Page 44 of The Sun God’s Prize (Child of Scale and Fire #3)

Her glow begins to fade, though it seems to be purposeful, by choice. She approaches me while I can’t seem to move, frozen in place, still gaping at her, flinching when her fingertips rise and brush my cheek.

As the kinspark links us together. Sizzles through me, crashing into Sheelan, who sways beside me—

—leaps to Atlas, to Zenthris, where they lie together, holding one another, so close I can touch them if I just reach out, but it’s circling back, too late—

—and slams into me again.

I rock in place, her fingers still on my face.

“Don’t be afraid,” Aurous says, concern creasing her flawless skin.

I clear my throat, nod, though it’s not fear I’m feeling. It’s been a very long time since anything or anyone took my breath away in awe and wonder, and I’m in no rush to shake it free. Or the tie of the kinspark that has brought her into our little circle.

“You’re amazing,” I say. It’s a silly thing, really, but she lights up again, her smile wide and delighted and she hugs me as she laughs.

Her laugh seizes me in a hold as warm and inviting as her arms. That means resistance will be impossible, even without the kinspark. When I embrace her in return, I inhale the scent of her, part soft kitten, part fresh spring morning, all hope in a single breath.

“You found me,” she whispers in my ear, and I know I’m not the only one who hears her, Sheelan, of course, but our kinsparks, too. They’re here with us as surely as if they stood beside me, experiencing this with me. “You’re the amazing one, Remi.”

I’m trembling and I can’t stop, still fighting for words, horribly sad when she releases me, not wanting to let her go.

She leans away, arms twined around my neck, her bright, gold eyes at level with mine, naked body warm, almost hot where her skin touches mine.

There are fine scales beneath her skin that fade as I watch, but she has no pores, no wrinkles, perfection, like a gold statue come to life.

I can’t stop shivering, and when she frowns, I’m worried I made it happen.

“This still won’t do,” she says, looking down, biting her lower lip for a moment.

When she raises her face again, her skin softens, the flawlessness retreating, a more natural texture taking its place.

The scales are gone completely now, and while it’s still certain she’s not human or drakonkin, looking at her no longer overwhelms me.

“Aurous,” I manage her name.

She kisses my cheek, letting me go, her hand falling to mine, squeezing my fingers while she turns to Sheelan. I’m acutely aware when the (dragon? Woman? What do I call her now?) reaches out to her, too, free hand cupping her cheek.

“Kinspark,” Aurous says. “We’re almost whole already, and we’ve barely begun.

” She turns her head and smiles at me again, that glow of her skin almost gone, just enough to see by.

She’s far from ordinary now, but she’s as close to human in appearance as she’s going to get, if a perfected version of one.

Her long, rippling waves toss back over her shoulder, exposing her nakedness that she doesn’t seem aware of at all.

“You truly are a marvel, Flame.” Her thumb traces over the back of my hand before she sighs and looks down at herself, then up at us again. “I need something to wear, I think.”

I can feel the distant touch of our loves fading, but they are with us still, just released from whatever drew us together in spirit at the moment of Aurous’s birth.

“How do you know that?” Sheelan’s question is halting, and she stops abruptly after blurting it out.

Aurous tilts her head again, her small smile gentle. “My mother has been teaching me for many years,” she says.

“But you’re…” the Sunnish princess shakes her head and lets out a trembling laugh. “This is…” she looks at me with wide eyes as awe-filled as my own. “What have you gotten me into?”

The dragon laughs that gorgeous, warming laugh of hers. “Come,” she says. “We have a long way to go, and now that I’m finally free, I’m eager to leave this place where I was born.”

She doesn’t seem to mind the rough shells beneath her feet, crossing toward the curving path like she’s used it many times before, confident and calm.

“The other eggs.” Sheelan’s not done with her questions or the awkward way she asks, Aurous pausing to look back at her with a curious expression.

My kinspark’s distress has the dragon stopping and turning toward her while I struggle to regain my autonomy.

It’s gone, lost to the stunning creature I’ve come here to find, and I must shake loose of this hold she has on me if I’m to regain control of myself.

Aurous looks around at the ground, a graceful gesture encompassing them all. “My sisters,” she says. “What of them?”

Sheelan’s horror grows visibly. “I’m so sorry,” she says. “All of your siblings died?”

