She put it around her neck. And he helped her clasp it. The metal was smooth and cool, except for the slightly rough etching. She felt none of the trapped feeling of panic from when she wore it before. She concentrated on the secret promise, pressing gently against her. With her always.
Amos looked pleased as he watched her play with the cuff. He picked up the fur coat and helped her into it.
“You’re wearing undergarments, you know.”
“I figured,” she said. “But there was nothing else in there that I wanted to wear!”
“Maybe the other wives have other clothes you could borrow.”
They both inwardly cringed at the word, “other”. It just reminded them that Lucy was part of that count.
A slightly chagrined look came over Amos’s face as he led her to the door. “You’re gonna have to go out first and make sure there’s no one passing by.”
“Why?” she asked, cocking her head to one side.
“Because I’m not supposed to be in your chambers. And I don’t want to be seen coming out in the dead of the night.”
“Because then everyone will know that you just fucked me silly and made me come for like eight straight minutes?” she asked sweetly, batting her eyes at him.
He chuffed out a surprised laugh and pulled her in for a quick kiss. “Exactly.”
“Fair enough,” she shrugged and did as he asked, pulling open the door and peeking out in the hallway. “All clear.”
The fortress was much larger than she had thought. He led her through a few different secret passageways and stairwells. She thought he might be taking her an intentionally circuitous route to avoid running into anyone that shouldn’t be seeing them together.
She sagged against a wall as they came to the bottom of yet another set of stairs. “For the love of god, Amos. I can’t.”
He grinned at her, scooping her up in his arms. Her heart stuttered.
“This is how I carried you when you first came out of the portal.”
“I was fighting you as hard as I could.”
“It was cute.”
“Cute!” She crossed her arms. “I was going for aggressive and intimidating.”
“Maybe it would have been for a human man,” he shrugged.
“I guess I’ll have to try it out and get back to you.”
“No,” he growled, his eyes dark. “I don’t want you to wiggle around in a human man’s arms. Or anyone’s arms but mine,” he amended fiercely. But his eyes softened when he looked down and saw her trailing her finger along the gold collar.
She opened her mouth to respond to him, but all words cut short when he kicked open a final door and they stepped out onto a windy roof. The night sky opened above them like a humongous glass chandelier.
There were three times as many stars than Lucy had ever seen before. And the sky somehow looked deeper than on earth. As if it were more three dimensional than normal.
He set her gently down and she found she had been holding her breath. She turned a small circle, her head toward the sky and gasped in pleasure when a shooting star went burning through the air. The tail was the color of an aurora borealis, green leading to aqua to violet. She clapped her hands over her mouth in wonder. It was so beautiful she felt like she could open her mouth and taste it.
A whooshing sound came from directly behind her and she turned. She froze in her tracks when she found she was staring directly into the eyes of the largest creature she’d ever seen. He was a lot faster at transforming than the King. He’d done it in seconds, and silently.
She stood still and took him in. His eyes were the light yellow-green of spring leaves and catlike, each as large as a goose egg. But his predominant color was the clear, glassy amber of his scales. The same as the color of his human eyes. The scales on his humongous back and belly were as large as dinner plates, but they gave way to smaller ones on his arms and legs.
His head towered above her as tall as a giraffe and his tail, she realized was curled around where she stood. She turned a circle trying to see the whole thing. A humongous iridescent spike shot out of the end. It was made of a material Lucy couldn’t even imagine. Obviously biological, but clear, like glass. She moved toward it, her hand outstretched, but he instantly jerked it away. The heavy tail thumping on the ground as he dragged it.
“Poison,” he said and his voice made Lucy tremble. She’d never heard anything like it in her life. It was Amos’s voice, but so many octaves lower she felt the bass of it in her chest. It was almost scary.
She turned back to face the impressive beast.
“You can actually fly?” she asked, her mind spinning in wonder at all the new things she was seeing.