Page 25 of Wings of Frost and Fury (Merciless Dragons #4)

So yes, I feel the surface joy of clever joke, the comfort of a good meal, the pleasant haze of wine. But under that shallow layer of merriment or warmth, my deeper emotions are creatures of shadow with broken wings, fluttering in the dark thickets of my soul.

I’m too self-aware to think that I could ever rely on emotional potency, so I always plan my spells without it.

Usually, I have plenty of my own energy, and I employ various ingredients and crystals to supplement it as needed.

I know there is not enough positive emotion inside me to drawn upon.

It’s no use looking to my heart as an alternative source of power.

But this time when I search the thorny thickets of my heart, among the torn wings and icy shadows, there is something new.

A warm, golden energy, unfurling from the darkness.

This is no fragile flower—it has a sturdy golden root, running deep into my soul and branching outward, linked to another soul outside my body.

To use it, I have to name it, and I have to confess its source. It goes against every sardonic bone in my body, every caustic and careless impulse I’ve learned as a defense against softer feelings.

But I have no choice. I must name it, or die.

The emotion is love, and its source is my dragon.

I seize the love between us like the lifeline it is, and I surface back into the spell .

It’s strange coming out of that time-suspension, that blind trance.

I can see the cave again, the spell, the circle—and my fingers, paralyzed in the act of setting the eclipse gem on Ashvelon’s scale.

I place the gem and resume the spell, drawing from that rich gold inside me, from that connection we share.

Love fuels the transformation spell in the moments of its conclusion. Love fills the spaces where I don’t have enough energy left.

The last phrase leaves my lips: “to begin at sunset.”

And it’s done. The eclipse gem dissolves and dissipates, the light of my energy dies, and the candles wink out.

I have just enough vitality left for a flicker of existence.

My body topples sideways, utterly limp. I can’t move a muscle. All I can do is breathe shallowly and stare out of my mortal shell through half-closed eyes.

I’ve read about the enervation state, in which a sorcerer goes completely immobile while they recharge their energy, but I’ve never entered one myself. Thankfully, it isn’t permanent. After six or seven hours, I should be able to move and speak again, though I’ll still be exhausted and weak.

The stone floor vibrates beneath my body. Ponderous footfalls—the steps of a dragon.

Ashvelon’s muzzle brushes against my hair. “Thelise.”

I told him to wait by the entrance, even if I screamed. He must have thought everything was too quiet and looked back to check on me.

“Thelise,” he says, more urgently.

I can’t blink or give him any kind of sign. I can only stare.

His voice deepens with agony. “No… not you, too.” He groans heavily, wretchedly. “No, I can’t, I can’t fucking bear it.”

Shit, he thinks I’m dead. If I’d known I would go into the enervation state, I could have warned him about it. But I didn’t anticipate this .

I manage to move my eyes a bit, trying to signal to him that I’m alive, but he’s not looking at my face. He’s pressing his nose against my body, sniffing.

“You do not smell like death.” He sounds slightly reassured. “Perhaps you are injured from the magic.”

He rumbles anxiously a few times, then carefully picks me up in his front claws and drapes me on his nest. The strawlike grasses poke my skin, making it itch. I would rather die than lie here paralyzed for seven fucking hours.

“The nest is too rough,” Ashvelon mutters.

He moves away, but I can’t turn my head to see what he’s doing. After a while, he lifts me again and plops me on a different part of the nest, where he has covered the woven grasses with a few blankets. It’s actually quite soft and comfortable.

You precious beastie , I tell him in my mind. You’ve done so well. When I recover I’m going to fuck you until you can’t think straight.

The dragon settles his enormous body into the nest and curls himself partway around me.

“We should never have asked this of you,” he murmurs. “If the Bone-Builder saw fit to let our race end, we should have let it happen rather than sacrificing you to our need. Forgive me. Please forgive me, and live . That is my only wish.”

He nuzzles my face with his giant snout, flicking the tip of his tongue along my cheek.

“If you die, I will lay your bones on the meadows of Ouroskelle, with the bones of my kind,” he says solemnly.

“It will be a great honor for you. No other human’s bones are allowed to remain on the soil of this island.

But yours will grace the fields forever, and I will keep your skull here, in my cave.

I will carve your name on it, and I…” His voice trails off, and a heartsick groan shakes his body.

His head moves out of my line of sight, but I can hear the sobs in his throat and see the heaving of his armored chest.

I’m crying, too, tears slipping from my half-closed eyes… but I want to laugh at the same time. There’s nothing quite so annoying as emotion that is locked inside and can’t be released.

You big, adorable, ridiculous dragon. You sweet, gigantic, beautiful monster. I love you.

I don’t know what it means yet, loving him. It’s fucking inconvenient, and I’ll be damned if I live in a cave the rest of my life. But that’s a problem for another day.

Like the others of his kind, Ashvelon will be a dragon until sunset, at which point every male on Ouroskelle will take human form. And then we’ll see if I did everything right.