They walked until sundown, only stopping twice when Leida had to attend her body’s demands. She kept a steady pace with Magnus, staying a little behind him as they navigated their way through the dense wood. They didn’t speak, for which she was glad. Her thoughts were in a tangled whirl, especially since the interlude by the stream. She wasn’t ready for conversation, even the most inconsequential small talk. The monotonous activity of placing one foot in front of the other and keeping Magnus’s broad back in sight served to calm her emotions, even if her feet ached by the time he called a brief halt. The sun had disappeared into the west, and the moon, still bright and nearly full, drifted low in the twilight sky.

Magnus paused at the base of an ancient oak, its thick sheltering arms creating a canopy of shadows that swayed and shifted on the ground. Leida walked past him, sitting down with a graceless thump. Her pack created a cushion between her back and the tree’s rough bark, and she sighed with relief at being off her feet. It was with some irritation that she stared up at Magnus, noting he seemed none the worse for wear after the long trek. He gazed at her, amusement dancing in his slanted eyes. The pale light filtering through the branches made the silver in his dark hair glow, and carved shadowed hollows into his thin, haughty face.

“You’re tired,” he said.

She felt no compunction to deny it. “Very,” she admitted, “but I don’t want to stop too long. We’ve made good time today, yes?”

He nodded. “Aye, we have, even though we had to walk.”

Leida smiled, hearing the derision in his voice. “It is much more dignified to fly, true.”

Magnus lowered his own pack, rummaging in it until he pulled out a colorful bundle she recognized as their food satchel. He didn’t look at her as he untied it. “Yes, it is. And much faster. You may call it pride, Leida. I prefer to think of it as efficiency. Unfortunately, we walk in the daylight. I have no wish to be shot down by some vainglorious farmhand with visions of adding ‘Dragonslayer’ to his family name. There aren’t many humans so understanding as yourself concerning the close proximity of a dragon.”

The thought of such a thing happening to him made her stomach lurch, and she stared at the honey bread he gave her with little appetite. A memory surfaced, a fearful time when in her sixth year as his favorite, he’d limped into the caverns, snorting with pain. She and the other servants had been horrified to see two thick arrow shafts protruding from the broken scales on his right side. Between the skilled hands of an ancient wood sprite named Dagden, and Magnus’s own considerable magic, he was able to heal in less than a month. But that time was burned into her mind, of days when he’d laid his huge head in her lap, panting and suffering as Dagden cleaned the wound. She had sung to him in those moments, even as her voice cracked with fear and wavered off key, no longer the beguiling instrument that first lured him to her.

“What dark thoughts plague you, Leida? If you worry for your child, we will fly longer, even into the dawn. It will be risky, but it will lessen our journey time.”

A frisson of warmth suffused her. He may have taken the fair Sivatte as his favorite and still nursed a grudge toward Leida for stealing from him, but somewhere in that great dragon heart, he still cared for her. Her cheeks heated, and she was glad for the darkness. He also still desired her, if his lovemaking at the stream’s edge and the promise of more were any indications.

“I’m eager to see Vala,” she said, picking apart the bread to chew on small pieces. “She is everything to me, and I miss her greatly. But she’s safe in caring hands.”

There was no mistaking the downturn of his mouth as she spoke of her daughter, or the flinching quickly hidden. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him he was mistaken in thinking she’d lain with another who had gotten her with child. But he would learn soon enough. One look at Vala’s eyes, and he would know. And then what? Dragon males were fiercely protective of their offspring. Magnus had already incubated and raised a male and four female hatchlings to adulthood. His pride in them was obvious, even the male, Ariadoc, born with a twisted wing and unable to fly.

But this child was human, sired by Magnus when he was in human guise. Leida had heard of such progeny, rare though they were. Most often they had been as welcome in the dragon community as the full bloods. They were long-lived, inheriting the powerful magic of dragonkind. She’d already seen hints of it in Vala, young as she was. What would Magnus think when he discovered Vala was his? What would he do? Few of the scenarios she imagined gave any comfort.

