A sudden screech jerks my attention back to the present.
My eyes flash open just in time to see two dragons drop from the clouds, entangled in a fierce battle.
Furious wingbeats slice and echo through the damp air, stirring up an unnatural wind. I stare, frozen in place, as their claws swipe and tails whip viciously about, as they tumble and dive at one another, each trying to force the other toward the ground.
The smaller, darker one ultimately succeeds, catching the other's wing and twisting it until something gives with an awful, resonantcrack, sending it into a dazed, spinning freefall.
The earth caves in around it as it hits, long, jagged cracks spreading out in all directions.
The smaller dragon swoops down after it, a dark cloud gathering around its tapered snout. It hovers for a moment, leathery wings slick and shining with rain and what might be flecks of blood.
The injured dragon rocks awkwardly back and forth, legs flailing as it scrambles to right itself.
It's too slow.
The cloud of darkness descends and immediately begins to eat away at the fallen dragon's hide, leaving it covered in weeping patches with blackened edges; raw, peeling wounds where the scales simply…cease to be. Its struggling quickly stops, its limbs going rigid and its eyes widening into saucers of pure black.
I clamp a hand over my mouth and nose as a putrid, sulfurous reek rolls outward on the wind.
Sesca steps in front of me, her frill pressed flat, her tail and wings drawn in close and tense as a coiled spring. Thepoison-breathing dragon cocks its head and locks eyes with her. It starts to open its mouth, and I start to panic?—
But then it drops several feet in the air, swaying as if a sudden weight has slammed into it from above.
It tears its gaze away and then flees, vanishing into the fog above the nearby forest with a final, rattling screech.
I'm still watching the sky when my gaze is caught by something far below—a shadowy figure that appears to have been watching the battle from the other side of the palace grounds. As soon as the fleeing dragon streaks past it, the figure turns to chase it.
I must be seeing things, I think.
Sesca's vision slides briefly over mine, sharpening my senses just long enough to let me get a closer look at that shadowy figure…
And now I finally know where the king has disappeared to.
In the next instant, he's gone, slipping into the woods, still heading in the same direction as that raging, poisonous dragon.
“Why would he be runningtowardit? Is he out of his mind?”
Sesca gives a low, uncertain hum in response.
All I can think about is how unpredictable Mouren's dragons have been lately. How Reaveadmittedhe's been struggling to control them—why does he think tonight is going to be any different?
Was it something that happened during his meetings? Something that made him desperate to prove to his allies that Mouren still has some semblance of power and authority over its winged beasts?
A dark, terrible thought seizes me and won't let go.
He's going to get himself killed.
My legs are moving, one uncertain step after the other, and then suddenly I'm jogging, running,sprintingas fast as I can manage in the slick conditions, the rain pounding into my face, blinding and cold and stinging?—
Sesca darts in front of me, blocking my path.
I open my mouth, prepared to shout at her to get the hell out of my way, when suddenly she kneels in the mud and renders me speechless.
Thunder rumbles overhead. A flash of lightning draws my gaze upward as it illuminates the poisonous dragon flying erratically over the forest. It spirals sharply left, then right, then drops rapidly before catching itself just above the tree-line. It tries to gain altitude again, fails, and plummets out of sight.
The sound of limbs creaking and snapping carries back on the wind, followed by the thud of several entire trees going down—and then the unmistakably loud crash of the dragon itself hitting the ground.
Reave is at least a half-mile ahead of me. I won't catch up to him before he catches up to that dragon, and Sesca knows this as well as I do, which is likely why I can feel her impatience prickling through me like the static before a lightning strike.
