Down, and down, and down she fell.
Wind scraped along her bones and burned her eyes, filling them with tears. The roaring of the waterfall became louder as she neared the bottom of it. Perhaps, if she held her breath long enough, she would live. If her body hit just the right spot in the water, she would avoid any rocks and chunks of ice. She could only hope for the best, even as Death gripped her heart in a fist.
As she neared the bottom, something loomed beneath her.The lake,she thought. This was it. She closed her eyes.
But then she hit something solid yet soft, and the breath was knocked out of her.
This couldn’t be…
Daring to open her eyes, she caught a glimpse of scales glinting onyx in the sunlight. A pair of wide, leathery wings stretched out on either side of her, strongly and proudly maneuvering the wind.
“Nine Hells!” Sable gasped. She clumsily shuffled back, as far as she could get from the dragon’s massive jaws. She’d lost her sword when she’d fallen off the waterfall, but her fingers now closed around her dagger as she waited, crouching low near its spine.
One snap—just one twist of the dragon’s powerful neck and it would swallow her whole.
There was nowhere for her to go. On all sides, there was nothing but open air. And far below, the tops of the swaying evergreens were the size of pinholes.
Her breathing grew rapid, but the dragon did not attack. Minutes passed—minutes—as she waited to be eaten.
The dragon veered sharply to the left, and Sable lost her balance, crying out as she slid toward the base of a wing. That wing swept up in the nick of time, preventing her from falling as the dragon leveled back out.
Sable blinked.
Inside the cave, everything had looked black as midnight, including the dragon. But beneath the glow of the setting sun, Sable could now see that the onyx scales were tinged in blue, and the broad wings were ribbed with veins of cobalt.
She drew her dagger when she realized the dragon was watching her. His great, horned head was turned in her direction as he peered at her with one eye. The look was an accusation.
The pupil was a vicious slit as it surveyed her dagger—but the iris was gold, no longer red. The same gold as her brother’s eyes, and her own.
Sable slid the dagger back into its sheath. Her limbs felt wobbly as she sat back.
“Killian?” she whispered.
He blew out a puff of warm air from his nostrils in answer.
The beast plunged through layers of cloud, each boom of his wings as he maneuvered the wind sending a shiver down Sable’s spine.
She gaped as the North spread before her.
A sprawling land of packed snow, volcanic rock, and white forests stretched for miles on all sides of them, and in the distance, she spotted the House of Ice. She could see everything from up here—the Ice Bay farther north; the Blue River wending toward the Realm of Wind; the bordering mountains where the Crows picked at bones inside their caves; the Outlands, where she and Levon had met; the Haunted Woods edging the endless nothing to the west, where Hannelore had crept through portals at twilight and forged an undying friendship with Sable.
The dragon groaned, and Sable realized he was watching her again. As she leaned forward to rest her trembling hand against his strong neck, and the beast slowly closed his eyes, a startled laugh escaped her lips.
The bright light she’d seen… She’d heard stories of how a skin-changer bonded with their chosen animal, but she had never seen it in action—until today, when Killian had bonded with this dragon. She could hardly resist pinching herself, for something as unlikely as this was… incredible. The dragon had beenmadefor him. If Killian had never climbed that waterfall, he would never have discovered he was a skin-changer—someone capable of claiming a secondary skin and shifting into it at will. She supposed she was not surprised. She and her brother had defied Death in so many forms—why not add a dragon to that list?
Her brother, a skin-changer—holy gods.
He swept up, breaking through layers of fleecy cloud. A rosy sky spread before them at last, and when Sable threw her arms out at her sides and bellowed a cry of triumph at the top of her lungs, her voice ringing loud and clear through the skies, Killian echoed it with a roar.
And for one moment, Sable swore the whole world shook.
~
Avalon’s surrounding came to her in flashes.
Dawn was pouring into the room in a buttery glow, lighting up the cherry floorboards. She was lying on her side, one arm draped over the edge of the bed, her fingers nearly grazing the polished floor.
A blink of her eyelids revealed more about the room. The wallpaper was cream with a floral pattern. There was a fire roaring somewhere nearby. She was boiling.
