Page 70 of Silver Slayer

Her expression softened as she looked from the cushion to me. “You planned all of this before you came looking for me?”

“I promised you a tour of the Huren jungle. This craft is much safer than the rovers.”

The answering warmth through our shared essence strengthened. Quin lowered herself onto the cushion and tucked her legs to one side, close enough that her shoulder nearly brushed my knee once I took the pilot’s seat.

I turned sideways and forced my hips between the narrow arms of the chair. The hard edges bit into my thighs, and the backrest ended well below my shoulders. Vallon had laughed until he could barely breathe the first time I attempted to sit in it. After several hurs inside the cursed thing, I had learned there was nodignified way for a Valosian warrior to fit into a seat built for a Gretolic.

“That’s a whole lot of warrior crammed in that seat.” Quin chuckled. “Comfortable?”

“Extremely.”

“That grimace says otherwise.”

“This is my expression of complete contentment.”

“Right.”

I settled my palm over the sphere and pinged the comm. Zikkar, the tech on duty, answered from the control center inside the palace, granting me clearance through the dome.

Above us, the translucent shielding shimmered. The distortion moved outward in widening circles until a small portal appeared near the top of the dome, no more than a dark opening against the pale morning sky.

“You do know how to fly this, correct?” Quin’s excitement sharpened into nervousness as I increased the craft’s power.

I looked down at her.

Her eyes narrowed. “That hesitation did not inspire confidence.”

“I was deciding how offended I should be.”

“Vennox.”

“It is safe.” I curled my fingers slightly against the control sphere. “Vallon and I spent the whole of the dark hurs flying across Valose while he taught me.”

“You just learned to fly this thing last night?”

“Yes. During the previous suns-fall,” I said, guiding the sphere upward, and the craft lifted without sound.

Quin’s hands shot forward and flattened against the transparent hull as the ground dropped away beneath us. Rows of rovers and Gretolic craft diminished below, followed by the pale pathways and clustered huts of Huren. The palace rose at the city’s center, its towers catching the first full light of the twin suns while the translucent dome cast a faint wave over everything beneath it.

“Oh my God,” she whispered.

The open portal widened as we approached. I kept the craft steady and guided us through the center. For a single breath, the shimmer of the shielding slid over the hull like a ripple of heat. Then we were outside.

Quin looked down through the floor as the portal sealed. The dome became whole again, its curved surface barely visible except where the suns-rise shone across the shielding.

“That was amazing.” Her hands remained planted against the hull as if she feared the transparent surface might disappear beneath her palms. “Terrifying, but amazing.”

“I told you it was safe.”

“You told me you learned to fly it a few hours ago.”

“I’m a fast learner.” I laughed at her wry expression and angled the craft east.

The jungle stretched beneath us in an endless expanse of silver trunks and luminous blue foliage. From above, the canopy appeared almost solid, broken only by the occasional rise of an enormous yulin tree or a wetlock sweeping over the treetops in the distance. The new light of the twin suns moved across theleaves in broad waves, dulling the last of their nighttime glow while deep shadows remained trapped between the layers of vegetation.

Quin leaned forward until her face was inches from the hull. Her earlier nervousness vanished beneath pure fascination.

The trees gradually thinned as the land sloped toward the eastern coast. Dense jungle gave way to lower growth clinging to pale cliffs, and then the Caspeen Sea opened before us.