My need to be with him explodes, pumping me full of the strength I require to stand and blast a belted word, searching the surrounding gloom.“Rygun!”
His ember loses a little more of its luster—
Panic rages as I whip around, hunting for a sign of which direction I should search. Anything.
“Rygun!”
Another chest-ripping cough threatens to disable me, but all the hurt in the world has nothing on the realization that my dragon is dying. He’s dying, and I’m not there to tell him it’s okay to push into the sky.
To leave me.
Because he won’t; not without me there, urging him on. He’ll die alone in the frigid dark for the predators to pick at. For his blood to leach into the ground, fossilize, and eventually be scavenged by greedy folk, his valuable scales and tusks fought over until all that remains are his bones … forever lost in the snow.
I choose a direction and stumble forward, chest jerking.“Rygun!”
Something begins to take shape ahead, emerging through the gloom, making my breath catch. But any hope is crushed when I see it’s too small to be Rygun, using its left wing like a foreclaw, hobbling.
I freeze.
The Elding Bird’s beak pierces into view, still red with Rygun’s blood. I expect it to snap forward and end me, but it’s not looking my way. Instead, those bloodred eyes are narrowed on the broken body at my back, while soft keening sounds slit the silence.
I stagger to the side as it trudges past, offering a perfect view of its crushed and tattered wing painting a bloody trail through the snow.
With a scratchy lament that echoes my own agony, the beast collapses beside Arkyn, the tip of its beak resting against his chest.
It shudders.
Popping, snapping sounds distort the silence as it begins to compact down, claws retracting into feet, wings wilting into delicate hands bundled together. Its body tightens in places, feathers melt into slopes of pale, naked skin, its beak retreating to form a delicate face.
I fail to make sense of the shapely fae lying coiled beside my slain brother in place of the Elding Bird, with her head on his chest, cushioned by a spill of red hair … wondering if I’ve lost more blood than I thought. If I’m seeing things.
That has to be it.
She releases a gurgling breath, then goes deathly still with my sword lodged in her back—
Groaning, I turn. Stumble down the bloody trail she left.
“Ruif, Rygun.”Darkness gathers at the edge of my vision, pressing in. Threatens to clap together.“RUIF …”
A rumbling exhale comes to me. Almost splits my chest.
I run, unsteady through the bloody snow and smog on legs that barely feel. Come to the edge of a crater the Elding Bird must’ve clambered free of, based on the bloody gouges in the steep, icy terrain.
It’s an agonized stumble into the bowl, some of the skin ripping from my arms as I’m forced to slide down the majority until the terrain flattens again. I surge to my feet, power forward through the powdery gloom. Release an anguished sob when a hill of jagged darkness begins to take shape, lumped on a mess of luminous moonshards.
Staggering around Rygun’s crumpled wing, I move toward his right claw—outstretched, his scales frosted over.
Like he’s made of ice.
I groan, coming to the side of his face that’s been pecked at, his eye gone. All that’s left is a pulped hollow leaking blood into the snow.
Falling to my knees, I press my hands against his jaw and look up at his remaining eye, straight into his dying soul. He releases a drawn-out exhale of relief that guts me.
I open myself to the Creators and pull a crackling breath, then belt a stream of desperate requests. But only silence comes. Like they’re too crushed with mourning for their battered world to listen.
Again, I hiss at Ignos.“Vaugh—aith ish-áth, Ignos. VISH AITH.”
In the quiet that follows, the cold knifes deeper. A thousand icy swords of it pointing toward my dragon, pushing past his scales.
