Total pages in book: 160
Estimated words: 161615 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 808(@200wpm)___ 646(@250wpm)___ 539(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 161615 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 808(@200wpm)___ 646(@250wpm)___ 539(@300wpm)
She could feel his tongue beneath her—massive, wet velvet, and alive. It shifted against her bare skin, adjusting her position like she was nothing more than a morsel to be savored. The texture dragged across her breasts, her belly, the sensitive flesh of her inner thighs. And then—intentionally or not—the tip of his tongue pressed between her legs.
Sol gasped. “Oh!!”
The pressure was brief but devastating. Hot, wet muscle sliding against her most sensitive flesh, tasting her arousal, feeling how slick she'd become. “Oh!!”
Her hips jerked involuntarily, grinding against that velvety wet tongue before she could stop herself.
Pyrran groaned again—a sound of tortured pleasure that vibrated through his entire jaw and straight into her core.
He had tasted her.
Truly tasted her.
And from the way his body shuddered, from the fresh spill of silver she glimpsed dripping from between his hind legs, he had liked it.
Then, his breath surrounded her in humid waves, carrying that scent of black violet and roses. The inside of his mouth glowed faintly silver, illuminating the ridged roof above her, the glistening walls of scale and flesh.
He could crush her. She knew this with absolute certainty. One flex of his jaw and her bones would splinter like dry twigs. One swallow and she would disappear into the furnace of his belly.
But he didn't bite down.
Instead, Pyrran began to take her away.
"BROTHER, NO!" Korin's roar shook the cavern. She heard him transforming behind her—the crack of bone, the hiss of scale—but it was too late.
Pyrran was already moving with her captured in his jaw.
His wings beat once, twice, and then the world tilted violently as he launched himself into the air, taking her with him.
No! No! No!
Wind screamed past Sol's ears. They rose so fast that the golden lake shrank below them. The walls of the cavern blurred into streaks of black and crystal.
Higher!
Higher!
Sol couldn't breathe.
Couldn't think.
Could only scream as Pyrran carried her up through that terrible opening in the mountain's peak—through the heat and the glow.
And then they burst free.
The sky exploded around them.
OH GODS NO!!!!!!!
Sol gasped as cold air slammed into her body. Above her stretched an endless expanse of blue—so bright, so vast, so open that her mind couldn't process it.
And below. . .
Dear Goddess!!
Below her lay a chain of mountains unlike anything she had ever seen. They rose from the ocean like the spines of sleeping giants—dozens of them, all carved hollow, all connected by bridges of black stone and rivers of gold. Towers jutted from their peaks. Courtyards sprawled across their slopes. This wasn't just a lair.
It was a kingdom.
A dragon kingdom.
Built into the bones of the earth itself.
But Sol barely had time to marvel before Pyrran climbed higher.
Higher!
The air grew thin.
Cold.
Her lungs burned.
The mountains shrank to toys, to pebbles, to nothing. The ocean became a silver mirror. The clouds approached like a floor of white silk.
She could hear Korin roaring somewhere far below—a desperate, furious sound—but it grew fainter with every wingbeat.
With her still trapped in his jaw, Pyrran burst through more clouds.
And suddenly, Sol was floating above the world.
Nothing below but white. Nothing above but dark blue. The sun burned like a distant god, and she was so high that the curve of the planet seemed visible at the edges of her vision.
She couldn't breathe correctly.
Couldn't think.
Could only feel the terrible grip of Pyrran's jaws and the weight of gravity waiting below.
And then. . . Pyrran opened his mouth and tossed her in the air.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sol screamed as she tumbled free, her body spinning through the frozen air.
Her stomach plummeted before the rest of her did—that sickening lurch of gravity claiming her, yanking her insides upward while the world rushed down. Her hair whipped violently above her head, a wild black halo against the endless blue. The cold seared her naked skin like a thousand tiny blades, burning where it should have frozen.
Tears ripped sideways from her eyes, stolen by the wind before they could fall.
For one heartbeat, she saw Pyrran's silver eyes watching her from above—cold, calculating, and utterly without mercy. His voice followed her down. "If you are truly a dragon, then surely, you can fly?"
NOOOOOOOO!!!!!
And then he laughed.
The sound was nothing like Korin's warm rumble. This laugh was cruel and crystalline, sharp as shattering ice, echoing off the clouds themselves as if the sky had learned to mock her. It rang in her ears long after it should have faded—cold, ancient, and utterly without pity.
The sound chased her as she fell.
Fell through the clouds.
Fell through the sky.
Fell toward the ocean, the mountains, and death itself.
Sol screamed.
And screamed.
And screamed.
Chapter forty-three
The One Who Fell
Sol
I don’t want to die!
Sol fell.
The world vanished in a single violent gasp of white.
The clouds devoured her, dragging her into their frozen belly, spinning her end over end until she no longer knew where the sky ended and the sea began.