Her empathy seems to surprise the dragon, Aurous thinking it through as I breathe deeply and clench my fists.

Whatever’s come over me, I’m shedding it like a lizard’s skin, though I know that I’ll never be fully free of it.

Because I don’t want to be. But I can’t just follow this creature blindly.

I have to be independent, and though the kinspark fights me, I realize it’s the magic that bound me to her mother—that allowed us to communicate over great distance—that’s the real problem.

“When my mother knew she was failing, she began to spawn,” Aurous says, looking out over the cave. There’s an innocence to her that the voice in my head never had. “As it is often with the ancient of our kind, it took her many layings to produce one egg that was viable.”

Sheelan hugs herself. “They all died.”

“So I might live,” Aurous nods. “As is the way of things.”

“Aren’t you sad?” Sheelan must be thinking of her own loss, of her father’s recent death, her brother’s betrayal, because the princess’s cheeks are wet in the soft light that Aurous radiates.

The dragon ponders this for another long moment, enough time for me to separate myself far enough from her, to gain sufficient freedom, that I know it’s not through will of my own alone, but because Aurous chooses to let me go.

That should be frightening, but it’s not.

For someone who has hated being a pawn, I’m suddenly longing for her again.

“I… am not.” Aurous says with a faint hitch in her voice. She frowns, concern softening her eyes further as she turns to me, anxious and sad despite her words. “Should I be?”

“No,” I tell her, Sheelan shaking her head, her face even more horrified, though from regret, I think, more so than judgment of the dragon we’ve come to find.

“You survived because your mother made you to survive. If not you, then one of them.” I gesture as she had done, to take in the cave.

“Never question your right to exist instead of another.”

“I’m sorry,” Sheelan says, hugging Aurous abruptly, the dragon embracing her kindly back, her soft smile returning as the Sunnish woman clings to her. “I didn’t mean… I’m just sorry, Aurous. That’s all.”

“Thank you,” the golden woman says, kissing Sheelan lightly on the forehead when they part. She meets my gaze, squeezing my hand again. “Better?”

I nod, myself again, and yet linked more tightly to her than even Atlas or Zenthris or Sheelan. And yet to all of them just as bound. “I need to be able to act as myself.”

“I understand,” she says. “I’m new to this, you see.

Your patience is a gift, Remi.” She sighs.

“My mother’s teaching is vast, and her vault of knowledge immense.

I know what she knew. But she hid here for a century, long before Neem’s death, nurturing her brood, nurturing me, so there are things that I know, but that I do not yet know , if that’s clear?

” She scrunches her nose in the most adorable way.

“Nothing will teach me like experience, I fear.”

“Wait, you’re a century old?” Sheelan’s questions prove she’s not as entwined with Aurous as I am. Or perhaps my upbringing—raised not to push the boundaries of those who command me—make it easier for me to accept this is the way things will be.

No, I don’t believe that. I’ve been so far from that princess of Heald for far too long. Whatever binds me to Aurous, I believe now that I’m the lynchpin, so it makes sense that I’m the most under her influence.

“I am,” Aurous tells Sheelan. “Not very old at all, for a hatchling.” She turns and looks up the path. “I will answer every question you have of me, but we really need to go.”

“Of course,” Sheelan says, hurrying after her. I take up position last in line, though there’s nothing to guard against, that protectiveness I’ve been feeling unrelenting in its tension. I doubt Aurous will need me to fight for her, but I could be wrong.

“My mother gave me what was left of her power as she left me,” Aurous tells Sheelan when prompted.

“And I have my own, of course.” Of course, because she is a dragon.

I can’t lose sight of that, even in the vast love I already feel for her.

The casual assurance almost makes me laugh, a helpless feeling of near-hysteria, and yet delicious joy bubbles inside me.

“You were a dragon,” Sheelan says, puffing a bit as our new companion sets a fast pace.

Aurous instantly slows as she realizes the Sunnish woman is straining to keep up. “I chose this form instead,” she says. “It seemed wise, considering we have far to travel, and my hatchling one would draw too much attention.”

“Smart,” I say.

“Very,” Sheelan agrees. “Does that mean you can turn back into a dragon whenever you want?”

