The high-altitude winds of Voidmore screamed past the scales of the Clemadead as it carved through the freezing atmosphere. The silence between the two riders was a physical entity, heavy and jagged, vibrating with the residual heat of their last contact. Hebner Grand sat like a statue of black iron, his gaze fixed on the horizon Voidmore, his knuckles white as he gripped the reinforced leather reins.
Hannah McKay, huddled in the rear of the Great Saddle, felt the bite of the cold, but a different kind of heat was beginning to rise within her marrow. She was a scientist, a woman of cold logic and survival, but she was also a woman on a clock. Every second that passed without breaking the Demon Lord's fortress was a second closer to the extinction of her kind. The memory of the "arousal" he had seeded in her was still a raw, electric ghost in her nerves.
She took a breath that tasted like sulfur and high-altitude ice. She dared.