She chewed slowly on her supper, accepting the flask of wine Magnus handed her with softly spoken thanks. He crouched next to her, watching the darkening sky. Moonlight danced across his features, and she thought him the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. The wine was sweet on her tongue, soothing to her parched throat as she drank deeply.

“Careful with that. You will be flat on your back if you imbibe Gersel’s spiced wine in such a fashion.” His vibrant green eyes, shrouded to shades of gray, glittered in the half light as she licked a stray drop from the corner of her mouth.

Leida passed the flask back to him, already feeling euphoric from the wine’s effect. “Your warning comes too late, I think. I feel dizzy.” She leaned her head back against the tree, gazing upward at the white stars winking back at her from the clear spaces between the oak’s branches. A sigh and a chuckle drifted to her ears.

“Too late, indeed. We’ll wait a bit before we fly. The effects are strong but pass swiftly enough, even in a human.”

She turned her head, blinking slowly as her vision spun in an arc and finally caught up with the movement. Magnus appeared blurred around the edges as he dug once more into his pack, pulling out a pipe and small leather bag. Even in her inebriated state, it surprised her to see him with it. In all the years as his favorite, not once had she ever seen him partake of pipe smoking. He’d never been convinced of its virtues or its vice. “Were I meant to breathe smoke from my nose and mouth,” he’d told her once, disdain strong in his voice, “I would have been born a firedrake.” The sneering curl to his lip let her know exactly what he thought of firedrakes.

Magnus must have felt her watching him as he packed the pipe bowl, for he turned his head, giving her a faintly amused look. “There are moments, few and far between, in which I will admit my haste in stating an opinion. This is a soothing ritual.”

Leida laughed, her eyes widening as a hiccup followed the laughter. “You mean you admit when you’re wrong?”

He arched a dark eyebrow at her, giving an audible sniff of disdain.

“I am never wrong, only misunderstood.” The knowing humor in his eyes told her he made light of his sometimes overweening pride.

She hiccupped again, smothering a giggle. “Forgive me,” she gasped, “I didn’t know the wine was so strong.”

He waved away her apology, even as a small bright flame shimmered to life between his fingers, and he lit the tobacco in the pipe, blowing gently on it until it caught. Leida recognized the spell. It was a simple one he’d taught her in her first year of service to him. One she could no longer invoke with the silver-clad iron choker wrapped around her throat like some venomous serpent. She picked at the delicate links, suppressing the urge to try to claw it off her neck. The sweet scent of tobacco smoke teased her nostrils as Magnus drew on the pipe and watched her.

“I won’t remove the choker, Leida. You’ll not use my own magic against me to hide yourself and run again. I’d prefer not to waste another four years searching for you.”

Confusion welled in her, along with the small hope she’d held close and almost refused to acknowledge in case she was wrong. “Why would it matter now? You have your precious ring back. Why hunt me again?”

Magnus drew long on the pipe, releasing the smoke through his nose and mouth in leisurely fashion. He gazed at her from the corner of his eye, a measuring look that made her breath hitch in her chest. “What makes you think this has anything to do with some innocuous trinket?”

She wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly cold. “Revenge is it? A way to draw a little blood for hurting your pride?”

He snorted, his voice turning waspish. “Tell me, Leida, beyond the precautions I’ve taken to keep you close, what have I done to exact this revenge you speak of?” The look in his eyes dared her to blacken their earlier intimacy.

Her throat closed up, clogged with tears that also blurred her vision. It took two tries to clear her voice and speak with some semblance of normalcy. “It isn’t what you’ve done. It’s what you will do.” Gods, but it would hurt to the depths of her being once they returned to his caverns, and she took her place as his lowest servant while he paraded his current favorite before her.

Magnus blew out a rush of smoke, emptied the pipe bowl of its contents, and stamped out the still red coals with his boot. The pipe stem snapped in his fingers as he pinned her with a hard glare. “What I will do? What dark things do you believe me capable of, Leida? What revenge do you believe is appropriate for a lover who deserts her mate, steals from him, takes another lover, and bears his child?”

