"We will hunt weredragons!" Angel shouted through her laughter, and they filled the hall around her. "We will mate with mortal flesh! Spread across the city, children of rot. Choose brides among the women. Sniff out reptiles and slay them. Kill and breed! Crush and bring forth life!"

They stormed through the hall, a geyser of rot, cracking the columns, crashing through doors, shattering windows, flowing into the city and the searing sunlight that had been forbidden for so long. Their howls shook the world, almost drowning the screams of the mortals.

They left the hall singed, globs of rot dripping from the charred tapestries, the floor shattered, the mosaic stones scattered like dragon scales. Still he stood before her, this new king, this human of hot skin and blood.

She placed her arms around him.

"I need no bride," she whispered and licked his face, tearing his skin with the hooks of her tongue. "You will be mine."

She tugged and they fell upon the shattered floor, limbs dangling across the open pit's ledge, and there she copulated with him, a sticky dance of stone and skin, of blood and fire, and she screamed as they merged, and she laughed and clawed the floor.

She had found freedom. She had found release for her fire. And soon . . . soon she would find dragons to burn.

JEID

"Grizzly, I am leaving." Maev crossed her arms, thrust out her bottom lip, and raised her chin. "I'm flying across the sea and into a bronze kingdom, and you can't stop me."

Standing in the canyon, Jeid Blacksmith stared at his daughter, rage and fear mingling inside him. He clutched his axe so tightly he thought he might snap the shaft. His arms shook. A growl rose in his throat. Finally he could not contain it; he tossed back his shaggy, bearded head and shouted wordlessly. His cry echoed within the mossy walls of the canyon, shaking the stones. This was an ancient crack in the world—boulders perched precariously atop pillars of stone, trees clinging to craggy walls, natural cairns of sharp rocks, and caves running into the depths of the earth. This natural fortress of walls, tunnels, and towers had stood here since the dawn of time. Now Jeid howled so loudly he thought the sound could shatter the old stones, burying him and his daughter forever.

Finally his wordless cry morphed into words. "No! I forbid it. You will stay here in this canyon, in safety, with me."

Maev tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. She placed her fists on her hips and snorted, blowing back a strand of her long, dark blond hair.

"You cannot stop me. I am twenty-three years old, Grizzly. When you were my age, you were already a father." She gestured at the canyon around her. Vines and moss covered the craggy walls, and boulders lay piled up around her. "I'm a Vir Requis. I can shift into a dragon. I'm not meant to hide among stone." Her eyes gleamed and she hopped to another boulder, moving closer to him. "Grizzly, there is another. I know it. Let me find him."