Shadow Dragon (14 page)

His gaze searched her soul.

* * * *

Ardan held the young Dragoness defenceless beneath his claws. He expected her to whimper in fear, but her frantic hearts-beat suddenly settled down. Her pupils were dilated and her throat worked against his paw, which could entirely encircle her slender neck, yet she was unafraid. What? She should tremble! Flame licked from his nostrils as he demanded,
Why do you not cower before me?

Aranya’s jewelled eyes contracted with amusement.
Because I could destroy you before you blink.

His muscles tensed. How dare his captive goad him? Then, the Dragon’s laughter thundered around the cavern, shaking loose sand and rocks from the ceiling, until he realised his convulsive grip was crushing her windpipe. He eased the pressure on her neck but did not uncurl his talons, nor did he relax his grip on her neck, the major wing bone of her left wing and her right hind leg above the knee. As though drawn by hypnosis, his gaze returned to her face.

Oh, her Dragon eyes …

Her magical gaze drew him in and disarmed him, as though her eyes hid a vertiginous drop to places unknown. Her fire whispered Dragonsong to his feverish senses, eliciting a surge of unforeseen tenderness. From a killing rage, to desire, to … this?

Now, Ardan found that an inexplicable pressure in his mind held him captive. Her magic weaved melodies to enthral his soul. He held a star, her purity so dazzling and intense that he wanted to gaze at her forever, to weep in cleansing rivers at her beauty, only his Dragon form had forgotten how. The beast was erased, replaced by a creature who wondered who he truly was.

She said,
Do you have any idea what powers an Amethyst Dragon has?

The Dragon released her wing to scratch his chin in a surprisingly Human-like gesture.
Let me see … o pulchritudinous Princess of a place which doesn’t exist, you have beguiling eyes–

I don’t exist?

Instead of answering her, Dragon-Ardan cracked open his jaw. He wafted his inmost Dragon fire gently into her face.

* * * *

The world spun on its axis.

As Aranya breathed in the male Dragon’s flame-vapour, she knew at once it was more than just Dragon fire, for it conveyed the quintessence of all that was Ardan–Shapeshifter, Dragon and man–a constellation of impressions, as if the dark Dragon’s personality and past had exploded inside her mind in a single instant, but communicated nuances and complexities a million-fold to her awareness. Aranya saw all things anew. The universe held new colours, dizzying, rapidly-expanding ripples of sensations never before imagined, world-shaking in their intensity, uncontainable.

In that instant, all was lost.

There was only one possible response. Aranya breathed her own fire over Ardan’s questing muzzle, putting all of her soul into it.

The Dragon blinked in surprise. He drew a deep, shuddering breath, and she recognised that for him, the shock was as intense and omnipotent as it had been for her. His dark eyes became liquid, fiery pools of understanding. A low, throbbing song rose unbidden from the depths of his formidable chest, a song of flying together through moonlit nights and rubbing necks and resting side by side in warm, sandy caverns, a song of awe and adoration, almost worship.

Fire swirled from her mouth, fire intermingled with Dragonsong. It rushed together into the form of a blazing jewel, filled with colours and magical essences, a jewel which pulsed with her inner life. He had never imagined a thing more precious.

She said,
Thou, Ardan, my soul’s eternal fire.

As if she dwelled within that fiery jewel, Aranya found her spirit rushing into him, igniting all that it touched. She was the shivers running up and down his spine. Visions crowded into his mind, images of birth and battles and loving and running and laughing and weeping in the ashes of his beloved home Island. Was this her power? The power to unbind his past, yet to soothe and heal with an extraordinary, consuming love?

She knew that he desired nothing more than to offer her his greatest treasure.

He said,
Thou, Aranya, my soul’s eternal fire.

She breathed again of his secret fire, and crossed the unimaginable divide between two souls, yet suddenly, there was no divide. Ardan’s fire dwelled with her, as though she had grown a fourth heart … no, as though their souls were united, and all she had to do to know his presence, was to search within.

