“Meanwhile, his dragon spirit is on a killing spree here.” I twisted my lips.
Ransom clenched his jaw. “If you can kill the dragon, kill it permanently, the human might just go catatonic. Or he might die, but at least the threat would be neutralized.”
Jax’s face darkened. “What about the other option?”
Ransom hesitated. “If we kill the human side first, the dragon might die, but then again he might just get stronger. You saidwhen the humans die here, the dragons go there. I don’t have a good feeling that killing the human Vaelog would do any good. The risk is too high.”
I folded my arms. “Agreed. So, it’s on us.”
“It’s always been on us,” Jax muttered, more to himself than to anyone else.
Ransom straightened. “We’re monitoring his human half on this end. I wish we could go through and help you hunt his dragon down.”
He looked like he wanted to say more, but the portal shimmered, the image distorting. I reached out and put my hand against the surface. Ransom did the same.
“We’ll see you soon,” I said.
Jax was already shifting, his mind-voice a quiet rumble. “Are you okay?”
I shifted back, scales rippling, the wind already teasing my wings. “I’m good. Just getting a little homesick.”
He pressed his side into mine and I leaned my head so it touched his. His love pulsed through our bond, giving me the boost I needed.“Let’s go back to the castle and end this so we can go home.”
We were halfway back to the castle when the horns sounded, a rolling, thunderous call that ricocheted from peak to peak. The alarm. Jax and I locked eyes, no words needed. We banked as one, plummeting toward the valley, ready to face whatever this world had for us.
The castle came into view. Jax and I punched through the last band of cloud in a dead heat, wings aching from the effort, nerves already humming with anticipation. We hit the courtyard as one, claws tearing furrows in the glassy basalt. The moment we landed, Corvus was on us, his wings snapping open in an arc that commanded every eye in the courtyard.
Solenne stood to Corvus’s left, every inch the regent. Her fire-opal scales caught the light and threw it back in a fan of color, making her look half-celestial and half-military dictator. Next to her, Adalinda was coiled with tension only seen in animals seconds before they killed something.
“Vaelog has been sighted,”Solenne said, her mind-voice clear and resonant. “Eastern valley, near the ridge with the cloud-forest.”
She sent the image of the map into our thoughts. A craggy, wind-blasted cut between two floating islands, notorious for its unpredictable wind currents.
“We go now,” said Corvus. “Full sweep. All wings.”
He didn’t wait for a response. Instead, he snapped his tail, and the assembled warriors, maybe twenty in all, sprang to life. I recognized many of the faces from the last two days of court drama. The Garnet delegate, now stripped of his jewelry but carrying himself with the same stiff pride. The topaz matriarch, eyes narrowed and dangerous. Even the ancient who’d complained about sulfur levels, now baring fangs in anticipation, ready to fight as one.
Jax shifted at my side. Flint was there, too, scurrying up the ramp from the lower nests.“I want to go,”he sent, the wordspitched to me but loud enough for every dragon in the valley to hear.
Corvus bristled. “You will stay with the hatchlings. This fight isn't for you.”
Flint’s disappointment was a physical thing, a spike of loss that made me want to scoop him up and run. Instead, I said, “Keep the other kids safe. If this goes bad, you’re the last line of defense. Can you do that?”
He straightened.“Yes, Mama.”He wanted to say more, but he swallowed it, chest swelling with the dignity of the deeply aggrieved.
The formation moved, and we moved with it. We launched as a single, violent cloud of color and scale, fanning out over the valley in a pattern I’d only ever seen in the flight plans of military jets. Solenne and Corvus took the high left, Adalinda and two guards cut low and right, Jax and I sliced the centerline.
We gained altitude, the wind scalding across my scales, every muscle tuned to the hunt. I kept my body close to Jax’s, drafting him on the thermals, but after a half-mile I let myself slide up and over, catching the ridge view and looking down over the sweep.
It was magnificent, terrifying, even, to see so many dragons in the sky, all pointed at a single goal. Below, the valley looked abandoned, the forests rippling in the wind, but no sign of movement that wasn’t ours. Jax arced toward a high bluff, a move so clean it made my flight seem clumsy. I followed, the two of us in perfect tandem now, wings nearly touching.
The sky ahead darkened, the clouds turning a sickly shade of yellow as we approached the ridge. The wind here wasunpredictable, slamming at us from odd angles, but the formation held. Corvus’s training paid off. Even the least experienced dragons kept their places, none breaking ranks even when the gusts tried to throw them.
Jax banked hard, and I mimicked his movements, sticking close. Below, Solenne’s squad skimmed the treetops, their scales barely visible against the shifting light. I felt, rather than saw, Adalinda pacing us, her focus pure and absolute. We split the search pattern, running north-south, the others combing east-west. The valley looked empty, but every instinct I had screamed that we were being watched.
We slowed, hovering, and I scanned the horizon. Nothing at first. Then, just for a second, I caught a flicker of movement in the clouds above. Something big, and not just big, but wrong, moving with the silence of a predator who had waited its whole life for this.
I pointed with my snout.“There.”
