Morgan did not stop. The moment the Dóthain vanished in the storm, he lunged after her, wings snapping open with a violence that shredded the air. The wind howled in answer, ripping at his feathers, but he drove into it anyway, jaw clenched, eyes locked west.
“Morgan!” Lain shouted.
He didn’t hear her. Or he heard, and chose not to.
The bond flared hot and sharp with the tang of pursuit and possession and necessity. He needed the Dóthain. The Underveins were singing through her now, and his own reserves were burning down to nothing.
He angled harder, chasing the echo of her cry through the storm.
His wings began to fail.
The left wing shuddered, its edges fraying. The right followed, the structure unraveling into smoke that steamed backward on the wind as if his feathers had caught fire.
“Morgan –” Lain gasped, terror punching through her chest.
The lift vanished. He swore with a raw and vicious cry and twisted, instinct dragging him toward survival even as the rest of him strained to follow the Dóthain. Morgan’s grip faltered. The wind shifted, turned treacherous.
He angled them hard toward the ground, fighting the wind. Below them, the cliffs fell away into a rolling shelf of black stone and slick grass, the sea breaking white and furious against the rock far below. The smell of salt hit her.
He released her at the last possible moment.
Lain hit the ground shoulder-first and rolled, hooves scrambling uselessly as the world spun – sky, grass, stone, sky again – until she slammed into a low rise of earth hard enough to knock the breath clean out of her lungs.
For a moment there was nothing but the roar of blood in her ears.
She gasped and twisted onto her hands and knees. Her body screamed in protest; her hips were bruised, palms scraped, and a sharp pain flared along her hip.
Morgan fell further upslope. She saw him tumble, then strike hard enough that the sound of it carried over the wind. He lay half-curled on his side, one arm dug into the wet grass as if he’d tried to stop himself and failed. Smoke bled from his back in slow, unraveling tendrils where his wings had been, thinning into nothing on the wind.
The Dóthain did not look back. She vanished westward, a dark shape swallowed by cloud and distance, her cry fading into the roar of the world.
Lain lay there shaking, vision tunneling.
Then the fury hit. She dragged herself upright, breath burning, and turned toward Morgan’s crumpled form. He wasn’t moving. Smoke still curled lazily from where his wings had been, staining the air with a metallic bitterness. For a moment she thought he was dead.
Relief hit her next, sharp and dizzying, when he groaned.
And then the anger came back twice as hard.
“You bastard,” she hissed.
He stirred, rolling weakly onto his side. Blood streaked his temple. His breath was ragged, shallow.
“You tried to bind her,” Lain said, her voice shaking. “You tried to make her yours.”
His eyes cracked open, unfocused but fierce. “I was right.”
She let out a short, broken laugh and stepped back from him. The bond screamed in protest, pain flaring through her chest, but she didn’t care.
“You don’t get to decide that,” she said. “You don’t get to decide anything anymore.”
She turned, and every step away from him felt like pulling scales from her own arms, but she kept going. Toward the edge of the cliff, toward distance, toward air that did not taste like blood and ozone and his control.
He was her captor. He’d used her. He would have bound the Dóthain in the same way.
Behind her, Morgan made a sound. It sounded animal, stripped bare.
She stopped.
The bond surged in shock.
He hadn’t followed her. She turned back despite herself.
He was still on the ground, one arm digging uselessly into the grass, teeth clenched. His body shook with the effort of trying to rise and failing.
Under the anger, under the fear, she felt his hunger. It was a deep, gnawing emptiness clawing at his core, the absence left behind when the bloodwyrms were gone and the Underserpent’s gift of wings had burned itself to ash.
Morgan had nothing left to feed on.
Lain swore softly.
She went back.
He looked up when her shadow fell over him, disbelief flashing naked and unguarded across his face.
“You came back for me,” he rasped.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” she said, hauling him upright before he could argue. His weight sagged into her far more heavily than she expected. “It’s only guilt.”
They staggered together toward what little shelter the cliff offered. They found a shallow cleft in the rock where the cliff folded inward, enough to break the wind and hold a little of the day’s warmth. Morgan collapsed the moment they reached it, knees folding, shoulder striking stone hard enough to make Lain flinch as it rolled through the bond. He slid down and went still, breath shallow, lashes dark against his cheek.
