She sensed the coiling of his muscles beneath the smoky surface of his pelt. Fascination could not help but surface, despite the disjointed nature of her brutally uncertain emotional state. How could something so hard, so stone-like, ripple like liquid? For that was the imagery that sparked in Losa’s thoughts when Hurricane first stiffened beside her. The contraction of his marble slab infrastructure slithered up his sculpted shoulders, clenched the expanse of his abdomen, and tightened the tendons in his arched neck with perfect rhythm. His unease rolled like fog off his frame. It should have spurred Losa into a heightened state of alarm, should have made her want to struggle from his proximity—but instead the wounded faerie pushed her onyx muzzle more firmly into his fur. Just as she failed to explain every other bizarre effect this spell had on her, so the girl found herself without explanation for this action. She’d already trusted him enough to lie near her. She chose to risk his contact rather than the peril of surviving her injury alone. It simply felt right.

Finally he relaxed, and this motion was just as smoothly executed as the first. Unease melted into resolution. Losa chewed the inside of her jowl, talons flexing again as she waited for the first stroke of pain. A thin whimper caught in her throat at the gentle pressure of Hurricane’s tongue on the edge of her laceration. Raw nerve endings cruelly exposed to air shrieked at the fiery stimulation and wracked Losa’s awareness with blaring signals of danger. PLEASE STOP! She remembered those words, screamed in her own voice. She remembered a pain that once it began had grown and grown and grown until it was an avalanche crushing her body. Her breathing, which had jerked quick and shallow while Hurricane positioned himself around her slender build, swelled into gulping, desperate pants. Her mouth felt drier than an autumn leaf. Each caress of his tongue made her flinch, as if she expected fangs the next moment.

Nevertheless, the earth-painted bird remained curled into the shelter of the colossal dragga’s embrace. Such blind trust was a ferocious act of defiance on her own part—defiance against the steadily building dissonance of conflicting commands starting to resurface. If Losa could just wait this out, if she could hold herself still for a little while longer, maybe one of them would have an epiphany. At this point, the tortured princess would even welcome a realization of darkness . . . because discovering the source of her private agony was better than living a half-life shackled by confusion. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad if Hurricane of Mexico turned out to be the creature responsible for the scars that webbed her flesh. If he had the decency to clean the hideous trench raked down her side, who was to say he wouldn’t kill her with mercy once he regained his memories?

If he’d actually ever lost them at all . . .

Gradually the predictable cadence of Hurricane’s touch dulled the magma-hot ache striped over her ribs. Losa swallowed thickly, steeling herself from the question that now waited at the back of her throat like a bundle of broken glass. She didn’t want to ask it. But if she didn’t shatter this spell, if she didn’t try to fight back, then the rest of their lives could be this way. The sylph would wander back into nothingness and die alone. She knew not what this magnificent titan would do, yet even in her bewilderment Losa knew he suffered as well. Birds had ceased their singing when he’d marched beneath their perches. He might go back to being a beast, but maybe it would be better if he could be a beast with purpose . . .

“So . . .” Losa whispered, reckless courage pushing the words from her maw. “Does it taste familiar?”