He’d risen to stand over her, his face twisted with a snarling anger. It might have frightened her had she not grown so angry herself, spurred on by the temporary courage of the dragon wine. She rose to face him, resentment and rage bubbling out of her in a cleansing river.

“Why can’t I take a lover? You’re a fine one to pass judgment on me! How do you think it felt when you courted the fair Sivatte before my very eyes?” She began to pace, hands on her hips. “I have my pride as well, Magnus, inferior human that I am. Did you really believe I’d wait until you escorted me to some far off city, spouting platitudes about the transitory affections of dragons?” She swatted his hand away as he reached for her and asked the question that had burned in her gut for four years. “How long did it take after I left for Sivatte to become a favorite?”

Magnus’s stare was icy as he answered, his words clipped. “Three days.”

Leida closed her eyes, the bravado of the previous moments seeping away, only to be replaced with a wrenching sadness. “Three days.” Her laughter sounded hollow to her ears. “I remember those days. I traveled with a family of fortune tellers along the base of the Riori Mountains and wondered if you missed me at all.” She cleared her throat again, wiping at the tears which managed to escape her lashes. “Obviously not. After all, what is a farmer’s daughter with a damaged voice when compared to an elfin maiden who sings down the gods?”

She didn’t know what to expect from him then, mockery and scorn, surprise that she had been hurt by his actions, amusement at her jealousy, but nothing prepared her for the reaction she got.

Her yelp of surprise echoed through the trees as Magnus reached out and grabbed her shoulders, shaking her until she curled her fists into his shirt and begged him to stop.

He pushed her from him, his face white with fury. Chills raced across her back, and she flushed, confused by the deep disappointment, the insult in his eyes. “You hide your thoughts well, Leida of the Far Lands. In all the years you lived in my household and shared my bed, I never once suspected your regard of me was so low.” His voice was scathing, and she wondered how he managed to so neatly turn the tables on her, once more making her the accused. “And you name me pernicious.”

She watched, struck speechless, as he dropped his hands as if she burned him, turning away, and stalking to where their gear lay. He gathered the broken pipe, tobacco pouch and flask, shoving them into his pack. When he turned back to face her, it was with a face devoid of any emotion. “It’s time to leave. We’ve a short walk to the Lomondari Cliffs. We’ll fly from there.”

He didn’t bother to see if she followed him, and Leida scrambled to catch up, grappling with her pack as she tracked Magnus through the growing shadows amongst the trees. The wine still held a light grip on her, but one that weakened rapidly as Magnus promised. The euphoria it brought was long gone, leaving despair and bewilderment in its wake. He hadn’t denied Sivatte, but somehow he’d made her feel guilty, muddled, and she bore the uneasy sense that her actions of four years ago might well have been a colossal mistake.

It would be nothing short of a miracle if he didn’t kill her before their journey’s end. Leida had tested his patience and control to the limit with her accusations, her insults that made him sound fickle, malicious even. Magnus might have thought she goaded him with the single-minded purpose of making him lose his temper if not for the stricken look in her eyes, the jealousy in her voice when she spoke of the elf woman, Sivatte.

Wind rushed over his wings as he flew high over the dark forest, seeing it thin in the distance to farm and grazing land dotted with gently rolling hillocks. As always, the thrill of flight soothed his troubled emotions, calmed him so he could think more clearly, work his way through the pits and traps of her words to discern the meaning behind them.

If he didn’t believe she would make an escape, he’d work his greatest magic, transform Leida for a short time so that she could feel the tickle of low-flying clouds beneath her belly, the stretch of wings across on her back. He snorted, steam rising from his nostrils to flow behind him. The gods knew she could benefit from any pastime that might curb her impulsiveness. She was human, but her nature was as mercurial as any dragoness he’d ever encountered.

Despite his anger with her, Magnus couldn’t help but preen when he transformed and saw her eyes light up, practically glowing as she viewed him in his true state, giant wings stretching out on either side of him, amber scales tipped with obsidian and emerald. He’d arched his neck, elongated nostrils flaring as she raised a hand, running it over his withers in a reverent caress. The scales there rose in reaction, sensitive to her lightest touch.