For a long moment, she only stood there.
The wind roared past the mouth of the hollow. Spray lifted from the sea below and feathered the air with salt. Far off, thunder rolled, or something like it, a deep sound that set her teeth on edge.
Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.
She could leave.
The thought arrived clean and brilliant.
She could take his cloak, his knife. She could walk until her hooves bled and never look back. He had wings once; he had power; he had chosen to spend it on control instead of trust. None of that was her fault.
He had been her captor.
The bond pulsed weakly between them, a thread stretched thin enough that she could almost imagine snapping it with a single hard choice.
If she went now, she would live.
She crouched, reaching for his knife.
Her hand went to his cloak instead, pulling it over him. She tugged it up, not especially gentle, more an act of defiance than care. He didn’t stir. His skin was too cold beneath her palm. Whatever had sustained him before was gone. She could feel the absence of it like a vacuum in the air.
“You don’t get to make me choose you,” she whispered. “Not like that.”
She stayed.
Night fell. The wind softened. The sea withdrew into a distant roar. Lain slept fitfully, half-wrapped in fear, her dreams knotting and unknotting without resolving into sense.
A strange pressure woke her.
She opened her eyes to darkness so complete it took her a moment to understand she was awake at all. The hollow breathed around her: damp stone, mineral scents.
Her night-seeing eyes adjusted little by little to the darkness.
Someone was very close.
She did not move.
The shape above her was still, tall, outline blurred as if the darkness itself were shifting around it. For a terrible moment she thought of the Dóthain.
It leaned closer.
Her breath caught in her throat, sharp enough to hurt.
Its eyes emerged from the dark. They reflected what little starlight reached the hollow, pale and unblinking. Not human eyes. Hunger raw and undisguised. It was a need so naked it made her skin prickle.
She tried to speak. Nothing came out.
The thing above her inhaled slow, savoring, as if tasting her scent, She felt the unmistakable draw of a predator deciding distance and weight and timing. Her heart slammed against her ribs.
It moved down to her, its weight firm on her body, its mouth questing in the darkness to open over the pulsing vein of her throat.
This was how people died. The thought was distant and curiously calm. Just teeth and need and the dark.
When its teeth met her skin her hoof kicked reflexively and scraped the stone. Her ears flicked at the sound and it was enough to unjar her.
“Morgan,” she whispered, the word breaking as it left her mouth.
Its teeth paused only briefly, hot and wet at her neck, and then the shape recoiled as if struck.
“No,” he said hoarsely. “No –”
He staggered backward, hands coming up, fingers curling as though he were trying not to touch her. He pressed himself against the far wall of the hollow, breath ragged and shaking.
“I didn’t,” he said. “I wouldn’t.”
She didn’t answer. But now that he was no longer hovering hungrily over her the shudder came and she couldn’t stop shaking. Her hands flew up to guard her throat.
For a long moment they stayed like that, the hollow stretched tight with the aftermath of terror. Then, without another word, he turned and vanished into the night, his footsteps swallowed almost at once by the wind.
Time smeared itself thin. Lain lay awake until dawn. She half-dreamed of claws scraping stone, of breath hot against her neck, of wings dissolving into smoke and leaving a bloodwyrm in their place.
When he returned, the sky was just beginning to pale.
There was blood on his hands. On his mouth. It was dark, and drying. He did not look at her. He sank down near the mouth of the hollow and stayed there, shoulders bowed, breathing slow and controlled as if he were holding himself together by sheer force of will.
She sat up. This was her second chance. The light was coming. The path down the cliff was visible now, treacherous but possible. She could leave him while he was weak, when he couldn’t follow. She could choose herself.
Her body didn’t move. Anger stirred inside her, hot and familiar, but under that was something far worse: understanding.
He had hunted for survival.
She hated that she understood. Hated that the bond let her feel it, the animal clarity, the shame afterward, the iron resolve to never let it happen again.
“You’re dangerous,” she said finally.
“Yes,” he answered. He did not argue.
