Beastward Academy: Reborn, I Claimed My Sister's Serpent novel · Chapter 17 of 32

Chapter 17: Wings

I walked all the way around him on the road.

I ran my hands down the long bones of the left wing, then the right.

Straight. Knit clean. Not a ridge where the old breaks had been.

"Well?" his voice rumbled out of the snow.

"They're perfect."

"Of course they're perfect. I had an excellent beastwright." The huge head swung round to look at me. "Get on."

"You haven't flown in six hundred years."

"I've never flown at all. Get on anyway."

"Morvran, if you drop me in the sea in my mother's dress..."

"Then you'll finally be rid of it."

I climbed up behind his head, where I'd sat in the flooded caves, and took hold of the ridge of scales on his neck.

He gathered himself.

I felt the whole length of him coil tight under me.

Then he threw himself off the coast road, over the low wall, straight at the cliff edge.

"Morvran!"

We went over.

For one sick moment there was nothing under us but the gray sea, a long way down, and the wind screaming past my ears.

Then the wings came down.

The whole sky seemed to push back.

We stopped falling.

We rose.

He beat the wings again, clumsy and too hard, and we lurched sideways.

I screamed, and he laughed, a huge laugh I felt in my legs.

"Stop laughing and fly!"

"I am flying!" he roared. "Look at me! I'm flying!"

He beat again. Smoother. And again.

And then we weren't lurching anymore.

We were soaring out over the winter sea with the snow falling around us.

The cliffs went by on our left, and the whole coast spread out below.

I could see Tremayne House, small and gray. I could see the academy's towers. I could see the gold roof of Leofric's tower, shining.

I could see Lowtown at the bottom of the cliff, with its harbor lanterns just coming on in the dusk.

I stopped being afraid somewhere over the sea caves.

I put my arms out.

The wind took my hair right out of its knot. The pencil went spinning away into the sea.

"That was my good pencil!"

"I'll buy you a thousand pencils."

"You don't have any money."

"Then I'll eat someone who does."

"You can't eat anyone!"

"I'm a flying serpent now, Beastwright. The rules have changed."

He banked, so steeply I yelled and grabbed his neck. He swept us down low over the water, so low the spray hit my face.

Then he turned his huge head right around to look at me, upside down, one green eye level with mine.

"Watch where you're going!"

"I am," he said. "I'm going here."

He poured himself up.

He didn't go all the way.

His head and shoulders shifted into a man's, there in the air, and his arms came round me.

The great wings and the long black body still carried us below.

He kissed me.

Twenty feet over the winter sea, in the snow.

← Chapter 16 · All chapters · Chapter 18 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend