“It’s fine. I can’t shut it off,” he murmurs, shoulders lifting with another shrug. “I’m used to hearing things I don’t want to hear.”
For some reason, I get the feeling that’s not the case at all.
The egg jolts, almost tipping sideways.
Ahvi smiles. The faintest tilt of his lips, yet it brightens his entire face. Makes him look even younger.
Lighter.
He reaches into the pocket of his cloak and pulls out a silver weald, meets my gaze through the gaps in his hair, then whispers a single word that chills me to the bone.
“Run.”
“What do you meanrun?”
Ahvi shrugs. “I know you don’t like fire, so …” He flicks back the lid of his weald. A bright-orange bulb of Moltenmaw flame bursts from the coil, and my heart drops into my ass.
Ialsodon’t like watching folk burn to death.
The egg wobbles again, jolting in the other direction.
“Shit,” I mutter, twisting sideways. I lurch forward and try to smash my upper body through the opening, hoping to drag the kid out.
Ahvi moves his tongue around his mouth, then crunches down on something. My blood ices as a silver sheen ripples out from his mouth, then smothers him like a net. Like a—
Shield.
He peers up at me through his floppy hair, a shy smile stretching across his face. “That’s because itisa shield.”
I still, the backs of my eyes bursting with a flare of sting.
Essi would be so impressed by you, kid.
He begins to lower the weald.
“Wait—”
“Can’t. He’ll die.”
I groan.
He drops the weald amongst the flammable nest, the dried leaves catching light much too fast for my liking.
Muttering a chain of profanities probably not fit for a youngling’s ears, I try to jerk free of the opening. The moment the nest finally regurgitates me, I turn on my heels and bolt for the door, leaping free of the runed tiles—
The nest erupts in a hot rage of flames.
I spin, heaving breath as the dragonfire consumes the sphere of branches and vines, filling the room with an explosion of thick, billowing smoke. A dense shroud that soon hides the rabid orange flames, though they still whip at me, like they’re trying to claw free of the chamber—striking an invisible barrier somehow keeping the blazing chaos contained. Not even a puff of smoke makes it past the doorway.
My heart lodges in my throat as I watch from behind the barricade. Body tense.
Mindwild.
Suddenly—almost violently—the smoke evaporates. Like some great being just sucked it free, flames and all.
The chamber’s walls come into view, illuminated with thousands of silver runes. Then the sloped floor, cradling the crumbly remnants of the broken-down nest andAhvi …sitting cross-legged in the center of it all, still wrapped in his shimmery shield.
A choked sound ruptures past my lips, gaze dropping to the egg in his arms—no longer the same powder blue as it was before.
