Nikolai’s heart froze. How did they always find out about these things? Last week, he’d knitted the broken leg, but before then, he hadn’t healed anyone for a few months. And now, someone had come looking for him.
Ngubi’s brows had drawn down. “You’re sure she asked about Nikolai?”
Mosode nodded. “He wasn’t close enough to hear, but she had long white hair with weird crystals woven in. Pale eyes, kinda blue. My son saw her clearly.”
Nikolai exchanged a glance with Ngubi. Those that came looking for him were always females.
Female versions of him.
“Thank you, Mosode,” Ngubi said.
“I wouldn’t come back for a while,” his nephew advised. “I will meet you at the rockpile with the tree that looks like a giraffe, in two nights, to tell you if she makes it here.”
Ngubi nodded, and he and Nikolai moved swiftly back through the village. Moments later, they’d left it behind and picked up a jog.
“Where are we going?” Nikolai asked.
“To the rockpile with the tree that looks like a giraffe,” Ngubi answered.
* * *
Aria dreamed.
She lay on a bed of soft grasses and stared up at the stars. Where was she? Usually when she dreamed, it was in realms she knew.
She didn’t know this place.
Aria sat up and looked out upon a meadow lit by moonlight and surrounded by huge, gnarled trees. Their spreading branches were, in places, so heavy they had dropped to touch the ground, only to sprout roots and grow new young trunks. Moisture clung to her skin and moss grew everywhere.
Someone walked toward her out of the trees. A man, as tall as a Legion Dragon, with broad shoulders and hair the color of steel hanging to his waist. He wore threadbare clothing that did nothing to disguise the muscles rippling beneath them, and when her gaze fell to his feet, she saw that everywhere they stepped, flowers sprang into bloom.
Startled, her eyes rose to his face, and she found herself riveted by gray irises so pale they were almost silver. A wide brow and high cheekbones flowed into a chiseled jaw—an impossibly perfect face.
Something glowed at his throat—an amulet on a thong, casting its blue light through the darkness and highlighting his jaw, the sculpted lips, and the long line of his nose.
Her heart did an odd flip and then fluttered. No man she’d ever seen could compare to this one. His movements powerful but graceful, he walked straight up to her and reached out with long fingers, touching her cheek so lightly—as though she was made of glass.
She longed to touch him, and so she did, her fingertips extending to trace the swell of his pectoral muscle beneath the thin shirt. His breath hitched, and his eyes flared pure silver, before an odd swirl of black drifted across them.
The blackness wasn’t just in his eyes. As she flattened her hands against his chest, it drifted off his skin. Like a fog, it swirled around her, enshrouding the two of them. She reached to trace that perfect jaw with trembling fingers...
And the world exploded. Thunder crashed, and the ground shook. The wind howled, sweeping away the man, the fog, and the meadow...
Aria woke up with a start. The cool night breeze rising off the barrenlands caressed her skin.
Her heart pounded from the dream. She’d had them a lot, as of late, and the big, silver-eyed man had been in a few. He was so compelling that he sometimes found his way into her daydreams, too.
Not just compelling. He was sexy as hell.
She sighed. Sometimes she wished for someone to scratch her occasional itch without complicating her existence. The dreams too often ended in frustration.
Aria sat up and stretched. She’d curled up beneath the sun to sleep for a few hours, preferring it to her tiny quarters in Udo’s stronghold. But now, as the sun set, it was time to return to the city.
She shook off the dream, spread her wings, and with three powerful beats was airborne.
In vivid contrast to the meadow in her dream, she flew over a devastated landscape. This region used to be a forest until the realm experienced a dramatic drought. The trees had died, and now their blackened stumps rose from the lifeless ground. The ever-present winds blew the exposed dirt into enormous dunes.
Aria let them drop away beneath her. Flying was as natural to Dragons as breathing, helping to clear her mind and put life’s issues into perspective.
