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She stilled. “What happened? There was a fire, and these strange noises?—”
Screeches cut her off. Harpies dipped and dove overhead only to dart back into the sky again, cackling like they were toying with us.
She gasped. “What…?”
Watching the harpies carefully, Roan lifted her again. “Just stay still and hang on.” He twitched his chin toward the nearest path out of the open space. “Can you boys run?”
The two children nodded wordlessly.
“Okay.” He glanced at me. “We need to get her to Niko, so when I say go?—”
The harpies suddenly shrieked louder, but they didn’t dive for us. Their attention went to the northern horizon.
And their cries sounded victorious.
Screams rose in the distance, near the edge of the city.
Oh, gods, this couldn’t be good.
Roan’s dread-filled expression said he agreed. “Run.”
I grabbed the boys’ hands and took off. The nearest path out of the communal garden lay twenty yards ahead, and every inch of that felt too far. But if I changed form, I didn’t think I could carry everyone even with my vampire powers. I’d end up outdistancing Roan, leaving him on his own against whatever the hell excited the harpies.
He clearly didn’t care. “Shift!” he shouted at me. “Just get out of?—”
A deafening roar shook the air. Dorn stumbled, crying out in terror.
I threw a look over my shoulder.
Oh… gods.
Silhouetted against the rising sun, the dragon rose in the sky like a monster straight from hell.
“What is that?” Teos cried.
I couldn’t find the words to answer because my mind couldn’t wrap itself around what I was seeing. I knew what my men had said. They’d seen a dragon in the Wild Lands. And of course I hadn’t thought they were lying.
But holy gods. I’d only ever seen dragons in paintings and tapestries, and every book claimed the creatures had gone extinct centuries ago, if they’d even existed at all.
Clearly, the books were wrong.
The dragon opened its massive jaw, its long and brutal fangs promising death to any who came near. A fountain of flame erupted from its throat like a battering ram of fire, slamming down to the earth and then raking across the city. The blast snapped and snarled like a monster of its own, and the heat reached us even here, making me wince as my skin tightened like I’d come too close to a raging bonfire.
But an oily, oozing sensation carried on the heat too, making me want to flee and yet bite something, all at the same time. The feeling wasn’t like it’d been in the forest days ago, but I still recognized the effect.
That was the power of the Voidborn.
Beating its wings so powerfully the air made great walloping sounds, the dragon cut off the torrent of flame. Smoke billowed from the edge of the city, choking the sunrise and curling in the wind stirred up by the dragon’s wings.
The creature swung its massive head toward us.
Oh hell.
Instinct drove me to shift. Stretching as far as I could, I tried to grab Roan, the woman, and her boys alike, determined to get us all out of here now.
But Roan only released the woman and then stumbled away from me.
And he stopped running.