She wrapped her arms around herself, staring at the thin strip of horizon where light bled into the world.
“I should go.”
“Yes,” he said again, just as quietly.
She stayed.
Exhaustion took her again and she slept. She could not trust him. But leaving him would have meant admitting that everything between them had only been a cage. And that was not the whole truth.
She woke to his voice before she felt his hand.
“Lain,” Morgan said quietly, close enough that she felt his breath against her skin before she fully surfaced. “Lain. Wake up.”
Her eyes opened into gray light and stone, the mouth of the cave washed with a new dawn. For a disorienting moment she didn’t know where she was, only that her body hurt in a deep, structural way, as if it had been rearranged without her knowledge as she slept. Then memory rushed back in fragments: the roar of the collapse, the wild beating of wings, the terrible moment when the Dóthain had vanished.
She jerked, and only then did she realize his hand was resting on her shoulder.
He felt her fear immediately and withdrew. He had washed; she could see that now, the faint dampness at his hairline, the absence of blood that had haunted her half-dreams. His face was pale with exhaustion, the planes of it drawn hard, but his eyes were clear.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said. “I thought it was better to wake you before we lose too much light.”
Her throat burned when she tried to speak. She swallowed, mouth dry. “How long did I sleep?”
“Not long enough. But long enough for the light to come up.”
She pushed herself onto her elbows, then immediately wished she hadn’t. The world tilted unpleasantly, a slow, sickening roll that made her stomach clench. She closed her eyes and waited for it to pass, breathing through her nose the way she always did when she was close to retching.
“There’s a village,” Morgan said after a moment, watching her carefully. “Down the coast. I saw smoke when it was still dark, and boats pulled up along the inlet. Fisherfolk. Many loyal to me. We can get you water. Food.”
When she tried to stand, her legs betrayed her, folding beneath her weight in a way that shocked her with its suddenness. She pitched forward, and he caught her without thinking, one arm coming around her middle to keep her from striking the stone.
She stiffened at the contact, a sharp, instinctive recoil, but he did not pull her closer. He only held her upright, steadying her while she fought down the wave of nausea that surged hard enough to make her gag.
“There’s no need to rush,” he murmured.
Her vision swam. She pressed one hand to her mouth, breathing shallowly until the sickness ebbed, leaving her hollow and trembling. “I just need water,” she said. “And something to eat.”
His arm shifted as she sagged, his hand adjusting at her waist to keep her balanced – and then he went still.
He felt the resistance beneath her skin for the first time, the unfamiliar firmness where her body should have been soft. His palm rested there, bracing her, and his awareness sent a chill up her spine.
He drew a slow breath.
“Lain,” he said, very carefully. “How long have you been feeling like this?”
Her pulse thudded hard in her ears. “Don’t,” she said, the word sharp with panic.
He loosened his grip at once, his hand lifting. “I’m not accusing you of anything,” he said quietly. “I’m trying to understand.”
She twisted out of his hold, anger flaring hot and mottled in her chest. “You know how long I’ve been feeling like this. I’ve been singing for days, Morgan. I’ve been running on nothing but exhaustion and fear. Of course I’m sick.”
“I know,” he said. “But –”
“No,” she cut in, the sound tearing out of her before she could temper it.
Silence settled between them, thick and uneasy, filled only by the distant sound of waves breaking against the cliffs. She hugged her arms around herself, suddenly aware of the cold.
When he spoke again, his voice was steadier, stripped of speculation. “Then let me get you to someone who can help,” he said. “A healer.”
She gave a short, humorless laugh. “Your fishing village has a doctor?”
“I think they’ll have someone. And if they don’t they’ll still have clean water and food. You can barely stand, Lain.”
She swayed again, and this time she didn’t fight when he steadied her, his hand light and careful at her elbow. She was furious to know that he’d been weaker than her for all of a day and she’d done nothing to take advantage of it.
“We’ll go slowly,” he added. “You decide when to stop.”
She let him help her toward the mouth of the cave, each step an effort, the cliff yawning behind them, the sea stretching endlessly ahead. Beneath the fear and the anger she hadn’t finished with, there was something else now, something insistent and entirely her own that was waiting for her to acknowledge it.
