Bile rose in her throat, accompanied by a terror that froze her body in place. Magnus watched her, his severe features impassive. But there was a knowing look in the vibrant green eyes, an awareness of the reason for her fright. Leida had already told him her voice was ruined; however, his initial lack of reaction to the news led her to hope he had missed the comment, too intent on her remarks regarding Sivatte. She should have known better. Magnus missed very little.

“I can’t sing, Magnus,” she said, shaking her head. “At least not in the way I once could.” His silence made her squirm. “Have you nothing to say?”

He unfolded his long frame from its sitting position, rising gracefully to pace in front of her. “You say you damaged your voice. How? Were you injured? You never spoke to me of it, and I saw no wounds on you.” He stopped, pinning her with a hard stare.

Leida licked her lips, feeling much like a child caught in an infraction. How many times, she wondered, could she incite his wrath before he finally lost every last bit of that phenomenal control and strangled her? She rubbed her damp palms over her knees.

“Leida?”

One deep breath, and she plunged into her tale, talking fast in the hopes she wouldn’t become completely incoherent before she was finished. “I wanted to improve my singing, make it even better than it was. I practiced every free moment.” She smiled a bit sadly, thinking of Magnus’s elderly wood sprite. “Dagden threatened to gag me with her apron if I didn’t give her some rest from ‘all that incessant howling.’”

Magnus chuckled. “Dagden has never had an appreciation for the finer points of a well-sung melody.” He sobered almost instantly. “Continue. I can sense you hesitating in the telling.”

Leida cleared her throat, annoyed at how easily he could discern her emotions. “I hit notes I’d never hit before, and you noticed. I saw your surprise when I sang for you on the eve of your trip to Meck’s Laketown.”

A sob caught in her throat. It was her last happy night with him, when he praised her voice with great enthusiasm and loved her into the dawn. When he left for the lakeside town, she had felt secure in his affection, sated and warmed by his loving. He didn’t tell her why he traveled to Laketown, only that she and two other human servants were to meet him there later that evening. The scene she came upon that night still sickened her with its memory.

Magnus came to crouch in front of her, lifting her chin with one finger, forcing to look at him when she tried to lower her head and hide within the sheltering folds of her skirts. “It was then, wasn’t it?” His voice turned brittle. “It was then that you changed, became someone I no longer knew.” He held her jaw in a firmer grip. “What was it, Leida, that made you turn on me? Withdraw so far that I soon rested my head in the lap of a stranger with a familiar face? A woman who no longer sang when I asked and stared at me with such revulsion?”

Leida jerked her head, wrenching away from his hold. She stood up, skirting out of reach as he rose with her. The festering anger once again bubbled to the surface, and she was relieved that her voice sounded firm and even when she answered him. “I saw you with Sivatte,” she said. Her eyes narrowed as she glared at Magnus. “And you’re a fine one to speak of lying in a stranger’s lap. You had your head in hers, your eyes closed as she stroked your hair and cast her spell with her voice. You looked like a man who had just found his pleasure between a woman’s thighs. I imagine you did that too, before I came across the two of you on the edge of that farmer’s field.”

There was a cautious note to his question. “Why didn’t you call out?”

Leida gasped, stunned by what she considered pure idiocy. “Surely, you jest.” She flung out her arms in exasperation. “What exactly might I have said, Magnus? ‘Hello, would you mind not seducing my master? He already has a favorite. Me.’” She fisted her hands, hiding them in her skirt so he couldn’t see the true measure of her rage, her hurt. “What would you have done had the situation been reversed?”

His black brows slammed together in a dangerous scowl. “I would have torn the bastard’s arms from his body and left his entrails for the farmer to use as fertilizer for his fields.”

Leida’s eyes widened. Magnus’s voice was heavy with jealousy, and she might have found some small joy in it were it not for the gruesome image he described. She shuddered, knowing he would have carried out such a deed without a second thought.

“This is about you, Leida, not Sivatte.”

Her knuckles went white. If she sported longer fingernails, she would have bloodied her palms. “Oh, this is definitely about Sivatte, Magnus,” she snarled. “In fact, all roads lead back to your pretty elf.”

