I ignored the heat of burnt leather, my own scorched skin and focused on Dora, on getting us out of this alive.
Another volley of fireballs and Dora was in a spin. A fireball went wide and as we spun again, I saw three dragons andRiders incoming. The lead dragon was white. Lord Aurexian. Ang.
The white flew straight and true at the reds. Ice streamed from Aurexian’s maw and he drove in, taking a chunk of the dragon’s neck, dragging it up and out of formation with its partner. Another twist showed me other dragons, riderless. Dragons I recognised from Unkea. They were all screaming and they fell on our attackers. I didn’t have time to thank them or appreciate the show. Dora wasn’t spinning, she was plummeting.
Her right wing was part extended, the feathers mere stubs, but she could hardly stretch out the left wing. I forced her to lift her head, raise her neck. Where the neck went, the body would follow. But it wasn’t enough. We had mere seconds before a cold wet grave closed over us.
We rose.
For a moment I thought a miracle had happened and Dora had recovered, but as we were forced up, I was forced forward over the seat bone, and I looked down to see the sleek long white neck of Lord Aurexian beneath us. He was lifting us up. On the power of his wings we were rising in the sky. Unkea appeared on the horizon.
Ang! The wind whipped my breath away too much for me to scream the name. We were speeding towards the Fortress, faster than I’d ever know. The desperation was pulsing off Aurexian and Dora alike.
No. There was a reason that dragons were never ridden one below the other. Misjudge the height and the rider on the lower dragon could be crushed between the two massive beasts.
There was no time for finesse. Aurexian crashed onto the landing platform, throwing Dora loose. My trauma brain reminded me of Fin’s first flight, of his rolling and laughing. But I was already struggling with breath and burning eyes as I rolledaway from Dora, no perfectly executed emergency dismount, just a crash to the granite. My ankle and knee gave way, but I didn’t care. I rose as soon as I could, took one look and ran. Hurdling Dora’s neck seared agony up my left side, but I had to get to the prone form of Ang, lying too still on the cold granite.
“No!” I don’t know if the word left my ragged throat, but I skidded to his side and leaned over him. His eyes were closed. Blood leaked from his mouth. I turned him to his back. His torso was the wrong shape. Broken ribs pierced his flesh and his uniform.
No. I couldn’t allow this. Sniffing back the anguish, I pushed his ribs back into his body. Gathering what strength and magic I had left, I channelled every memory of Boutros’s teaching and every last iota of my power into imagining his bones reconnecting, his chest reforming, his lungs expelling blood and filling with air. His gasp didn’t reach me. His heart had to beat. The pulse beneath my fingers spoke louder than he could.
Air burned in my lungs. My heart was pounding.
Hands pulled me away.
“He needs—”
“I have him.” Boutros’s voice. Boutros, a healer as good as any medic I had ever known. I leaned back against whoever had me, and I watched as Ang’s limbs were straightened and healed. Around me I could hear movement, shouts of direction, people caring for Dora. I cared but had no energy to respond to anything.
I looked into Ang’s ocean deep blue eyes, watched him take a blink that took forever, and saw that life had returned to him. Tears streamed down my face.
“You saved him.”
“No,” Boutros said. “You saved him. He’d have been beyond my reach by the time I got here if you hadn’t done what you did.”
He moved to my side. “Now for you.”
I shook my head, but he moved my leg straight and agony flooded out of me in a scream that rang around the world. Heat flooded me, pain compounded on agony, compounded on suffering. Then it stopped. Just stopped.
I looked down.
My leg was straight. I risked moving my foot. “Wow.”
“What?” Boutros asked. “You’ve been healed before.”
“I’ve healedmyselfbefore,” I corrected. “I never broke a bone before, didn’t know what that felt like. Thank you.”
“Thank him later.” The tall, black-haired figure stood behind him. “Time we got in out of this rain.”
I hadn’t even noticed it was raining. But as Ang and Boutros helped me to my feet, I turned around to see Gahunia had been behind me and nodded my thanks to him too. We headed inside. Ang led us straight to the dining hall, Boutros made us sit then found mugs, poured something into them and put them in front of us.
“You’re both going to need some time to recover from the healing process,” he said.
I knew he was right. My body had been healed, but every fibre was screaming with exhaustion.
“Do you know why you were attacked?”
I looked up from my mug to Boutros as he sat across the table. Pain sliced down my left arm. I tried to fix on him. Someone punched me in the chest. My sight rose, the wall, the ceiling.
