Page 83 of Dhampira

“Let’s go,” he said, knotting his jacket around his waist. He stuffed the shirt under his belt.

Wait. Go? He meant to…Oh gods, did he intend to fly off the tower? Backing up, I shook my head. “Absolutely not.”

Impatience flashed in his eyes. “This isn’t the time for belligerence, Corinthe.”

Was he serious? I put out a hand. “It’s not belligerence. It’s—” My protest ended in a squawk as he rushed me and scooped me into his arms. His wings flared, violet blotting out the sky as he charged across the roof.

“Lorcan!” I cried, clinging to his neck. The tower dropped from under us. My stomach pitched, and the wind snatched my scream as we plummeted. Lorcan grunted and tightened his grip. He pumped his wings hard, buoying us up, up, up. We ascended in great sweeps. Then we soared, shooting toward the pink, sugar-laced clouds so swiftly that I held back another scream.

“I’ve got you,” Lorcan murmured, holding me with one arm under my knees and the other around my ribs. The muscles in his chest bunched as his wings swept back and forth.

Swallowing, I found my voice. “Have you done this before?”

Black eyes dipped briefly to mine. “Not with glomarid wings.”

Puzzle pieces slid into place in my mind. He’d drained the glomarid at the ball so he could steal its gift of flight. He’d planned it, perhaps as soon as he learned of the impending werewolf attack. I opened my mouth to repeat my question, only to shut it a second later. Maybe I didn’t want to know how many other winged creatures he’d eaten.

We leveled out, our progress through the sky more like floating than flying. The Drakhold was a dollhouse behind us, its towers and windows too small to be real. Nocta splayed over the ground like a brilliant green carpet. The forest was a delicate miniature. Rivers forked through it and drained into lakes and small pools. A thicker ribbon wound through a valley, and I wondered if I’d speared the merman on its banks. If, somewhere on the golden sand below, my footprints and the stain of old blood marked the scene of my crime.

“Are you all right?”

I tore my gaze from the ground. Lorcan watched me, the wind in his hair and his stolen wings flexing like sails behind him. His eyes were still black as pitch. One forearm grazed the side of my breast. Heat rolled off him, his skin like a furnace even through my gown and chemise.

“You should have asked me if I was willing to fly,” I said.

“Would you have agreed?”

I clamped my lips together.

The look on his face told me he guessed my answer anyway. With a sweep of his wings, he took us higher. Ghostly clouds raced past us, wetting my cheeks and leaving the taste of rain on my lips.

“It was necessary,” Lorcan said after a minute. “Rasimir doesn’t hold dominion in the sky. At least not yet.”

“How did you know the werewolves were going to attack last night?” Too late, I realized the question placed us perilously close to discussing his kiss.

He glanced at me. “I told you. Rasimir wanted to show you off in front of the court. You drained the merman under controlled conditions.” Lorcan’s jaw flexed. “Rasimir is impatient. He wanted to know if you were capable of performing when it counts.”

Anger kindled in my gut. “You could have warned me sooner. And if you ever threaten to spank me again, you’ll regret it.”

Another glance, this one accompanied by a lifted brow. “It got your attention. As for warning you, too much advance notice would have made you nervous. Worse, you could have slipped and given us both away. Rasimir is a master at ferreting out emotion. Your face is…expressive. You need to learn to be cold around him.”

The acrobat tumbled through my memory, his power and grace a splash of beauty against the courtiers’ bloodlust. “Is that what you were doing when you murdered the glomarid? Being cold?”

Lorcan met my stare and held it. “You’re awfully bold for someone five thousand feet in the air.”

My stomach wobbled. “You won’t drop me. I’m a legendary creature, remember?”

He shifted his gaze to a distant point ahead of us. “Maybe there’s a reason your kind are so rare.”

A jest? Impossible. But I was right. He wanted me to kill Rasimir. He wouldn’t ruin all of his scheming by letting me fall. And apparently, the sky was a safe place to talk. Which meant Lorcan was a captive audience.

“Can you read minds?”

“No.”

“Can Rasimir?”

Lorcan looked at me again. “Only a handful of witches possess the gift of pulling thoughts from another’s head. And it’s a heavy burden. They live in the north, where it’s cold and isolated, and they train for years to control the constant flow of others’ thoughts. Even with training, many go insane. Years ago, Rasimir considered hunting one of the mind-keepers and taking the gift. He eventually decided it was too risky.”