The tears couldn’t be held back, and they cascaded over her cheeks, and it was now she who paced in front of him, hugging herself in lonely comfort. “I didn’t want to believe,” she murmured. “I didn’t want to believe you were courting another favorite. But how could I not? I saw her, heard her.” Magnus’s face blurred before her eyes. “I’d never heard singing like that. Neither human nor dragon could match a voice such as hers.” Leida sniffled, wiping at her tears with shaking hands. “And she was far more than I could ever be. Long-lived, ageless. She would be young and beautiful long after my bones had turned to dust.”

Leida hiccupped once, no longer willing to look at Magnus. She sensed his stillness, a tense waiting as if he would spring on her once she finished her tale. “You went to Lakeltown several times that month, and I knew why. I held some hope that maybe I wouldn’t lose you altogether if I just continued to improve my voice. After all, you seemed to still enjoy it when I sang or recited poetry to you.”

“I have always found great pleasure in your voice, among other things.”

She dredged up a small smile. “I counted on that. But practice wasn’t enough. I could drive Dagden to sheer madness and it wouldn’t be enough.” She did glance up at him then, seeing a new sympathy in his eyes. “So I used dragon magic, an arcane spell in one of your books. It was supposed to sweeten a dragon’s voice, so I tried it on myself.”

Magnus’s face bled of all color, his pupils expanding so that his green eyes turned black. Leida rubbed at her arms, her stomach roiling as he stared at her in horror. She swallowed a scream as he lunged for her, lifting her from under her arms and slamming her against the sheltering willow’s trunk. He crushed her against the tree with his body, and she could feel the violent tremors coursing through him.

“Had you gone mad?” he said, forcing the words out between clenched teeth. His thin face was so drawn it looked skull-like. “Do you realize you might have killed yourself with your own stupidity?”

Leida squirmed in his hold, accomplishing nothing more beyond tiring herself out. “I didn’t think it would be so dangerous.” Her voice broke on a sob, and she abruptly sagged in his arms. “It didn’t work, Magnus. I thought someone had ripped out my throat, it hurt so badly. I was afraid to tell you what I’d done.”

His grip lightened, changing to a comforting embrace as he stepped back, taking her with him. “I remember. You were hoarse. Dagden thought it was a cold, but neither of us understood why her draught didn’t work to heal you.”

Leida felt his chest expand on a long drawn breath, and he spoke again.

“Ah, Leida, why would you do something like this? Your singing was a thing of beauty, but not worth dying for.”

She used his shirt to swipe at her dripping nose and dry her tears. His eyes still looked black, his face still pale, but the shock was gone, replaced with a pained regret and some other emotion that made her breath hitch in her chest. She shrugged. “It was a pointless endeavor anyway. As you’ve admitted, Sivatte became your favorite three days after I left.” He shook his head when she repeated the same insult she’d used in the judgment chamber. “Dragons are indeed capricious.”

Her eyes closed as he tilted her head back, stroking her neck and the underside of her jaw with his fingertips. His breath fanned across her cheekbones as he spoke. “They can be. Capricious and greedy, prideful and short-tempered.” Leida sighed when he touched her forehead with a light kiss. “Look at me, Leida.”

She opened her eyes again, drained and docile in his embrace. Magnus’s gaze was intense, willing her to look at him, to listen. “It is true Sivatte is a favorite, but she isn’t my favorite. I courted her for Ariadoc. She belongs to my son.”

Leida was certain her heart stopped beating for a moment, before starting again and pounding in her ears like a war drum. “What are you saying?” she whispered.

His mouth twisted, caught somewhere between a frown and a smile. “You are a suspicious, foolish favorite, with a poor opinion of your master. Because of Ariadoc’s twisted wing, he will never fly fast enough to mate with a dragoness. He asked me to help him find a favorite. Sivatte was perfect for him, and the last I heard, she is as beguiled with him as he is with her.”

It was stunning news, and she felt the urge to both laugh and scream. A ruined voice and four years of misery, lightened only by the joy of her daughter’s presence—it could have been avoided had she just possessed the courage to ask him what he was about.

“I would have told you, had you asked. There were no secrets. But you expressed little interest in my trips to Meck’s Laketown, so I didn’t mention it.”

