A black, long shape cuts across the sky.
My breath catches.
She’s magnificent from this height, even at a distance. Her body glides through the air with terrifying ease, dark scales flashing where the sun catches them between the clouds.
She circles once above the mountain range, then again, lower this time, as though surveying the land below.
I press myself against the trunk, tracking her path.
Where are you going?
She turns then. Not back toward the forest, but toward the mountain.
A jagged wall of stone rises above the forest, nearly sheer in places. Near the top, partly hidden by shadow, is a wide ledge jutting from the rock. She angles toward it with slow, powerful beats of her wings.
She lands with enough force that even from this distance I see loose stone break from the ledge and fall. She lowers her head and disappears into the dark mouth of a cave.
“There you are,” I whisper.
I go still.
The mountain.
The ledge.
The cave.
I’ve found her den.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
JAX
She didn’t take anything but her bow and a skin of water with her.
She left without Luna.
How is she going to walk all this way to the dragon’s den?
She left her backpack with rations.
The fur blanket.
Thedamnfur blanket she needs to survive the nights here in the mountains.
It only hits me as I stop to set up my camp for the night and notice the fur blankets strapped to the saddles of our horses.
Oh, spirits of the gods.
I fucked up.
I had only one goal, to keep her safe on her journey, and what did I do?
I let her go without a fucking fur blanket.
She’ll freeze to death at night.
My head drops, and I press the heels of my palms into my eyes until I start seeing stars.
