You don’t always have to be the smart one, she’d told herself. Let him be the hero for once.
Her dragon stirred restlessly beneath her skin, its unease coiling tighter with every second that passed. Another minute ticked by. Then another.
The knot in her stomach pulled tighter.
“This is ridiculous,” she muttered aloud, turning sharply toward the forest.
The silence that answered felt wrong. Too quiet.
With a breath that burned in her lungs, Spring shifted.
Light shimmered around her, folding her body into the sleek, pale form of her dragon. Her wings spread wide with a soft whoosh, then lifted her effortlessly into the trees. She beat them once—twice—and was gone, soaring through the light fog and over the green canopy like a white shadow.
Roam, she called inwardly. Where are you?
The wind rushed past her face, but no answer came. Just the ache of emptiness.
She followed the route he would have taken, her eyes sharp as a laser cutting diamonds. A moment later, she dropped through the branches and landed hard on a patch of flattened ferns.
The moss here was disturbed.
Clawed feet and heavy boots had churned it up.
Too many boots.
She sniffed the air. The scent of earth. Bark. A bitter tang of sweat and greasy food. Locals—maybe? And Roam.
But there was something else.
She padded forward, wings tucked close, until she stepped on a thin shaft of wood. It snapped under the pressure of her paw and released a bitter smell. She hissed and jerked back.
A dart.
Thin, with a small thorn attached to the end.
She lowered her snout. Her nostrils flared as she breathed in deeply. She shook her head violently and sneezed at the sharp, fragrant scent still clinging to the tip.
No…
She knew that smell. A sleeping sedative brewed from dream thorn—or a variation of it adapted to this world.
Someone had darted Roam.
Spring’s vision pulsed crimson at the edges. Her chest tightened until she could barely breathe.
Her dragon growled, low and thunderous.
They took him.
She leapt skyward in one powerful burst, her claws shredding the moss below in her fury. Her wings snapped open and caught the wind, propelling her upward, higher, faster. The forest blurred beneath her, streaks of green and brown and shadow.
And then—off in the distance—a shimmer of light on stone.
A spiral tower.
The castle.
She roared, a sound that cascaded from the sky over the ground as she angled her wings and dove toward it, following the faintest trail below: deep ruts from wagon wheels, blurred boot prints, and the familiar scent of masculine cologne, moss, and boy-sweat.
