Their movements become so fast and flurried they’re a churn of wings, stripping into each other with their claws and maws, spraying red across the snow.
Fear rings my fucking neck.
Maell’s never shown interest in attacking another dragon. Has never felled anything other than a pending meal.
More blood splatters, accompanied by a spill of yellow feathers. A sight that mauls me to shreds as Maell’s adrenaline begins losing its edge, her movements growing slower … weaker … the larger beasts dominating the fight with their synchronized attack.
“MAELL!” My face screws up, lips peeling back from my teeth. “RETREAAAAAT!”
A flare of pain in my abdomen has me looking down.
I peel back my cloak to see my shirt slit through. Rip the gap wider and instantly regret it, realizing the purple Moltenmawdidn’tmarginally miss me with his tail barb …
He got me. Dug an inch into my gut and whipped it through, diagonally across my abdominals. A gory slash that exposes my innards, now barely contained within my body.
“Fuck.”
One wrong move and I’ll spill everywhere …
Maell screams.
My gaze jerks up, hunting her through the smoke, my heart caught in a clamp that keepscrushing.
I wobble, certain the world’s shaking. My knees punch into the snow as I gasp dense breaths, like I’m breathing past a cloth that keeps gathering more muck.
Which probably means—
Another gut-churning glimpse at the wound, and I notice the red veins of Moltenmaw venom branching from the slash, weaving across my skin.
I groan, imagining what it’s already doing to my organs.
I know I haven’t got much time before I can no longer move. Before my body gives up, leaving me paralyzed but still awake and aware. The perfect meal to be tossed at warbling hatchlings, unable to fight as I’m slowly torn to shreds.
Probably the worst way to die.
Fuck that buck. If anyone’s eating me, it’s Gruffin.
Wind gusts forth, shoving back the Mists. I look up at the wall ahead, my vision wavering, splitting as I hold my guts together and gather the energy to stand.
I stumble through a graveyard of smoking carcasses, haunted by Maell’s shrieks that score me to the bone …
‘Retreat!’I scream internally.‘Please, Maell! Please listen.’
A guttural sound drudges out of me, not born from my torn-up gut, but from the squeaking sounds she’s making. The agonized cries to the sky.
Tome.
‘Live … Please …’
Only silence echoes back.
My legs stop working.
I keep my arm bandaged around my gut as I topple forward and splash into the brown muck that reeks of dead things, blinded by a thrash of pain. As if someone’s claws are in my belly, tearing me down the middle, ripping a seam wide open.
My vision clears, gaze hones. I hiss wet breath, then cough it back up with a bloody splat.
Teeth gritted, I lift my spare arm, punch it forward, and drag myself through the mud—eyes trained on the wall. Too aware of the eerie numbness working its way through my muscles, swallowing me in increments.
