

I need to know how before this can resume.

“I’m dreaming,” I whisper.

“We all are,” Atlas says, blue eyes filled with wonder. “Is this real?”

“Real enough,” Zenthris growls from my other side, fingers trailing down my stomach to my clit. He strokes me as we talk, comforting more than stimulating, Atlas’s lips tracing my cheek, my jaw, nibbling my ear.

“I don’t care if it’s not real,” I say, fighting the tears I refused when I was awake.

“Remi,” Atlas says, anxious concern as aroused as his thick, heavy cock that softly pulses against my hip. “We’ve looked everywhere. Where are you?”

“South,” I say, and tell them everything. In the dream state, it seems that I’m folding my story over into layers, not like I shared with Brem, but as though I’m able to explain it all in a crumpled ball of a handful of words that somehow share the horror that now squeezes tears from me after all.

They cradle me, whispering their love to me, the kinspark bright as it races between us, tying us tightly together. And I see and feel more than I hear them tell me what has happened to them, for them, since I’ve been lost.

Flashes of panic, of hunts through the city of Neem, the outer isles, while they fought the armada of the Overking, Isolatta’s fleet destroying the attacking ships and fleeing again, striking hard and fast.

But no trace of me was found, and they both took comfort in one another while refusing to believe I was dead, even when my father gave up on me.

They’re sailing for Dorgondon in the morning.

“Not anymore, we’re not,” Zenthris growls. “We’re coming for you.”

“No,” I say immediately, startling them both. I feel their resistance to my denial, but I can’t risk them throwing themselves into peril. “I’m already here. I have to see this through. But I will do what I need to do, and when I return, we will go to Dorgondon together.”

“Remi,” Atlas says, blue eyes spilling over his own tears, “we can’t abandon you.”

It’s clear he feels they already have, Zen’s growling agreement paired with weeping, too.

“Don’t ask that of us,” the rogue tells me. “Not now that we know where you are and how to reach you.”

“What you’ve endured,” Atlas says. “We’ve had each other,” they exchange a look that breaks my heart with its tenderness and love, “but you’ve been so alone.”

I gasp a breath and hug them both to me, the edges of the dream fading. I feel it pulling away, feel them going, but I cling to them one more moment.

“I love you,” I whisper to them as the spark blazes one more time, sizzling into a circle of binding, “and I will see you again. Don’t come for me. Please.”

My inhale is shaky, and when I open my eyes to the bedroom in the Sun God’s temple, my heart breaks all over again.

Will they honor my request? I know better than to think I can order them to do so.

But I have them with me again, at least through the kinspark.

I feel now, distant but alive and well, and their connection renewed.

It is the best that I can do , the dragon tells me in a weary voice. Hark now, you’re not alone . She’s gone as I slowly sit up and face what’s to come, already planning to unman the Sun God if he decides to sully what I’ve just dreamed with some hope of physical assault.

Only to win a gasp from the young woman who sits on the edge of the bed, watching me. I know her, recognize her from the temple earlier today, from the seat next to Isthisahaloun. This is my first look up close, however, and I immediately note the familial resemblance.

“You’re his daughter,” I say. I’m not even trying to be friendly.

She recovers from her surprise, nodding, softening. I must have frightened her, expecting her father as I did, no doubt with murder in my eyes when I met her gaze. “I am Sheelan,” she says simply. “First Rae of the Sun God.”

Does that mean his oldest? His heir, perhaps?

She’s taking a big risk, and so is he to allow this.

Are they that deluded? How can she miss the risk that is this visit?

Coming so close to me? Why would he allow me access to his daughter?

Perhaps, she’s meant to endear me to him somehow.

Though she was afraid in that moment of my waking, she doesn’t seem so anymore, far too curious for her own good with those dark eyes of hers fixed on my face.

She’s close to my age, I’m guessing, early twenties at the most, hair a black, silken waterfall woven with gold, a single gold ring sparkling in her nostril, bright in the light against her dark skin.

And gorgeous, yes, soft and shapely in her gossamer, scented with flowers, full lips moist and parted in a breathless innocence.

Sheelan reaches out with tentative fingers and hovers over the back of my hand, her wrist bangles tinkling when she does, gold-painted nails shining with glittering gems. But she doesn’t touch me. Is she asking permission?

I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt, if only in this.

“I’m sorry for your terrible journey to us,” she says. “You’ve endured so much to reach us.”

They could have pulled me from the arena, and didn’t, so her apology falls short, even if at least she expresses guilt, while her father blames others.

“If you say so,” I reply.

Sheelan’s hand falls away without contact, accepting my rejection.

She folds it into her lap with the other instead, the thin, transparent fabric of her skirt rustling, the embroidered hem heavy with jewels that make it swing as she turns toward me, crossing her legs beneath her as she settles further.

Clearly, she’s planning to stay despite my lack of welcome.

Perhaps I should soften my own edges and take advantage of her presence. But I’m fighting to linger in the memory of the dream, and the kinspark’s return is a constant heartbeat now, one long to savor in private.

Duty, as always, takes precedence as much as I would prefer otherwise.

“You have a brother,” I say, blunt and without kindness, because the young man who sat on her father’s other side must be, of course.

“Theille,” she nods. “The next incarnation of the Sun, when the time comes.”

“Not you?” She’s older than him, I guessed that much when I first noted them.

“I am a woman,” she shrugs. “The Sun God only incarnates as a man. It is the way of the Rae.”

I grimace and shake my head. “If you say so.” Then sigh and toss my hands. “What do you want?” I’m out of patience at last, and I’ve engaged in what limited conversation I can manage for the time being.

She looks down at her hands, toying with one of the many rings on her fingers, the one that circles her index finger just before the first knuckle smooth and wide.

“Is it true, what they say about your mother? What she did?” Sheelan’s eyes lift to mine again, wide with wonder.

“I’ve heard the tales, but they seem so…

” she spreads her hands and laughs breathlessly.

“I’ve never heard those stories before I came to your country,” I say, surprised at how deeply it hurts me to admit it.

When did Mother fight the Sunnish army? Before I was born, no doubt, at her mother’s command.

She never mentioned she’s a legend here.

Did she even know it? I can’t believe she did, because modesty was not one of my mother’s virtues.

“But I can tell you that she was formidable to the very end, and the idea that she stood against a whole army on her own is not outside plausibility.” In fact, I would wager the stories are not only true, but under speak the epic truth of Jhanette of Heald’s stand.

And now I want to hear them, the tales of her, before I leave this place.

“Was?” Sheelan’s hand rises to her chest, fingers curling into a small fist at the base of her throat.

“She was murdered,” I say, “by the same traitor of an Overking who’s made me your father’s slave.”

The princess of the Sun God flinches, eyes wide again, biting her lower lip when she shakes her head. The tinkling of her ornaments is a sweetly musical denial, but a denial nonetheless.

“You’re not a slave here, Remalla,” she says, reaching out to me again, fingertips begging to slide over my wrist. Yet again, I hold still and in that simple act, deny her contact. “You’re meant as a beloved concubine to the Sun God. It’s a great honor to be chosen.”

My flat expression will have to serve to tell her what I think of such an “honor” because it’s the best I can muster.