Daemon stopped the horse, and as she was gazing glumly down at the ground going by beneath them, in her mind cursing Jellan for making good his escape and leaving her with this creature, this thing, leaving it all to her to find a way to stop it, the selfish sop, she had no idea why Daemon suddenly did that.

Thus, she looked up, to him, to see him gazing at the distance with an expression on his deceptively handsome face that did not make her feel like rejoicing.

“What is it?” she asked.

“This is my query,” he said as answer.

She turned in the direction of where he was staring and blinked.

“It’s a rainbow,” she said.

Though she could not be certain it was. She’d never seen the likes of it.

It seemed to go straight up into the sky without an arch.

And the sky was cloudless, so it was not that it was just very tall, and it disappeared in white.

“It is not thus,” Daemon stated.

She turned her attention back to him. “Then what is it?”

“It is not thus,” he repeated.

“Then what is it?” she demanded snappishly.

And then she jerked away, fear choking her, as his eyes bulged, his head sunk into his neck, his mouth widened, and he snapped at her with teeth gone ghastly.

“I tire of your tone,” his voice rumbled, animal and primal.

“I-I’m…” She swallowed. “I’m sorry. I was simply asking a question.”

“We need to make the stones,” he declared.

“The…what?”

He snapped at her again, literally, with dreadful teeth.

“We must make the stones,” he decreed, bent to her, and she again reared away.

But he was only preparing to dig his heels into their horse and start galloping.

Something he did.

Toward what, she did not know.

To where, she had no idea.

But clearly, he sought the stones, whatever they were.

One thing she knew they were…

They were important.

Thus, she hoped to the goddess, along the way, she was able to discover how to stop him.

Queen Elena

Bedchamber of the Prince and Princess Regent, Sky Citadel, Sky Bay

AIREN

With my tongue, I traced my mark on Cassius that adorned the skin above his handsome cock.

“Please tell me I did not make a mistake with this and my wife pays it all her attention and does not give it where it is needed,” Cassius growled.

I lifted my eyes to him, wrapped my fingers around the member in need, then licked it from root to tip.

His eyes went midnight.

“Come here,” he murmured.

“I’m doing something,” I told him, then kept licking.

“My queen, come here.”

That made me go there.

I crawled up his body, but before he could speak, I put my fingers to his lips.