The second they cleared the tree line and the wind hit her face and the ground fell away beneath them, the composure she'd been stitching together with spit and stubbornness finally tore apart.
She sobbed.
Not the quiet kind. Not the practiced, soundless tears she'd mastered in a dungeon cell at twelve. These were the ugly ones. The full-body, chest-heaving, can't-breathe-between-them kind that came from the floor of a person and didn't stop for dignity or altitude or the fact that she was sitting on a dragon a thousand feet above a kingdom that thought she was strong.
She pressed her face against Velkaris's neck and let it happen. His scales were warm beneath her cheek, radiating the steady, volcanic heat of a creature whose body temperature ran hotter than any hearth, and the heat soaked through her tear-streaked skin like a hand pressed against a wound.
