“They’re coming,” Kavya said, almost in a trance. “At the hangar. Snowmobiles.”

“Then airborne it is.”

He pulled back the throttle and begged the little two-seater to gather her nerve. More speed. More.

Kavya cried out, clutching her temples. She shook in her seat, as if whipped side to side by unseen hands.

Tallis didn’t dare let go of the yoke, but he needed his copilot. He needed Kavya as his partner.

“You’re a lying bitch, goddess. You hear me? Get your ass back here so I can tell you what I really think of you. I want the chance before we smash into the Beas.” He risked a sideways glance. “I mean it. I’ll slap you in the face right now. And if we do get out of here, you won’t believe what I have planned. You get to strip next time. I want a show like you’ve never given another man. Don’t piss me off or I’ll be the one to rip off your Dragon-damn clothes.”

She shivered again, then nodded. Her voice was an ancient album that had been scratched to hell. The song was still there, but obscured by damage. “Promises, promises, Tallis. Now fly this lonayíp thing.”

—

Kavya fended off Pashkah by distracting him with her own vulnerability. She imagined herself a child of only twelve. You should’ve killed me then, you monster.

The pain kept coming, but better to aim it at her than at Tallis. He was operating at the highest mental function. Total concentration. That meant he’d be vulnerable to Pashkah’s psychic attacks. She couldn’t let that happen, when flying in the storm required as much brawn as skill. She focused on Tallis’s verbal tirade. He kept taunting her, saying things that no longer rang true, but that served as an escape route.

Escape. Again.

She wanted to turn around and face her brother once and for all. That wasn’t possible.

Not yet.

She took refuge in watching Tallis work. The tendons along his neck tightened, as did the set of his jaw. He was a rubber band about to snap. Except for his hands. She fended off the agony that bored into her bones by watching his hands. His knuckles were white with the pressure of gripping the yoke. Every vein stood in relief. The light dusting of hair across the backs of his wrists seemed exotic. She wanted to touch him there. She wanted to touch him all over.

“Kavya, Dragon damn it!”

The plane suddenly slid to the left. “I’m here.”

“Don’t know where the fuck you went, but don’t do it again.”

“I’m trying to keep him out of your stubborn, perverted head.”

“I like my head a little perverse, thank you.”

“A little?”

“Hush. Hold on.” He grimaced. His nostrils flared over lips taut with concentration. Blue eyes had narrowed to laser beam intensity.

The plane skittered and slipped and insisted that it would never get off the ground. The small Cessna didn’t have enough speed, but the wind had enough power. An upward surge caught the wings about a hundred yards from the end of the runway. Tallis didn’t miss the chance. He hauled up on the controls until the nose lifted and the rear wheels left the ground.

Kavya screamed, partly out of triumph. Tallis’s grin was maniacal and transformed his entire face. Mad, but in the best way. Mad in a way she wanted to share—without fear and without regret.

She sent a parting psychic shot back toward her brother. She wasn’t a trained fighter, and she didn’t have his twice-cursed power, but she had a moment of pure adrenaline. Fused with her hatred, she flung her worst back toward the man who’d warped her life for too long. She pictured his joints. Knees. Shoulders. Hips. Elbows. She burned fire into each one. There was no way to hear his bellows over the sound of her heart, the storm, the propellers, but his telepathic scream resonated behind her breastbone with a satisfying rush.

No wonder he sought so much power—heady and dangerous.

She broke from that seductive trance by reveling in the intoxicating thrill of the elements. The storm played games with the little plane, up and down and listing like a rowboat in a froth of whitewater.

“Shit,” Tallis grunted.

The craft spun twice. Kavya was dizzy and nauseated. “What in the name of the Dragon was that?”

“We either spin with the wind, goddess, or see what happens when our wings sheer off.”

“Spin, then.”

“Only when the storm says so. Surprisingly, it doesn’t respond to your bossy orders.”

“You’ve taught me to cope with that disappointment.”

He grinned again, although his knuckles were still bone beneath skin. No blood and no color. “Does that mean I’m a force of nature? I could get used to that.”

“As infuriating as one,” she said.

“Bollocks. You like it. Besides, I obeyed you when I climbed into this— Whoa!”

The plane rolled again. The wind-tossed waters of the Beas were all Kavya could see out of the front cockpit windows. The g-force against her face meant gravity wanted them. The earth wanted them. And the storm didn’t want them sharing its sky.

Tallis’s desire to live trumped them all.

He steered the Cessna out of its downward plummet. He growled with what sounded like Pendray curses. She joined in using the Indranan tongue. Somewhere in time, however, they crossed from those separate languages and slipped into the mutual language of all Dragon Kings. Like the humans’ story of Babel, the Five Clans had fractured, too, each with its own means of communication. She liked sharing what might be their final words as if speaking directly to the Dragon—prayers and curses mixed, in complete understanding.

A headache that had nothing to do with Pashkah’s mental bullying pierced her temples. She rather liked that. Physical pain, not mental. But not too much pain. Crashing would mean agony beyond imagining. She and Tallis would wind up as he’d described: stuck in useless, broken bodies, unable to die. She’d obliged Nakul’s final wish, yes. This would be different. Their minds would remain intact. She might have the strength to put Tallis out of his suffering, although the idea of lobotomizing him added a layer of gut-wrenching sadness to her fear.

She wouldn’t be able to do it to herself. Endless suffering.

Hating her helplessness, she gripped the armrests until she thought her arms would splinter. She was panicking, and that was never a good thing for an Indranan. If Tallis was holding his fear response at bay—the berserker that almost certainly wanted to overrule his thinking mind—then she could.

“You threatened to strip me.” She grinned to herself, knowing Tallis would be smiling, too. “Think you can manage?”

“I’ll manage just fine.”

“A lot of experience in that department?”

“A lot more than you.”

She wanted to wipe the sweat off her brow but couldn’t find the courage to let go of the armrests. “You think you can handle seducing a virgin?”

“Seducing? We were talking about the forceful removal of your clothes.”

“That’s part of it, I’m sure,” she said with a shiver. The adrenaline, the physical anguish, the absolute terror—they were blending with their ribald conversation until her body felt molten. She was a bundles of nerves contained within too-tight skin. “But I don’t respond to violence.”

“Says you. The right kind can be amazing.”

He said that last with a gasp—sexy and breathless—as the plane righted and swerved sharply to port. Had they been any nearer to the ground, the wing on Tallis’s side would’ve shredded into the earth.

“We’re lucky to still be airborne,” he said after a hard, telling swallow.

“Every second is a victory.”

“We’re agreeing on so much, goddess. You’ll come around. I know it. Strip. Kiss. A little rough play—you’ll enjoy my definition of seduction.”

“Can a man be that assured and actually manage to be amazing?”

“Kavya, right now I’m flying a paper airplane in a turbine.” His neck was rigid with tension. “That means I can spin straw into gold and level mountains. Pick what impossible deed you want me to accomplish next.”