“Do you remember how to ride?”

Magnus could see his dragon voice startled her, its deep thrum powerful and echoing. Leida nodded and reached for the harness. He lowered his head to accept it, finding some small measure of amusement as she stilled, watching the flicker of his tongue near her ear as he tasted the air around her. She cleared her throat, her own voice carrying a teasing note overlaid with a measure of wariness.

“You aren’t thinking of…”

He rolled his eyes and finished her sentence for her. “Feasting on you? No, at least not as a dragon.” Even in the dark, he could see her blush at his allusion.

“Come, we’re wasting moonlight. Strap the packs to the harness and climb on. We’ve some distance to cover before we rest again.”

She nodded, quick to obey him, and soon they were soaring above the trees, skimming wisps of low-hanging clouds. Leida rode astride his neck, legs curled against his spine as she clutched the harness to maintain her seat.

Her slight weight didn’t slow him, and he wondered if she remembered earlier flights, when he swooped and spun in breathtaking aerial acrobatics, and she’d thrown back her head, laughing and shouting in sheer delight, gripping the harness to hang on. For now she was quiet, wrapped in a warm cloak he’d given her to shield her from the cold of night flight. Magnus felt a shift in her weight as she leaned forward, the faintest warmth of skin as she pressed her face against his scales. She’d fallen asleep, lulled by the rhythmic tempo of his wings as they beat the air.

They flew for hours, until a steady ache grew in his shoulders, and his wings tired of their constant motion. It was still dark when Magnus passed over a grassy hummock with a sheltering stand of willows and small lake at its base. He circled it twice before finally descending. Once he hovered a few feet above the ground, he curved his head toward his back, his long, serpentine neck giving him a large range of motion. As he suspected, Leida was still asleep on him.

“Leida,” he said as softly as dragon speech allowed, and she jerked upright, blinking at him with owl-eyed confusion. Strands of dark hair escaped from her braid, fluttering around her in the swift current caused by his rapidly beating wings.

He didn’t have to say anything else. They’d flown on long trips together before, and Leida was familiar with the precautions he took not to alert others of a dragon in the near vicinity. She slipped her feet out of the harness’s boot sleeves, sliding down Magnus’s stretched leg until she hung from one curving, silver claw. She released her hands, dropping to the ground with a soft grunt. The flap of his wings threatened to knock her over as she worked swiftly to unbuckle the harness and packs.

Once free of his burdens, Magnus emitted the same high whistle, changing once more into a man, clothed and shod as any human. He landed on his feet, agile as a cat, and grabbed the packs and harness with one smooth motion. No one would be the wiser that a dragon had landed here. Even the most experienced tracker would note only a set of footprints, that of a man and a woman.

He held out a hand, motioning to her. “Come, we’ll camp in the shelter of the trees and rest until midday. You can bathe if you wish, and I’ll bring a fresh kill.” Leida might have been happy enough with the bread and cheese packed by Gersel’s servants for their journey, but Magnus, even in human form, craved meat. His sharp dragon vision had noted fluttering movement in the stand of willows as he’d circled above them. Owls on the hunt meant there was game close by.

The graceful willows offered a haven of privacy beneath their drape of green leaves and slender, arching branches. Magnus placed a possessive hand against the small of Leida’s back, guiding her to one of the largest trees as she stumbled sleepily alongside him. By the time he’d made a bed of their blankets and situated their packs against the tree’s trunk, she was asleep once more, clutching one of the blankets under her chin.

Magnus gazed at her for long moments, noting the dark circles under her eyes, the pallor of her skin. He suspected the past week had drained her to the point of exhaustion. Her capture, her reunion with him, their flight to her village, the intense interlude by the stream bed, and all the emotional upheaval that came with it had finally worn her down. He pinched the bridge of his nose, almost as weary as she, but resolved to settle things between them.

For now, though, he would take advantage of the remaining darkness and find some decent food. He cast a protective ward on their camp site, one that gave a passerby a strong sense of avoidance. Armed with the small crossbow he’d unpacked, he trekked through the stand of trees, his senses far more acute than a true human’s. It didn’t take long for him to capture and kill two large hares. By the time he returned with the brace of rabbits, dressed and ready for roasting, Leida had awakened again. She sat up when she heard him approach.