I don’t remind her that Aurous can’t stop being a dragon, the semantics somehow important to me even if we all know what Sheelan means. But it’s a silly thing to say, and I let it go as the dragon answers.

“When the time comes,” Aurous says, finally grim, at least as far into that as she can manage while still radiating that wonderful sense of calm and care, “I will take my dragon form for good. But not until I need to.” She flashes us a smile over her shoulder as we near the top.

“I think I’ll be having far too much fun in this body to do so before I have to. ”

She pauses at the top then, gaze turning toward the opening. I reach out to Sheelan to hold her back, to delay her following Aurous, but I don’t need to, my hand closing on her shoulder while she’s already stopped.

We stay at the threshold as the dragon goes to her mother, walking along the spines of her tail, disappearing past the dusty, golden corpse.

“Remi.” Sheelan breathes my name into the darkness that Aurous’s distance leaves us in, turning toward me and embracing me, her head on my shoulder. “This is…”

“I know,” I say, throat thick with emotion. “I wasn’t expecting—”

“Are you coming?” I look up to find Aurous has returned, her glow beckoning to us as much as one of her hands.

Sheelan takes my fingers in her small ones, the two of us walking forward together, joining the dragon next to the body of her mother. I reach out and stroke the scales of the giant tail, heart breaking all over again.

“We thought you’d want a moment with her,” Sheelan says.

Aurous’s hand covers mine. “I’ve said my farewells to my mother, long before this,” she tells us.

“We knew she wouldn’t survive the last power she expended to protect these lands that were hers to safeguard.

” She lets her touch fall away. “I am very proud of her for her sacrifice. When Neem was killed, she did her best to free her sister’s magic.

And when she failed, alone and without the support of her siblings, my mother chose me to do what she could not.

” She shrugs, a delicate and deliberate motion.

“She has spent twenty-five years using her power to influence the lands of the north and the south, to ward off the disease that is what Neem’s murder created, so many layers, so many threads, all come together here, now.

In you,” she points at me, “and you,” another nod follows for Sheelan, “and in Atlas, Zenthris.”

“Are you our fifth?” I do have a question after all. “Are we complete?” But no, wait. She said I gathered four already.

“I am not,” she tells me. “But I am the source of your kinspark. Mother made sure of it.”

There’s so much I need to know. Atlas will understand it, no doubt. For now, one thing is certain. “We have to go home.”

“We do,” she says. “As quickly as possible.” Aurous cups Sheelan’s face in her hands. “Daughter of the Sun,” she says. “Will you help us in our flight to the north?”

“Of course,” Sheelan says. “I’ll do anything for you.” She turns her head, dark eyes fixing on me. “For you both.” When she shudders, Aurous releases her. “And them.” I know she means the men who wait for us. “Is it just magic, then? That makes me feel this way?”

She has the right to ask. And for the first time, the dragon does seem sad, authentically so, tragically.

“In a way,” she says. “Without the kinspark, your loyalties would remain with your family, yes.”

“And did you or your mother cause the madness in my brother?” Sheelan’s not accusing, but the question is.

“I did not,” Aurous tells her. “And no, not my mother, either. That, I fear, is the fault of the tainted power stolen from our sister, Neem, that spreads faster than ever.” It’s good to confirm it, at least in my own mind.

Aurous frowns, sorrow turning to a quiet anger that simmers in the glow around her, little sparks firing off in her aura.

“Brought here by the one who laid Neem low.”

“Hallick,” Sheelan and I say together, exchanging a look.

I’d already planned to kill him, if Theille hasn’t beaten me to it. And though I previously accused him of the damage done to Sheelan’s family, I have even more reason to destroy him now, though I’ll have to fight Sheelan for the privilege.

“I will go with you,” the princess says, jaw tight, chin lifting. “And I will avenge my father’s death, my brother’s corruption, if it’s the last thing I do.”

“Hopefully not,” Aurous tells her with a soft touch to the tip of Sheelan’s nose from one shining index finger, then looks at me. “Remi?”

“I’m yours,” I say, unbidden, without reservation, despite myself. “Always.”

Aurous’s eyes brim with tears, and I think she’s about to speak when she shakes her head and turns away. “Then let us leave this place,” she says. “We have very far to go, and I’d really like to find something to wear.” She shivers, hugging her hair around her. “How do you tolerate this skin?”

***