His mouth moves over mine, patiently coaxing my lips open, and I tighten my hold on the back of his neck as my knees wobble. He kisses me slowly, softly, like I am a new flavor and he has to take his time to taste all of me. I slide my hand up his chest and press it to the side of his face to feel his jaw working as he kisses me. One of his hands slowly traces my spine through my shirt and finds my neck. The other hand fiddles with my braid, tugging the ribbon from it, slowly undoing the weave until my hair falls long and loose all the way to my waist. Golmarr twists his fingers in my hair and kisses me harder. The sound of the waterfall is replaced with the roar of blood moving through my body. The forest seems to drop away and disappear, leaving Golmarr and me in a void where only the two of us exist. His lips slow against mine, then soften. His hands clamp down on my shoulders and he gently pushes me away so he can look into my eyes.
“If things at the binding ceremony had gone differently, you would be my wife right now, and I could kiss you all I want,” he murmurs, making my cheeks warmer than they already are. I swallow and nod and reluctantly let my arms fall from his neck.
“If we would have been wed at the binding ceremony, I don’t know that I would have wanted you kissing me,” I say. “But now that I’ve spent every waking and sleeping moment with you for the past seven days…” I cannot find the words to finish.
He nods. “I know. I feel the same. Being forced into it would have been hard.” He cups the side of my face and slowly kisses my forehead, then bends and picks up my belt. When he hands it to me, I can still see the energy of our kiss in his eyes. “In one week you’ve bewitched me with your magic, Princess Sorrowlynn.”
I shake my head. “No, I haven’t, I swear. I don’t even know how to—”
Golmarr presses his fingertips to my lips to silence me. “Whether you realize it or not, whether you meant to or not, you most assuredly have. No one has ever made me feel the way you do.” He kneels at the side of the stream and splashes water onto his face just as Enzio steps out of the bushes holding a black-bladed stone knife in his hand, muttering something under his breath. Golmarr stands and flicks the water from his hands. “What did you say, Enzio?” he asks.
Enzio looks from Golmarr to me, his eyes taking in my missing belt and loose, disheveled hair, and frowns. “I said I have been standing in the bushes cleaning my fingernails with my knife and waiting for you to finish kissing her for at least five minutes.” He twirls the blade in his fingers and then tosses it into the air, catching it by the hilt before sliding it up his sleeve. “I didn’t realize I was coming along to play chaperone.”
I glare at him and pick up the ribbon from the ground, and then quickly rebraid my hair.
Golmarr throws his head back and laughs.
With Enzio in the lead, we ride in the stream beneath the shadow of the cliff so our tracks are hidden. I am sitting in the saddle this time, with Golmarr behind me, his hands resting loosely on my leather belt, his legs dangling beside mine. When the air begins dimming and the crickets start to chirp, the undergrowth clogging the forest floor thins and the wind picks up, carrying with it warmer air. Golmarr takes a deep breath.
“Do you smell that?” he asks. I inhale. The damp forest air smells more like crisp, dry sunshine and less like mildew. It smells like my bedsheets right after they have been dried on the clothesline in the summer sun.
“What is it?” I sit a little taller in the saddle and try to get a glimpse through the trees.
“That is the smell of my home. Of Anthar.” Golmarr laughs. “I can’t believe we’ve made it this far. I didn’t know if I would ever get to see my kingdom again.” Like stepping from one room to another, the forest abruptly ends, replaced by yellow grass as tall as the horse’s belly. The wind blows and the grass ripples like warm golden water in the last light of the evening. Above, the sky is a pale, unending blue. Goose bumps travel up my arms, and I wonder if I will ever see anything as stunning again in my life.
I turn to look back at the forest. To the east, it runs in a perfectly straight line as far as I can see. To the west, it runs in a perfectly straight line to the base of a mountain. North, a snowcapped peak juts up out of the forest. “Is that Gol Mountain?” I ask.
“Yes. That is the dragon’s mountain. Was,” Golmarr corrects.
Enzio slows his horse to walk beside us. “So is it true what my father believes?” he asks Golmarr.
Golmarr’s hands hold a little tighter to my waist as he asks, “What does your father believe?”
Enzio looks up at the mountain. “My father believes that you killed the fire dragon.”
Golmarr goes very still behind me. “The fire dragon is dead,” he says quietly.
Enzio nods. Looking intently at Golmarr, he says, “It is an honor to travel with the Dragon Slayer.” Enzio slips the black stone knife out of his shirtsleeve and presses the flat of the blade to his forehead. I can see the respect shining in his blue eyes.
“What are you doing, Enzio?” I ask, baffled.
“Giving the Antharian prince the Satari salute of honor,” he explains.
“Did you make that knife? I have never seen anything like it.”
He tosses the knife into the air. It arcs over his head, and he catches it behind his back with his other hand. “This weapon came out of Satar with my ancestors over one hundred years ago, when Grinndoar the dragon toppled our stone cities and forced us to flee or be killed.” He holds the knife out to me, handle first, and I take it. The handle, cross guard, and blade are carved from a single piece of jet-black stone. It is perfectly balanced, with the weight of the handle in exact opposition to the blade.