This time, the change didn’t come as easily as it used to. His body didn’t want to shift into the weak form of a human. It wanted to feel the power of wings, the capability of sinewy muscle, and the reassurance of scale armor that protected him from all harm.
Nadir had to focus far more than ever before, so much that he panicked for a moment. His body didn’t want to let go of the form. Why didn’t it want to let go?
Eventually, it gave way back to flesh. He landed beside her in a crouch, fists pressed against the ground while breathing heavily.
“Husband?” she asked, kneeling beside him and sliding her hands along his jaw. “What are we going to do?”
“About what?”
The pain hadn’t disappeared from her eyes. In fact, he would argue it had only gotten stronger. “Everything.”
He wanted to tell her not to worry. That the world would wait for them to figure out what was going to happen. Both kingdoms had seen how the dragons were even larger than before. They had watched her kill and knew that the sultan dragon could kill as well.
They wouldn’t test gods like them. They wouldn't want to know what else the dragons could do if they were angered even more.
But she didn’t want to hear that. She wanted him to reassure her. To take away the worry and the pain for a little while at the very least.
Nadir had never been that person for anyone before. He had always been the one who had the worry taken away. His advisors had guided him through difficult situations. They had hidden so much from him that he feared he didn’t know how to be the person she wanted him to be.
Carefully, he reached up and slid his hands into the long locks of her hair. “Let’s not be kings and queens right now,” he said. “Let’s just be you and me. Let the stars look upon mortals tonight.”
He tugged her forward by the hair and touched his lips to hers. She softened beneath his touch, letting go of the icy rage that had flooded her being since the first moment they saw the battle in her homeland.
She tasted like the first drop of water after a summer of desert sun. The icy touch of winter as it first laid hands upon the lands. She was the soothing touch to his burning ache. Why hadn’t he looked upon her beauty before this? Why hadn’t he loved her sooner?
He drew her ever closer, touching his fingers to her skin. “Habib albi,” he murmured.
“Your love?”
“My love,” he replied, pressing her against his chest and pulling away to swipe her hair off her face. “My moon, my stars, my wings. You make me burn, Sultana.”
“Then find me in the ashes of your soul, my love.” She touched her fingertips to his lips, and he felt his soul take flight. “I choose you over all others now.”
“Over your kingdom?”
She didn’t answer him with words. Instead, she wrapped her arms around his neck and drew him back into her kiss.
As the sun rose on the horizon, rays of light stroking the land, they laid together for the first time. He fell in love with the curves of her body, with the sound of her sighs. But more than anything else in the world, he fell in love with the look in her eyes as she met his gaze.
She, who could have torn out his throat with her teeth. Who could tear open his belly with her claws. Who could burn him alive with her breath.
She had chosen instead to kiss him with every part of her soul. To love him with her whole heart. To believe in him when no one else had.
Nadir wrapped himself in her like a warm blanket and in turn, shielded her from the world, from decisions, from guilt. He would be the man she wanted him to be. He would take care of her, build her back into the queen he knew she could be, worship her as the goddess she was.
Gods. He would love her as no man had loved a woman before.
33
Epilogue
Camilla
“Where did they go?”
Camilla sighed. “I don’t know, Raheem. We’ve been searching for them for what feels like forever. We cannot find them.”
“They’re two dragons. We can’t simply… lose them.”
“We can if they aren’t changed right now. Two people can easily slip away. It will take some time.”
He slapped his hands down on the table. They’d stationed themselves in the old Beastkin castle. Woodcrest was one of the few places that hadn’t been destroyed by the fire, although the Beastkin had all seemingly scattered to the wind.
A few had remained. Those who stood around the table were the original women from Wildewyn, lacking a few of their most key people.
No one knew what to do now that both Sigrid and Nadir had disappeared. Wildewyn was all searching for the two dragons, some people whispering that the ancient gods of old had finally returned to their homeland. Others, afraid for what that would mean if gods now walked the earth.
According to Raheem, Bymere fared even worse. Without a single person from the advisor council left alive, and a sultan who had disappeared entirely, they were being led by the Alqatara. A group who left little to the imagination and were far more military than what the country was used to.
Raheem ran his fingers through his hair, tugging at the roots. “Tahira can only do so much in Bymere before people start to revolt.”
“She has the medicine woman with her, does she not?”
“You mean Eivor? That woman is terrifying people left and right. There’s already a religious faction certain she was sent to destroy them.”
“Good. Then she’s creating enough of a distraction to keep people busy. They’ll worry about her and not where their sultan has run off to. That gives us time.”
“Don’t you understand—”
The