His tongue flicked her neck-scales.

The Dragon-fire spell broke. Human-Aranya remembered someone who had licked her palm, a perverted, loathsome beast of a man, who had been a Red Shapeshifter Dragon. That memory spun her out of Ardan’s ambit of passion into a cold, bleak place.

She had freedom. She transformed.

* * * *

Lost in the depths of his reverent song, eyes heavy-lidded and mind adrift upon the winds of draconic romance, Ardan did not realise at first that the Amethyst Dragon had slipped from his grasp like prekki tree pollen blown away on the breeze. Her scent lingered in his nostrils. His sensitive scales and wing membranes thrilled to the pulse of her incomparable magic coursing through his body as a bone-deep vibration. Her eyes, her wonderful, bewitching eyes …

She was gone? Vanished!

A growl of discontent surged from his throat. He lifted first one forepaw, then the other, searching for what eluded him.

The little creature was back! The strange thing with the glorious mane knelt next to the bigger two-legged creature, touching his neck even as he had just touched her … in his dream? He noticed that the creature had fresh wounds on her back and buttocks, which were beginning to heal.

How dare she misbehave!

With a fiery snarl, the male Dragon pounded across the chamber and snatched the little thing up.

“Ardan,” she gasped.
Ardan, please … don’t hurt me.

His forepaw was so huge, it enveloped her body in its entirety. The little creature struggled feebly in his powerful grasp. But–his eyes bulged–her voice! He thundered,
What is this?

Please, listen to me. I am Aranya. I am both Dragon and Human. You are like me, Ardan.

Fire roared out of his nostrils.
You lie!

Smell me and know me–but please, don’t burn me. I’m already hurt.

The huge nostrils flared, ruffling her hair with a cavernous inhalation. He felt and heard her little heart fluttering like prey panicked at the first inkling of a Dragon’s awesome presence. But before he even breathed in her scent, Dragon-Ardan stared into the small amethyst eyes which had so entranced his soul, and knew the truth.

How was it possible? His fist loosened slightly, but still curled possessively around her frail form.

What have you done with her?
He snorted a gust of Dragon fire, slightly aside from the little creature, singeing her hair.
How did you become this tiny … thing? Where did you hide my incomparable soul-mate?

Like you, Ardan, I have two forms,
she said.
I’m a Shapeshifter. You can become like this if you think about it–it is magic, which is easy for you as a Dragon. Remember Human-Ardan? Remember having two arms and legs like me? Remember?

He did. The world rippled. He fell forward into darkness.

Next Ardan knew, he lay sprawled on his back staring up into a pair of amethyst eyes framed by sculpted cheekbones and the most incredible abundance of hair he had ever seen. It fell about him in a many-stranded waterfall, an impossible curtain of colours, enfolding him in a mysterious cocoon of allurement. Great Islands! Nothing else existed. Only …
her
.

He groaned, “What a dream I had.”

“It was no dream,” said the girl, in mellifluous tones.

Her accent was exotic; a singing in the vowels that suggested fifteen sounds rather than five. It fired his soul with melodies of pure magic. Incongruously, Ardan pictured himself speaking to a songbird.

Reaching up to twine his fingers in her hair, he whispered, “You outshine the stars. Only a dream could be so flawless.”

“Don’t …”

He raised himself to one elbow. Desire seethed within him, unstoppable. “Don’t what?”

Her eyes flickered over the length of his body. The girl whispered, “Please, Ardan. Don’t look at me like that. I can’t …” She swallowed hard, to his perception, held captive by the power of emotions stoked to a volcanic pitch. “Introductions. Yes. I am Aranya, Princess of Immadia, a Shapeshifter, as you saw. A Dragon.”

She thought she was a Dragon? Was she moons-touched? Odd, though, how he had just been dreaming about Dragons. And, how by the Islands, did a tall, slender foreign woman come to be here in the Western Isles? These thoughts were but distant echoes, a faraway, meaningless drum-roll of sanity amidst a scorching madness. What had she done to him?

