Page 81 of The Crown of the Dark Prince
He snorted, sending a puff of smoke curling around me, and bent low, extending one massive front leg like a ladder.
“You want me to just walk up your leg?” I blinked at him.
The Dragon’s head bobbed.
“What if I hurt you?”
He arched a scaly brow—if Dragons had brows—and gave an exasperated huff, the sound so human it startled a laugh out of me.
Still, I hesitated. He was massive, easily twenty feet tall, and there was no feasible way I could clamber up without looking completely ridiculous. Iglanced up at him, the steady rise and fall of his belly, the gleam of sharp, dangerous claws only a few feet away. My nerves tangled into a tight knot.
Clay stomped his leg in irritation, snapping his jaws just shy of my head.
“Oh, hush! I’m thinking!”
He huffed again, softer this time, smoke curling lazily around his snout.
Drawing a breath, I pushed my magic downward—through my chest, down my legs—until it lifted me in one sudden, buoyant rush. I landed awkwardly atop his back, gripping his scales for balance as he shook slightly beneath me, his body vibrating in what might have been Dragon laughter.
“See? That was easier for both of us,” I said, patting his warm, golden scales affectionately.
His head turned, one slitted eye watching me with smug satisfaction. He shook out his neck, wings unfurling wide like the sails of a ship.
“Wait—” My voice pitched higher as I realized what he was about to do. “Clay, don’t you da—”
The world dropped out from under me. My scream ripped through the air as Clay pushed off the peak, his wings slicing through the wind with a deafening crack. I threw my magic out instinctively, anchoring myself like a strap to his back as the ground fell farther and farther away.
The first few moments were sheer, unfiltered terror. The rush of wind whipped at my face, tore at my hair, stole the breath from my lungs. My heart hammered wildly, and I squeezed my eyes shut, refusing to look down.
But then, slowly, the panic ebbed. The rush of flight turned exhilarating, and I cracked one eye open.
The desert sprawled beneath us, the golden sand dunes rolling on for miles, glowing in the morning sunlight. I grinned despite myself, lifting my head to feel the wind on my face.
“This is insane,” I called out, though I knew he couldn’t hear me.
Somehow, I felt his response anyway.
You love it.
And, annoyingly, he was right.
Chapter Twenty Three
Clay landed in a clearing outside the palace, and I kept my back to him as he shifted and dressed. I focused on the familiar silhouette of the castle in the distance. It looked exactly the same as it had before we left—its spires cutting into the grey sky—but somehow, everything felt different.
Wrong.
Every breeze that brushed my cheek carried with it a shiver of unease, like the wind itself whispered a warning I couldn’t quite hear.
“Come on,” Clay said softly, stepping forward and taking my hand.
His fingers entwined with mine, and his thumb traced soothing circles across the back of my hand. It was a thoughtless gesture—one I doubted he even realized he was doing—but it pulled me out of my haze of dread, forcing me back to reality.
He was engaged. I was engaged.
As much as I enjoyed that feeling of his hand in mine, I would never have more of him than that.
Clay tugged me gently forward, oblivious to the knot of unease tangling itself in my chest. We hurried through the palace halls, his grip firm, his mind clearly elsewhere. The courts people, on the other hand, weren’t asdistracted. They stared openly at our intertwined hands, eyes widening, whispers curling through the corridors like smoke.