Her eyes lit up at the sight of the hares, and she moved quickly to take them from him so he could start a small fire. “This is a fine catch,” she said. “Thank you. I’ve had only bread and a bit of fish for the past few days. This is a welcome change.”

Magnus sat down on the blankets she’d vacated, content to watch her prepare their meal. He reached for his pack, taking out the wine flask and broken pipe. As with her laces, he held the pieces of the pipe stem together, singing a wordless chant to meld the broken bits, making it whole once more.

“Will you sing for me later? When the meal is finished?” she asked.

He glanced at her over his shoulder as he pulled the pouch of tobacco from the pack. “Do you still enjoy dragon song, Leida?”

Her smile was both wistful and eager. “Yes, I do. I have always loved your singing. It is the music of the stars.”

Had she told him he was the most beautiful dragon in the world, such words would have paled against these. Dragons held song and those with the talent to produce it in high regard. His chest swelled with pride, and he gave her an indulgent smile as he packed the pipe bowl. “It will be my pleasure. I’m glad to hear you still have an affection for it.”

Her smile faded a little. “It’s only been four years, Magnus. It would take lifetimes for me to forget your voice.”

Magnus lit the pipe, drew deeply on it, and released a lazy swirl of

smoke from his mouth and nose before answering. “Would it? Did you remember my songs as you labored to bring your daughter into the world?” He could hear the sneer creeping into his words, but was helpless to stop it, the bitterness once more awake and alive in him.

Leida’s face paled, but she refused to glance away. “I did,” she said softly. “Their memory brought me comfort and eased the pain.”

He flushed, uncomfortable with a small, niggling guilt for his spite. “I am sorry you suffered.”

She sighed, the smile once more in place. “’Tis every woman’s burden and her joy.” Firelight reflected in her eyes as she searched his face, for what he couldn’t tell. “But thank you for your words.”

He nodded once, pleased to make her smile again. A comfortable silence fell between them as he continued to smoke, and she cooked their meal. They ate in silence as well, only making small talk when they cleaned up the remnants of supper and walked together to the lake to rinse their hands.

When they returned, Leida sat again on the blankets and Magnus stirred the coals of the dying fire. The sky had lightened to a pewter gray, the stars fading as the moon descended and dawn approached. “What song would you like to hear?” he asked her.

She bent her knees, wrapping her arms around her legs and tilting her head. “It doesn’t matter. I like all the songs.”

The embers continued to fade as Magnus took a breath and began to sing, a rich, low melody spun of dragon magic and ancient memories. He watched Leida’s face as he sang, watched its subtle changes as she fell beneath his voice’s bewitching allure. Her expression sent the blood racing through his veins, as it was one of rapture, as of a woman who had just found her greatest pleasure in her lover’s arms. He knew it was much like his own expression when he’d first heard her sing so many years earlier.

His song came to an end, falling away to a breathless quiet. Leida sat as if hypnotized, finally blinking and shaking her head to shrug off the effects of his voice. Her gray eyes darkened, a yearning drifting through their depths as she met his gaze.

“It’s as I remembered. A gift of the gods. You have a wondrous voice, Magnus.”

Magnus inclined his head in acknowledgment of her praise. He watched her as she rested her cheek on her knees, her own voice growing drowsy. “I know Vala would love to hear you sing.”

He went rigid at hearing the child’s name. The knowledge of her existence twisted his insides. He could push it to the back of his mind, save for those times, like now, when Leida insisted on reminding him of her. He brooded, remembering their earlier conversation, including the odd remark regarding her voice. He straightened, gazing at Leida with narrowed eyes, a realization growing within him.

“Leida,” he said. She lifted her head, eyebrows raised in question. “It’s your turn. Sing for me.”

Her panic-stricken expression confirmed his suspicions. His favorite, once blessed with the same quality of voice as the fair Sivatte, could no longer sing.