Her passion made color fly high in her cheeks. Her hair tumbled over her shoulders and her eyes were bright with emotion. “It might be risky. It might be too sudden for your taste, Sol. But mark my words. Dalyer is going to die. And if, in the course of the plan, something goes wrong and he gets close to me, then I’ll be the one to kill him. I’ll do it with my bare hands if I have to. With my teeth.”
With that, she brushed the angry tears out of her eyes and brushed past the men, hurrying out of the hut and disappearing into the dim jungle.
The three men stood stock still in the silence that settled in the wake of her speech.
“Wow,” Javi said.
“Yeah,” said Solar.
“That was really hot,” said the Oracle.
“Yeah,” said Solar again.
He slowly sat down in his chair and dragged his fingers through his hair. But when he looked up, there was the fire of determination burning in his eyes. “Alright. This plan better be fucking perfect.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Zara had to fly. There was no other way to get rid of some of the insane energy and tension that dogged her. She didn’t usually mind the heat of the jungle. But suddenly, right now, the oppressive blanket of foggy heat had her feeling like she was going to come out of her skin.
The second she stepped out of the hut, leaving Solar, Javi, and O behind, she headed back into the jungle, stripping off her dress and underclothes as she went. Not even caring who might see. She was shifted and in the air in less than a minute.
Zara beat her wings against the air; the canopy of the jungle swayed and retreated from the huge gusts of wind that puffed beneath her. Each stroke of her wings brought her higher and higher into the air. She needed the good clean, cold air of the atmosphere. She needed the thin, almost suffocating, layer of ozone. So high a dragon could always see the stars, no matter what time of day it was.
The breath came fast in Zara’s dragon lungs and from the corner of her eye she could see the sun glinting off her gray scales. She’d always thought her coloring as a dragon was boring, but she’d always appreciated how it allowed her to blend in. She picked up the colors of the world around her. She could look purple in the twilight, blue over the ocean, green in the jungle. She’d always been good at hiding.
After Solar had left the castle behind, Zara had gotten very good at hiding. Anytime that King Dalyer had required her presence, she would dutifully attend. But anytime that wasn’t strictly required, Zara would absolutely disappear. She used to spend most of her time in her room, or on the roof of the castle, where she could be alone, shift, and fly.
Zara gasped against the thinning air of the atmosphere as she climbed and climbed. The jungle ceased being an ecosystem and became a blanket of hilly green stretching out beneath her. In the distance, she could see a shiny, blue ribbon of the ocean. In the other direction, white tipped mountains rose up from the landscape even higher than she was. She executed a kind of twisting backflip in the air and felt as if she could see the curve of the earth beneath her.
She felt the same kind of exhilarated freedom she used to feel when she’d fly from the roof of the castle. Flight was the only freedom she’d felt for the lifetime she’d spent as the king’s betrothed. There had been one other bright spot in her tenure at the castle. Friendship. When Lucy had been there.
Lucy was a human that Dalyer had kidnapped from the human realm to mate with. But that had never come to pass, thank god. Lucy had fallen in love with Amos, the head of the king’s security and personal bodyguard. The two of them had escaped out of reach of the king’s grasp and back into the human realm to live their lives in peace.
Zara had been happy for them, deeply happy. But she’d also despaired. Lucy had been a good friend. Supportive. Kind. Hilarious. But Lucy hadn’t left her high and dry. Lucy, Amos, and the Oracle had been the ones who conspired with Solar to have Zara kidnapped by the Surgere in the first place. Lucy had made sure that Zara wasn’t left to live out her life in the clutches of the king forever.
And since then, Solar had looked after her. And in his surprising way, cared about her deeply. Her entire life Zara had good people caring for her, keeping her safe.
Zara twisted again and swooped upward. She jetted through a cloud and the small water droplets froze on her scales as she whipped across the sky. Using her momentum, she pushed herself farther, faster, higher, and she broke out of another layer of the atmosphere. The sky was black around her. The air almost non-existent, gravity almost gone. The universe surrounded her like a shiny, black globe. Stars and planets spiraled above her and Zara’s mind whirled. She ducked back down for air. She knew she was too high up here, flying dangerously.