“Get up!” Her voice shook. Her hands trembled. She got to her feet and walked around him. His chest rose and fell slowly. Hardly at all.
“Asha... ,” Safire said softly from behind her.
Ignoring her cousin, Asha pushed on his haunches. She sharpened her voice. “Get up, Shadow.”
This time, he tried. He raised his head and several heartbeats later, he pushed up on his front legs, but his claws slipped in blood and he fell with a terrible thud.
Asha saw the gash in his chest then. It was so deep. Right next to his heart, which slowed with each thump.
Asha’s eyes blurred with tears.
She could feel him straining, feel him trying—because she wanted him to. Because he loved her and it was the very last thing he could do for her.
“Good, Shadow,” Asha whispered, pressing her hand over his heart. It beat so faintly now. Like a dying echo across the Rift. “That’s so good, Shadow. You can lie down now. Just lie back down....”
Shadow collapsed. Asha sank to her knees. The dragon’s black blood soaked her dress.
Safire came to sit beside her.
As the star in him faded, Asha pulled Shadow’s warm snout into her lap. As his eyes closed, she told him one last story. The story of a girl who hunted dragons to soothe the hurt in her heart. The story of the dragon who changed her.
By the time she finished telling it, there was no rise and fall of his chest. No flicker of pale eyes trying to open.
Shadow had stopped breathing.
He was gone.
“Oh, Asha,” whispered Safire.
While Asha sobbed out her rage and grief, Safire’s arm came around her, pulling her in, cradling her while she cried.
Kozu came out of the shadows then. He nudged the younger dragon with his snout. He nudged twice. When Shadow didn’t respond, a sound split the night in two, joining with Asha’s sobs. A low, keening wail.
A dragon song for the dead.
Forty-Five
“I’m going to kill him.”
Safire dragged Asha out of the pool of dragon blood and brought her to the lake edge, trying to wash it from her knees and legs.
“I’m going to gut him with my bare hands and use his entrails for dragon bait.”
Her dress was ruined. Soaked in blood. When Safire finished washing her, Asha headed for Kozu. She would fly to the city this very night and carve out Jarek’s heart.
“Asha.” Safire caught her hard. “No.”
Asha struggled against her cousin.“Let me go.”
“You need to be calm.” Safire held on. Safire had always been stronger. “You need to outthink them, not play right into their hands.”
Two dragons flew above them. Asha stopped struggling to watch them circle the lake. Kozu watched them too. When they landed, the First Dragon melted into the darkness.
Both of these dragons were young. Half the size of Kozu. The one on the left had earth-brown scales and black horns. The one on the right had pale horns—one of them, broken—and was charcoal gray in color. Their wings folded back like crumpled leaves as they waited for their riders to dismount.
“If I don’t go, Jarek will kill him.”
Four riders dismounted. Two stayed with the dragons. The other two—Dax and Jas—moved toward them.
