S’Avetina is a young priestess of the Lord of Night. Although she is a mage, she has failed to bond to a dragon, leading her family to fear that too much out-crossing has weakened their Loftoni blood. Ave is under immense pressure to marry another Loftoni and soon. Then she meets S’Rak, a young priest, just off the line, and a dragon-bonded Loftoni. To her immense surprise, her family is dead-set against the match due to Rak’s past. But in Okyro, women do the courting, and women make the choices. Will Ave choose to continue her hunt, or will she yield to family pressure and let the young priest go?
Ave stood and spread her wings. The wind slammed into her, throwing her up, off the dragon’s back, the cord playing out as she gained altitude, fighting to master the gusts that wanted to tumble her in every direction. She jerked at the end of the line, a hundred feet out, and discovered that this stabilized her flight. Scorth towed her now, like a child playing with a kite, but she had a marvelous sense of freedom, of actually flying. She dipped a wing and darted down to one side then back up, only to do the same thing in the other direction. Every twitch of her wings altered her flight, the only constant being the forward motion of the dragon, and the beating of those enormous wings created all sorts of gusts and eddies for her to play in.
Abruptly, Rak joined her, flying on his own line.
Her violet wing briefly overlapped his scarlet one, and the tactile sensation of that was almost too much.
They split apart, glancing at one another and laughing, only to draw near once more, like moths to a flame. Silk slid against silk, wing against wing, their hands seeking, finding one another. They spun, locked together in a kiss, the wind trying to tear them apart as they clung ever tighter.
Ave could feel them dropping, but she didn’t care. All that mattered to her was that she have this man, the sooner, the better.