She thought of Vala, three years old and blessed with the magic passed on by the father she had yet to meet. Her arms came to wrap around Magnus’s waist. “Gods, Magnus, what have I done?”

Magnus held her, savoring the feel of her in his arms, the knowledge that she turned to him for comfort. His thoughts still reeled with her revelations, the terrible repercussions of her actions and the reasons for them. When she told him of using one of the arcane and deadly spells to help her voice, he thought he’d burst into flame. Terror warred with fury as he considered her imprudence, and he thought the silvered choker might well be an ornament of protection instead of punishment. Certainly protection against herself.

“Leida,” he murmured, kissing the top of her head, “I will bind you to one of my cavern walls with a length of iron chain if I ever suspect you’ll try something so foolish again.” He felt her hiccup against his chest.

“Allay your fears, Magnus,” she said into his shirt. “It was a hard lesson well learned.”

Magnus leaned away from her in order to see her face. It was tear-stained, blotched in spots, and her eyes were puffy. She had never looked more beautiful to him. “You destroyed your voice in a failed attempt to gain my approval, and possibly my loyalty. You ran from me because you thought I’d replaced you with another favorite.”

Leida reddened, lowering her eyes. “Yes.”

“You truly do have a very poor regard for me.”

Her head snapped up. “That isn’t true!” she cried.

He smiled at her protest. “Such extraordinary measures to attain what already belonged to you.” She gasped. “Do you remember when I said you took from me that which I held most precious?” He felt her tremble.

“Yes, and I’m sorry, Magnus. Had I known the ring meant so much, I would have chosen something else. I just wanted a keepsake.”

He placed a finger against her lips to stop her nervous explanations. “I wasn’t speaking of the ring, Leida.” Her eyes widened as his meaning became clear. Magnus cupped her face in his hands. “Sivatte’s loveliness will remain long after you and I are both brittle bones in the earth’s embrace. Hers is a near immortal race.” His thumbs glided across her cheekbones, tracing the fine lines appearing at the corner of her eyes, marks of years passed, years spent with him. “But she pales in comparison to my favorite, a woman with the night in her hair and the moon in her eyes.” Her fingers dug into his back. “Even when you are gray and lined, I will still think you the most beautiful woman ever born.”

Her moan whispered into his mouth as he captured her lips in a kiss, one gentle and long as he made love to her mouth. The sky had lightened even more, a hint of the dawn hovering on the horizon, but neither he nor Leida noticed. Magnus’s fingers worked at her bodice, unlacing her with impressive speed. Their shoes and clothes soon lay in a heap at their feet, and he stepped back to admire her, note the changes in her tall frame since he’d last seen her in her full naked glory.

Pale and long-limbed, her body had filled out. She was still slim, but the reedy, girlish thinness was gone. Instead, her waist curved and flowed into rounded hips, and he could see the silvery track of thin scars lacing her lower abdomen, just above the triangle of dark curls. Leida stood silent as he continued to gaze at her. He was eager to bury his face between those full white breasts once more.

“Childbearing agrees with you, Leida.”

She gave him a small smile, both bashful and beckoning and returned his stare. Magnus held still as her gaze passed over him, pausing at his chest and arms, his flat belly, and the blatant proof of his desire for her. “You are beautiful as a man, Magnus,” she whispered. “Almost as beautiful as when you are dragon.”

She could not have extolled his physical virtues in a better, more sensitive way, and he reached for her, sighing audibly with pleasure when she pressed against him from shoulder to shin. Leida echoed his sigh, winding her arms around his neck and trailing small kisses along the top of his shoulder, over his collarbones and around his throat. They sank to the blankets, a tangle of arms and legs as they rolled together. The occasional slide of her damp curls against the base of his cock tempted Magnus to pull her leg across his hip and take her as swiftly as he had at the stream bank. It would be just as good, just as frenzied, but he restrained the urge, wanting to relish this encounter, enjoy her in every way denied to him for the past four years.

He rolled Leida to her back, stretching her arms above her head. The position highlighted the line of her belly, the curve of her breasts and the dark pink nipples stiff with arousal. Magnus crouched above her and lowered his head, sucking one nipple into his mouth while worrying the other with his fingers. Leida’s moans echoed in his ears, soft wordless pleas that drifted into even softer hums as she held his head in her hands and pressed him closer.

