A Shade of Dragon by Bella Forrest Page A

meant, here.
    “Tell me now, and you will fear nothing from my hand,” Theon promised the wary women. The white one, having regained her strength, fluttered to the two brown-and-red harpies and helped lift the broken-winged one into the air. “If you do not tell me, I cannot promise to be kind.”
    The broken-winged one lurched forward, fighting her sisters to tangle with Theon one more time. “You’ll see soon enough,” she crowed.
    Theon kept himself between me and the harpies. He lunged for the offensive one and all three moved away in a flurry of wings. All four took to the sky and left Theon staring after them.
    “Augh!” he cried into the sky. “Damn you, ignoble monsters!” Leaning down, he wedged his moccasin against the ledge of the nest and gave it a thrust toward the ledge of the cliff. With two more kicks, the large basin toppled out of view, and I could only imagine how it came apart on the rocks below.
    Panting, Theon turned to face me again for the first time since this horrible nightmare had begun. I stared at him so bleakly, so helplessly, that I didn’t feel any words even needed to be said.
    He crossed the space between us in four strides and went down on his knees, cupping my arms. He stripped away my jacket to examine the burnt puncture wounds on my arm. I welcomed the heady warmth of his fingertips. I wasn’t sure if I was going into shock, or if temperatures were seriously hypothermic up here. He didn’t try to drag me up from my knees. “Tell me you are all right,” he pleaded. “Penelope? Tell me anything at all.” His eyes sought mine, glowing.
    “What…” I gulped. “Was… that?”
    “Look into my eyes, Nell. Look into my eyes and just focus there for a moment.”
    I took a shuddering breath and latched onto his golden eyes with relief. They seemed to get deeper and deeper as I stared into them, our surroundings getting darker, fading away.
    “Theon,” I whispered. During the brief spell I’d been under, he had brought me to a standing position with him, and the tear which had been cresting my lower eyelid had now darted down my cheek and its track was now frozen. “You’ve got to start giving me some answers here.”
    His thumb brushed my cheek. “I will,” he swore, so close that his warmth insulated me from the eddies of freezing wind. So close that I smelled the fire and leather and salt crackling in his aura. “Let me just have these little moments with you before things get… harder.” Theon’s golden eyes burned into mine. “These are the moments I live for.” One finger traced down my cheek and across my lips, cracking them apart slightly as he did so. My eyelashes fluttered closed as his lips came against mine again, but this time felt nothing like the last. Rather than drowning in some kind of inferno, I felt gently prodded by a halo of candlelight. His fingers moved through my hair, down my neck, over my shoulders, along my back, and onto my hips.
    I poured into the negative space between us, craving more, but he relented in his pursuit. “This is a dangerous place to be. We know someone is watching us, and there is nowhere better for all eyes to see. If they can find reinforcements, the harpies will be back.”
    Were birds that well-organized? But then some of the disjointed moments from the earlier scuffle returned to me. “You were talking to them. You were talking to them about their use for me, and about who they had ‘consorted’ with… Theon.” I shook my head and grappled with the words. “You had some kind of business with those bird creatures.”
    “Harpies,” he corrected me.
    I laughed a shaky laugh. “Right. Harpies.”
    “They are not common in my country or in yours. Noted for being vicious. Prefer to hunt and fight in packs… which gives them a high likelihood of engaging in an alliance with any other interested—and resourced—party.”
    “An alliance?” I echoed weakly. My mind gave way beneath the sheer weight of this