Black kohl outlined her sparkling blue eyes. That and the thick lashes created a dramatic effect.
Her perfect skin and sculpted lips belonged on a runway model in New York.
Beneath all that blond hair hid a supernatural homicidal maniac.
But she had been Tristan’s only ticket out of that cave before Cathbad could begin turning him into a polymorph, one capable of destroying Treoir before Daegan’s dragon would have been forced to kill Tristan. Daegan wouldn’t have known who he was until Tristan died. Tristan had been willing to do anything to save his boss and friend from so horrible a fate.
Tristan’s body ached from too many ice wounds to count, none of which would heal until he could draw on his gryphon’s power.
A rumbling noise shook him back to the present.
Thunder?
Getting struck by lightning would cap his crappy day.
Brynhild’s dragon made a soft cawing noise as if she liked something she saw.
What had drawn her beast’s attention?
And no one could see Brynhild’s dragon while she flew brazenly in public. She had the ability to cloak her dragon, even while in the air.
Did Daegan know that little detail?
If Tristan made it through this flight and whatever she had in mind for him, he had a lot to share with Daegan.
First he had to survive.
Brynhild had broken the spelled chains holding Tristan to the stone wall and let his abused body fall to the floor. His right knee had buckled when he tried to stand. The cold initially numbing the pain in his kneecap no longer helped now that a blanket warmed his legs just enough to feel again. Every time her dragon dipped or banked, his knee suffered a jagged ache.
He’d been so sure he could teleport away from her the minute she freed him, but she’d proven to be more clever than he realized and stayed a jump ahead.
The minute he managed to stand on his bad leg in the cavern, she’d produced a dagger. She shoved his wrist against the stone wall and stabbed the dagger through his forearm, pinning him in place.
That had hurt like a mother.
He was lucky she hadn’t killed him right then for the curses he’d shouted at her. She’d smiled instead, evidently more at home with confirmation of her warrior ability than a compliment that almost got him killed.
Rocking the knife to pull it loose from the stone, she’d kept the blade stabbed through his arm as she half-dragged him limping beside her to the mouth of the cave. Every move jarred the sharp blade. He’d come close to passing out. With her lack of patience, she would have probably just killed him on the spot, then regretted the rash decision later.
When she reached the front entrance to the cave, she nodded at the huge boulder blocking their exit and said, “Ledge is on other side of large stone. Teleport there.”
With blood running down his arm and shivering from shock, Tristan croaked, “You can’t move that rock?”
“Yes, but druid put ward in place,” she’d yelled at him.
Having his eardrums blasted again kept him from losing consciousness. “You still have to take the other manacle off for me to teleport.”
“I will, but know this.” She leaned around to his face, leaving no chance of misunderstanding her words. “I will have my hand on this dagger and your neck the very moment I remove the manacle. Try to teleport without me and I stab you somewhere next time that will hold a man’s attention.”
His balls shriveled at that warning.
He uttered in a thin voice, “No tricks.”
Good to her word, she looped the dangling chain from his manacle around the arm holding the dagger. The second she released the manacle from his wrist, she clamped her fingers on his throat.
Tristan considered all the ways teleporting somewhere unfamiliar could go wrong and kill him. He also had a fleeting thought of trying to teleport somewhere he knew, but feared he might be too drained of energy to teleport the entire way. He was not risking his death when he still had a chance to escape.
He’d asked, “How wide is the ledge outside?”
“Four strides away from boulder. Six strides wide. Do not miss or you will fall to your death where I will shift into my dragon and fly away.”
That required teleporting up and over the ward shielding the entrance.
He hoped like hell Cathbad had not warded more than this opening.
Brynhild wouldn’t care that teleporting was not a natural gift, but an ability he’d gained by downing a witch highball out of desperation in the past. That had been back when the goddess Macha had imprisoned him in a spelled jungle location in South America just for being an Alterant.
Screwed by another female and no desire to kiss either one. “Get ready. I’m teleporting us.”
Brynhild scoffed, “I have been ready for long time.”
He called up his gryphon power, hoping for enough to teleport the short distance and that his arm would not heal around the damn dagger. Then he closed his eyes and hoped he possessed a bit of luck.
When he reappeared, snow and mountains stretched forever. His toes hung over the edge of a cliff with nothing below him for thousands of feet with him teetering forward.
His heart tried to claw its way up his throat at the vision of falling to his death.
She yanked him back on solid ground and clamped the manacle onto his bad wrist.
He shouted, “I’m fuckin’ freezin’.” She conjured up fur and leather clothing on his body.
He’d considered shifting right then and fighting his way out, but Brynhild being a dragon shifter stifled that idea. Even if they had been equal in power, she had not been tortured for hours or stabbed with a dagger.
She immediately wrapped the chain around his neck, ending all hope of shifting.
Whatever spell Cathbad had placed on the chain and manacles blocked Tristan’s gryphon power.
“You will teleport us to my homeland.”
Tristan had a pretty good idea where that was, but still asked, “Where did you grow up?”
“Are you daft? You know of dragons but not the home of the ice dragons?”
“Actually, I do know where that is, but if we teleport there you might get attacked.” Truth, but Tristan was more concerned with landing in an open area without conflict to give him a chance to find a way to escape.
“Humans are everywhere today,” she groused.
Tristan thought about the place he’d gone with Daegan with the team where Vikings had once suffocated innocent women and children in an underground cave hundreds of years ago. That’s when Tristan learned that Noirre majik, the worst of all black majik, originated from the cadavers in that cave.
He hoped to convince Brynhild of going there. “You’re right about humans being everywhere these days, but I once went to a place called County Kilkenny, which isn’t far from where I believe your king’s castle to be. It has people mostly during the day. I did a lot of hiking there and think I can land us out of view from the humans.”
“Yes, do this.” She swung her lethal gaze close to his face. “Take me to wrong place and I will cut out an eye.”
Bloodthirsty female. His body couldn’t hurt more if someone had pushed him headfirst through a woodchipper. “Got it.”
When she removed the chain and manacle, Tristan teleported, but that one trip drained his energy big time. When they landed, rain battered his body and drenched him. This fur and leather outfit she’d dressed him in weighed more than medieval metal armor.