He switched to the other breast, groaning against her skin as she lowered her arms to stroke his chest, her fingers pausing at his own sensitized nipples and pinching gently. He almost came in that moment, a powerful surge of sensation flooding his thighs, coursing through his stiff cock. She whimpered in protest when he abandoned her breasts in favor of her belly. The whimpers quickly changed to sighs as Magnus ran his tongue in a long damp line down her middle, pausing to dip into her navel before gliding over the gentle curve of soft, scarred skin just above her womanhood.

Magnus shifted his arms to find a more comfortable position in which to pleasure her. The movement caused his hand to brush the wine flask lying forgotten on the ground near the blankets. He paused, eyeing it for a moment before raising his head to leer at Leida.

Her brows rose in puzzlement. “What’s wrong?”

He shook his head and reached for the flask, sitting up between her spread thighs. He wiggled his own brows at her, making her giggle. The wine was sweet on his tongue, neither too cold nor too warm. Magnus swallowed the first sip and offered the flask to Leida. She shook her head in refusal.

“What mischief are you planning, Magnus?” Her hands continued to rove over him, sliding across his thighs and belly. He stopped her hand as it reached for his cock.

“Not yet, my beauty. I cannot think when you stroke me.”

She pouted. “And that is a bad thing?”

“No,” he murmured, leaning down to place a kiss on her belly. “It is never a bad thing to feel your hands on me. But it is distracting, and I want to indulge in that bit of mischief you speak of.”

Magnus tipped the flask again, filling his mouth with the wine. But this time he didn’t swallow. Instead, he held it in his mouth and stretched out on his belly between her legs, his shoulders at her thighs and his face hovering just above her thighs.

“Oh my,” she whispered on a breathless sigh.

The wine, warmed in his mouth, trickled between his lips, dripping in a thin stream onto her thighs. He followed its path, nuzzling his face into the soft brown curls, wet with wine and her own passions. Leida’s knees fell farther apart even as her fingers furrowed into his hair, pressing on his head to coax him closer. Magnus acquiesced, spurred on as much by her scent, musky and sweet, as by the continuous low moans now emanating from her throat.

He cupped his hands around her, using his thumbs to part the swollen folds and reveal the bead of sensitive pink flesh to his gaze. His breath left him in a long exhalation, his mouth watering at the sight.

Leida’s hands grew more frantic, tugging at his hair hard enough to cause a twinge of pain. “Oh, gods, Magnus, please.”

Magnus smiled, gliding his tongue along the inside of her thigh to

lap up a trickle of wine. “Please what, Leida?” he teased. It was a ritual between them, played out years earlier when he would make her say exactly what she wanted of him. As before, her breathless commands sent fire racing through his veins, and his engorged cock throbbed in response.

“Put your tongue inside of me. Please. Gods, I need this.” She arched against his hands, a physical plea to accompany her words.

He didn’t have to be told twice. Her deep-throated groan held equal measures of lust and relief as he fastened his mouth over the small pearl in which so much sensation centered. She tasted of heaven and ocean, even better than he remembered, and he wondered how he’d ever found the control to wait an entire day before indulging himself in this way.

Magnus sucked slowly on her, sometimes pausing to swirl his tongue along the inner folds and slide inward to tease her slick opening. Leida slowly stilled in his embrace, her moans turning to soft mewing sounds even as her muscles stiffened. She skirted along the edge of a climax, her hips rocking on the blankets in an ever increasing pace. He knew the signs, knew her body so well. He moved back to the curved bit of flesh, sucking softly once more as his hands slid up to cup her breasts. Her small nipples, already hard, stiffened even more beneath the subtle play of his fingertips.

It was the touch to send her over the edge, and Leida nearly slammed his nose with the sudden upward surge of her hips. Magnus flexed his shoulders to hold her pelvis down as she bucked and cried out, thrusting against his mouth. She was liquid heat, and he wanted to feel it surround him, soak it into his body. He lapped one last time at her before changing position, rising up and sitting back.