“And I am Ardan of Naphtha Cluster,” he replied. A heaviness like gravity connected them, belly to belly, soul to soul. He needed only a fingertip touch to draw her closer. “You’ve nothing to fear from me.”

“You’re hurt.”

Ardan cared nothing for the half-healed scabs and scars covering his body, nor could he remember how he had come to be wounded. He said, “Destiny alone has summoned us to this time and place. Come, my soul’s eternal fire, sweet Aranya–”

“Please, no,” she gulped. “I’ve never … no, please. No!”

“Yes. You want this.”

“I … no, Ardan. Oh, stop me … no …”

Her arms twined about his neck with a will of their own, her hair rippling about them as though stirred by an unseen wind. Her body trembled. Aranya nestled her face in the crook of his neck, and he was astounded at the febrile heat radiating from her skin. It set him afire. If she felt half of what he did, he thought, then they were already lost in the Cloudlands, winging away far and free. There was a roaring in his ears and a wild abandon in his heart.

He kissed the girl’s neck and bare shoulder with great tenderness. “My treasure of the Isles, your cheeks burn bright. Your very soul quivers with a longing which cannot be denied.”

A memory of Dragonsong consumed his mind. The flames within her reached up and enticed him in.

* * * *

The storm broke outside the cavern, seeming to charge her body with every lightning strike, her entire being pulsating to the percussive drumbeat of thunder, as violent and uncontrolled as the storm itself. She became the storm’s rising. Winds raged through her mind, sweeping all before their blast, burning with a sweet, enigmatic fire.

All was incandescent, a desire that transcended any mortal reason or barrier, within her and without a tempest beyond imagination.

Thou, my soul’s eternal fire.

* * * *

Aranya came to her senses slowly. Her strength was spent. From the angle of the suns light filtering into the cave, she knew that the day was drawing toward dusk. She was never cold, yet she shivered now. How dark the surrounding shadows. Why had the beautiful flame vanished? She ached for its warmth.

As she stretched, her arm fell across the bare torso of the warrior lying on his side next to her, regarding her with soulful eyes as black as a moonless night sky. Mystery and melancholy inhabited his smile.

Oh, no. Her heart jolted against her ribcage.

He whispered, “I am sorry, Aranya. Your name is … Aranya?”

“It is. What–what have I done?”

Blunt, strong fingers stroked her hair. “Our desire burned out of control,” he said. “Words cannot convey my regret.”

Regret? A sweet lie. But her regret was greater than any terrace lake filled to bursting after a storm, a pain which could know no stanching.

Ardan’s arm was thick with muscle and scars, tattooed from his wrist up to his shoulder, and his fingers calloused from the use of weapons. He lay right alongside her, his legs entwined with hers, her head pillowed on his bicep and her cheek brushing the scarred expanse of his chest. She was skin to skin with a man. Not just any man,
him
. It felt so warm, so intimate and right–and yet so wrong. She could not bear to flee his embrace.

Was this the Dragon-beast within, expressing its primal needs? A surprising gentleness on his part in the face of her devastating need … a choked-off moan escaped her lips. She wasn’t that kind of woman, was she? She wasn’t the kind of woman who played all day at the pillow-rolls with a complete stranger while her boyfriend lay unconscious nearby, with a broken leg if not a cracked skull?

“Forgive me, Aranya, please.”

“You … you want … curse you! Go toss yourself in a Cloudlands volcano, you freaking black-eyed monster!”

Her scream echoed in the emptiness, swallowed up by cool rocks and dead-end tunnels.

Why? Why had she not withheld? Disgust made her skin creep. She hated herself, while her tongue shrivelled at the taste of her curses. She hated it even more that she could never find it within herself to loathe him or what they had shared–their amazing, Island-shivering, magical day …

“You’re blaming Dragons?” he chuckled, a low rumble that uncannily mirrored the voice of his Dragon form. “Girl, you’re fixated. Dragons don’t exist.”