I clamber between twin ridges of parallel spikes running down either side of her spine—in a spot Iknowshe can reach. Can whip around and chew me off, like a pesky itch.
She’ll do it. I just have to piss her off enough.
She churns, hurls her body about, but my grip is mortar. Another rumbling growl as she tosses her head, then looks back over the arch of her flared wing and crushes me with that silver gaze, going stone still. Akin to my beautiful Inkah the moment after she tore her presence from my chest.
Two breaths blast me, and Ahra’s eyes narrow with …something. Something I’ve caught glimpses of in my own reflection since I came across that merchant with the silver dragonscale.
Then we’re no longer in the nesting cavern, but charging down the burrow in bounding leaps, into the compressing dark. We launch into the smoggy sky, then plummet with such force my organs pinch in on themselves.
Ahra throws out her wings. Catches the air.
She tears through the swirling ash and smoke with catapulting heaves. Releases a roar that rivals the warringboomsof the nearby peaks.
A jarring tilt forces me to tighten my grip as we spear vertically, slashing free of the smog I haven’t been able to see past since I came to this Creators-forsaken place. Straight toward the blistering sun, like she intends to pierce through its middle and pin it to the sky.
Forced to turn from the blinding brutality of its harsh rays, I tuck my head, finding footholds against her spikes so I can press flat against her scales. Desperate to avoid the same death Inkah suffered.
She gave too much for me to get chewed by the fucking sun that chewed her.
Ahra banks, spins. Taunting me with the searing rays. Forcing me to climb farther up, up, up—using her spikes as a ladder until I’m perched between her wing buds.
She steadies her ascent, wings pounding in rhythm with my thrashing heart as something …scratchesat me.
Within.
A long, hooked talon that gouges across my heart and sends shock waves through my chest. The only warning I get before it feels as though a claw punches through my ribs, fists the pumping organ keeping me alive, and squeezes with such dominant might Icrush—caving inward like the shell of an empty egg.
I’m still gasping from the shock when an argent essence floods me. So mighty and vast I’m paralyzed.
Wide-eyed, I stare at the silver aurora wiggling through the sky, feeling like I’m falling through a darkness that has no end. A silent hollow that’s so lonely and quiet I want to scream.
Then wearefalling.
Pitching forward, tucking wings, and plummeting toward an active volcano, like diving at the world’s fiery eye, our fall becoming faster—
Faster.
I should be scared, but all I feel isher.The fathomless outline of Ahra’s mind, her bottomless heart, and the vast chasm of her grief—so hungry it threatens to swallow me. Probably would were it not for the song her soul whispers. A strange, echoing melody that binds around me like those silver ribbons tangling with the moons above.
A song I tune in to, pinching eternal secrets like a thief.
I realize that unlike me—scratching for meaning and purpose in my grief like shoveling through a wound—this ancient beingknowsher fate. Knows she can’t fall into her loss, because there are things that must be done. Alone …
Unless someone chooses to ride with her.
Though I sense that one strong shake would loosen her from my chest—that she’d give me the death I crave, perhaps flinging me into the volcano where it’ll be over in a blink—there’s not one part of me willing to let her embark on this journey alone.
I know how alone feels.
Instead, I lean into the great honor and harden around her presence like a solidifying moon, accepting the symbiotic beat of our hearts as we plunge into the volcano’s crater, cut across the pool of bubbling lava, and heave skyward again—emerging together.
As one.
Ilift my heavy lids, seeing a constellation of—
Moons.
Between slow blinks and blinding bolts of pain that split through my left temple, I study every finger-smudged orb on the dark-gray ceiling, mostly drawn by someone I love.