From his new vantage point, he had a full view of her, the white skin, flushed and shiny with perspiration, the rapid rise and fall of her chest as she sucked in great gulps of air. Leida’s eyes glistened in the fading shadows as she stretched out a hand, fingertips brushing across the head of his cock. Magnus shuddered and leaned forward, bracing his arms on either side of her head.

She smiled, her hand closing more firmly over him even as her legs slid over his hips and around his waist. She guided him to her, and he watched as the swollen head of his cock disappeared into the nest of curls. Slick, tight muscle gripped him as he sank into her, and Magnus groaned with the pleasure of it. He pulled out of her slowly, almost to the tip, fascinated by the sight of his shaft, rosy and shiny with wetness.

Leida’s legs tightened around him, her heels digging into the small of his back to urge him forward. He needed no more coaxing. Her small, rhythmic moans, timed to the pumping motion of his hips were the sweetest music to his ears. He licked her throat, the soft hollow just below the imprisoning choker. Her hands clutched his arms as she met each thrust, took him deep.

His thighs were slippery against hers, his bollocks slick with her spending as they rubbed against the curve of her buttocks. He fucked her hard, stroking in and out in a driving motion that pushed her up the twisted blankets. His mouth found hers, his tongue sweeping in to mimic the motion of his hips.

She gripped him, sheathed him, muscles tightening on his cock until he groaned in her mouth. A hot tingle spread across his lower back, traveled over his buttocks and thighs before finally centering at his groin. It grew, fanning out to the rest of his body, and he heaved against her, desperate to get as far inside as possible, sink into her, body and soul. Two hard pulses and his back arched, his deep cries echoing through the trees as he thrust once more, his cock throbbing with an almost unbearable ache as he came inside Leida in a thick pulse of heat.

Massive shivers wracked his body as he collapsed on to her, and it took some effort to find the energy and roll to his side so as not to crush her. He pulled Leida’s hips snugly against his so as to stay buried within her. His vision swam for a moment before focusing on her face, still pink from her exertions. He imagined he looked much the same.

She watched him with a sated, sleepy expression, her gray eyes almost glowing in the light put out by the dying fire. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to walk tomorrow,” she said, a smile in her voice. One hand tickled his nape as the other lazily caressed his side and hip.

Magnus rubbed his palm over her rounded backside, pulling her closer still as he softened within her, rivulets of his seed streaming out of her to soak both their thighs. He kissed her, tugging gently at her lower lip. “Remember, we will travel mostly at night.” Another kiss, this one a little longer, a little more forceful. "There will be little walking. You will ride me when I am dragon…” he paused to swirl his tongue through her mouth, “and again when I am a man.” Her laugh, sultry and knowing, transformed to a small, welcoming whimper as he clamped his mouth over hers, pressing his lips to hers and sucking on her tongue.

Soon, he thought, soon he’d take her again, when the darts of sensation that set his legs to quivering subsided, and he could pull himself away from the seductive lure of her mouth. He reveled in the feel of her fingers in his hair, the way she touched him with reverent, loving hands, as if she worshiped the feel of him beneath her palms.

Magnus wrapped his legs around her, suppressing the urge to hold her tighter and risk injuring her with his need to bind her to him in any fashion. It would take more than a crushing embrace. He thought of the child, her daughter, and felt his stomach tighten with the pain of jealousy, regret, and envy. He pushed it down, suppressed it for the moment. It served no purpose, but the child might.

He and his brethren were shrewd, cunning creatures, always looking for that which might benefit them most and further their aspirations and desires. Leida was his desire, his obsession, his need. And if her actions just now were any indication, she loved him as much as he loved her. The trick now was to convince her to stay with him beyond the four years of her sentence, assure her that he had no intention of ever replacing her, despite the ruin of her voice or the daughter he couldn’t claim as his.

Morning was full upon them when fatigue finally took hold. Magnus was almost asleep when Leida’s slow breathing suddenly changed, alerting him. His eyes snapped open as she stiffened in his arms, and he lowered his head to stare at her, questioning.

He grew suspicious at the sight of her gnawing on her lower lip, even as her fingers traced circles over his collarbones. Alarm grew at the timidity in her voice.

“I have something else to tell you,” she said, clearing her voice twice before continuing. “And I’m afraid you will be angry again.”