Total pages in book: 208
Estimated words: 209645 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1048(@200wpm)___ 839(@250wpm)___ 699(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 209645 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1048(@200wpm)___ 839(@250wpm)___ 699(@300wpm)
We’d almost made our tent when I heard what came next.
Aramus heard it too but he did the strangest thing.
And the craziest.
He halted.
“Aramus!” I shouted. “Put me down! We need to run!”
From what, I did not know.
I just knew we had to run from that sound.
I squirmed in his arms and he released my legs, but he did not release me.
He held me close to his body with one arm.
“Aramus!” I struggled against his hold, terror filling me. “We need to run!” I screamed.
He was looking up to the skies.
I tried to pull him with me but noticed his men around us were all also looking to the skies.
And they were all smiling.
The others, not his closest brothers, were not smiling. There was a good deal of shouting mostly drowned out by the noise coming from above. And I could feel the frantic activity.
That noise was getting louder.
Closer.
The shadow all but covering the beach.
The noise was flapping.
I heard the screams and may have done the same myself when the first showed over the horizon.
And then another.
And another.
More.
Dozens.
By the sirens.
Dragons.
“Aramus,” I whispered pitifully, pulling at his hold.
He looked down at me, still smiling.
“Frey arrives.”
I stopped pulling and blinked.
“Calm them,” Aramus ordered, Xi nodded, and he and the others jogged up the beach to what seemed like chaos.
As it would.
Because…
Dragons!
Aramus did not jog us up the beach (not that trees were going to be of any assistance, I’d never seen a dragon, but I’d heard stories, and their fire could melt iron and disintegrate stone).
He moved us down it, toward the water, as colossal, mighty dragons filled the sky, their flapping wings a cacophony of terror. And those wings were so strong, I could feel the stiff breeze wafting down from their command of the air about them.
I fought my husband’s hold, as we were headed where the dragons were going, though it didn’t matter where they were headed since now they were everywhere. They filled the skies, blocking out the sun.
“Aramus!” I shrieked.
He stopped, pulled me close, wrapped his arms around me and coaxed, “Baby, calm. It’s all right. Frey is friend and Frey commands the dragons. He must have heard word about the Beast and comes to our aid…with his own beasts.”
Oh.
Well then.
We were close to the water, and after my husband shared this with me and sensed I had taken it in, he tipped his head back to watch the dragons.
I did as well, and considering they were not going to rain dragonfire on us at any random moment their dragon brains told them they should do this, it struck me they were rather magnificent beasts.
They flew well out to sea, until, as one, they made a graceful turn, flapping back.
Aramus and I turned with them and thus we were prized with the opportunity to watch, as in formation they shifted their heads and shoulders back, extending their powerful legs with those fearsome claws. Then massive sprays of sand rose up as they landed one after another after another on the beach.
We watched this spectacle, and we continued to watch even after the last dragon landed and some of them had sat, hind quarters bent, front claws to the ground, their long, thin, forked tongues drifting out of their mouths, their reptilian eyes blinking.
Some even settled all the way to the sand to lie down, their mighty tails curled around a flank, their webbed wings standing proud at their backs.
“They’re incredible,” I whispered, for even if they seemed tranquil, and they were at least one hundred meters way, I didn’t wish to rile them. “Have you seen them before?”
“Never, but I’m glad of the seeing,” Aramus replied before he turned us, and we saw what I was surprised to see, but apparently, my husband was not.
A handsome, four-masted galleon sailing around an outcropping of sand, stone and trees some five hundred meters up the beach.
Aramus chuckled.
“She’s almost prettier than your ship,” I breathed.
Aramus stopped chuckling and his arm about my shoulders gave me an unhappy squeeze.
I looked up at him. “I said ‘almost.’”
“Nothing is remotely close to the beauty of the Siren’s Scream.”
I scrunched my nose, not because he wasn’t right, his ship was gorgeous, but because…
That name.
“I have long-since decided she’ll be rechristened Her Majesty’s Beauty when we return to Nautilus, does that make you more loyal to her?” he asked.
I felt my chin go back in my neck in shock.
“You’re rechristening her?” I whispered.
“Of course,” he said like my question was ridiculous. “I am a seaman with three mistresses. One is the sea. One is my ship. The last is my wife. I cannot rename the seas of Triton, or I would, so they all would be one. But I can rechristen my ship.”
Oh dear.
I might weep.
And oh yes.
He was earning my love.
Aramus stared at me.
He then noted, “Ha-Lah, my father’s ship was called the King’s Dream, this after my mother. And my grandfather’s was called Crystal Magic, for my grandmother had eyes much like your own.”