Stronger than me.
Swelling within like an avalanche pouring down a mountainside, time stretching into something almost tangible.
The anthe’s head ticks to the side. She stabs her sabered limbs into the columns around me, using their grip to tug farther from the water, and sniffs so close to my face the strings of my soul pull taut enough to fray.
You can’t have that, either.
I push my head closer andscream. Like a crossing of swords, reverberations shudder down my spine and into the soles of my feet. But the sound coming from me … it’s not warm. It’s blizzard cold and guttural, as though it just tore from the chest of some ancient, icy beast.
I’m distantly aware of something breaking behind me, like the world just crumbled at my back. Distantly aware of the hairs on my nape lifting; of Kaan’s robust scent engulfing me—a firm hug on a gloomy dae.
Strong hands slide down and wrap around my armpits. Take my weight.
Heave me up.
I don’t blink. Don’t quell my screaming attack, determined to masticate the anthe’s own soul if she tries to claim what’smine.
I’m dragged over jagged chunks of stone, back against a broad chest that’s a roaring flame to the ice packed within my lungs and veins.
Kaan’s arms band around me with such might it’s like he believes I’m about to fall apart at the seams, dragging me over broken bits of the pier that was whole a few moments ago.
The anthe impales her limbs in the stone, using them as leverage to yank farther from Rayne’s grip, clambering up like a billowy huttlecrab migrating against the tide’s pull.
Some small, primal part of me wants to do the same. To battle the male holding me back and shove close to the beast again. Challenge her until she withers and retreats down the tunnel she came from.
Perhaps Idothrash a little, because Kaan presses his mouth to my ear, his grip crushing.
“That thing so much as touches you again, Moonbeam, and I will not rest until I sever every limb from her body,” he rasps, cutting me to the quick. “So either you come gently, or I push you aside and challenge her myself. Thoughts?”
My blood thaws, body loosening.
I give in to his retreating tug, dragged backward as I hold the anthe’s narrowed stare. Emitting a quiet promise to hack her into little bits and stuff her in a thousand boiling pots of water should she so much as look in Kaan’s direction.
She clambers over the broken pier with jerky motions, chasing our slow yet steady retreat, her tendriled body tethered to the water like a stretched umbilical cord—eyes watching.
Until we’re swallowed by the dragon-mouth exit.
Water explodes up the tunnel, sloshes around our feet, then seeps back down the stairs as Raeve slips my hold and pins me against the wall with a dragonscale blade notched against my throat.Mydragonscale blade.
One I remember shaping phases ago from one of Rygun’s scales.
She pushes close, gets in my face, andsnarls—pupils blown, canines bared, trembling despite her savage stance. Blood streaks from her eyes, nose, and ears. From the deep gash across her cheek.
Too fast.
Had she not whipped her head back in time—
I fist my hands and stretch my shredded knuckles, fighting the urge to stuff my fingers in the ground and rip the world in two. Using every bit of my self-control not to thread my arms around her waist. To flatten my palm against her back and eliminate the remaining space between us, press my nose into her nape, andbreatheher—eyes squeezed shut while I let her heartbeat dull the residual ache in my chest from seeing her tread so close to death.
Pyrok clears his throat.
I risk a glance at him, then down at Roan slouched against the wall on the stairs at his feet, both gaping.
Pale.
They’re worried. I’m not. The blade at my throat is more a compliment than anything.
Raeve dug deep to speak with Rayne. She’s hurting, and she’s turned that hurt into rage I’ll gladly consume.
