She cocked her head. It wasn’t as if the wyvern were a mountain herself. With Yrsa on her belly, the saddle stood perhaps twice as high as that of a horse.
Magnus sucked in his lips and raised his brows like he was guarding some joke. In two graceful strides, he was up in the saddle with his long leg thrown over the other side. A row of cage-like stirrups surrounded his leg and he set to work fastening them. Nadine took a long look at the thing and decided the only place for her to sit was directly in front of him.
Shuraa ket.
“Take this.” She thrust her leather bag up to him which he took without question and secured into the saddle behind him before setting back to work on his legs.
Nadine gathered up her cape and the ends of her tunic, then grabbed the side of the saddle to pull herself up. What had she done as of late for the gods to punish her? Apparently the climb up the gegatu’s back was a bit more difficult than she’d estimated. Especially after various leather ties and trappings kept getting in her way. The friction of her struggle caused her lancet to come unhooked from her belt and promptly start to roll away into the sand. She just managed to catch it, but not without dropping her cape, which then got caught in a metal clasp.
“Damn it.” Nadine snarled as she fought to disentangle herself. All the while, Magnus sat above her, his own task of securing himself either paused or complete. She glanced up to see him leaned back in the saddle, staring down with his arms crossed and his expression so smug she knew the day was going to end in bloodshed.
For all Lavinia’s talk of Dokiri nobility, the man made not a single move to help her. If he had, he would likely have come away with a few less digits. He was either a bastard or a wise man. She shot him a killing look which doubled as an assessing glare.
He grinned.
Definitely a bastard.
At last she was free. Nadine tore the rest of the way up the saddle and suffered no regret when she sent her knee swaying a little too fast over the wyvern’s spine and caught Magnus in the side. The wind came out of him with a woosh, but he was a sturdy man. He’d live.
She huffed and sat straight up with her arms folded in the saddle in front of him, too angry to be annoyed when her rear slid against his groin. His rock solid groin.
He grunted.
Nadine rolled her eyes. Seriously? The situation didn’t improve as he went back to working at the fastenings of his saddle. Crossing her arms, a little smirk stretched across her face. Good. He could suffer like that for the rest of his life as far as she was concerned.
Without warning, one of his massive hands pushed into her shoulder blade. Her body went rigid on instinct. She was about to turn when he pressed his weight into her back, shoving her forward. Down.
For a moment, all thoughts of wounded pride fled Nadine in favor of white-hot anger. It flushed through her body, out from her core, into her fingertips and toes. Every muscle locked. The part of her that was just Nadine vanished, replaced by a creature which had kept her alive the last twelve years. One which didn’t feel or think. Only acted.
Her arms grappled for the weapons at her belt, but Magnus’s weight held her flat against the rise of the saddle. She pressed her palms into the leather and was about to buck against his monstrous form when his hands slithered off her body to grip something above her head. Nadine’s gaze followed them on instinct, determined to know what his next move would be. But he wasn’t reaching for a weapon, for her hair, or for something to restrain her with. What was he grabbing at?
Yrsa.
He was gripping the wyvern. In particular, the shallow spots behind two of her scales, near the base of her neck.
Before Nadine could calm herself, or even speak, they were moving. Yrsa rose from her relaxed stupor like the slumbering giant she was. Each tiny movement was exaggerated from Magnus and Nadine’s high perch upon her shoulders. They swung from side to side as Yrsa tipped for balance on her two feet and the curved spines of her great wings which sunk into the sifting sand.
A rumble sounded in Yrsa’s chest, or was it her belly? It reverberated through the wyvern’s body and along Nadine’s thighs, into her very core. It interrupted the rhythm of Nadine’s own fluttering heart as if the beast’s lifeforce were so powerful it might overshadow her own. Terrifying and wondrous. Nadine squinted at Magnus’s hands as realization dawned. He was somehow communicating with his beast through touch.
Nadine’s breath caught as he pressed a bit tighter against her back and muttered into her ear. “Time to fly, kandiri.”
6
Victor
Broken crevices of light illuminated Nadine’s vicious glare. “Why don’t you go roll through a vat of tar, light it on fire, and then dive nose-first into a sand pit?”
Magnus sighed and bit the inside of his cheek. “The sand would probably douse the fire.”
An hour’s ride had brought them to Amo Tanshi. In the time since, the verdant sweetgrass and serene trickle of water from the cave’s pool had done nothing for Nadine’s mood. She was anything but serene. She was fuming.
Magnus dropped the rag away from his own freshly blooded tanshi mark. She’d said not a word - only scoffed in disgust - as he’d said the ancient words that accompanied the rite and flicked the scarlet droplets onto the altar’s gleaming black surface. But no sooner had he turned to her and asked her to lie down than she’d turned into a hissing hellcat, her spine bent with a vengeful fury.
She pointed at him. “You stood while you marked yourself. I’ll stand, too. Simple.”
Magnus resheathed the genri blade at his belt. It was clear this wasn’t going to be a quick or easy conversation. But then, nothing about Nadine had ever been easy. “Our blood has to mingle and then I use the water from the pool to wash it away. That’s how it’s done.”
“For men who eat with their hands, you observe an awful lot of ceremony when it comes to the precise manner in which you break your women.”
He shook his head. “You can’t tell me you came all the way up here prepared to let me cut you open, but just lying down on a slab of rock . . . that’s where you draw the line?”
Nadine glared up at him. “It’s not going to happen.”
Regna, she was beautiful. Even when she was furious. Especially when she was furious. The first day he’d seen her, she’d worn black oil smeared over her eyes. Though it had been meant to add to her fierceness, she didn’t need it. Had the earth mother ever fashioned a woman more magnificent? She had curves born of sculpted muscle that could ruin a man by sight, and tear him apart by force. Her skin glowed a deep brown so smooth it was killing him not to reach out and touch it. And her lips? He forced his gaze upward. “Is this truly the mountain you want to die on? And I mean that literally.”
“I know it’s hard for you to wrap your small mind around. A woman who won’t simply lie down on her back for you. Your lot seems content to keep women in exactly that position from what I understand.”
If she weren’t so much fun, an ache would be pulsing between his temples by now. “You know, for someone who’s never been to Bedmeg, you have a lot of vivid ideas about our way of life. Has it ever occurred to you that some women actually enjoy the bonding process?”