Freezing them proved equally futile. Ice encased the first nesna completely, and for three glorious seconds, silence reigned. Then cracks spider-webbed across the surface, and a clawed hand burst free.
“Perhaps fire is the answer?” Tyrin suggested, wrenching his axe from the skull of the second creature for the third time.
Our cooking fire was nothing but ash, and I doubted the creatures would allow us the time required to rebuild it.
“Or distance.” I sheathed Silentium and seized the nearest nesna by its single ankle, freezing just enough of its leg to create a handhold. It shrieked and clawed at the air, twisting to snap at me with its half-jaw.
I shifted.
The nesna dangling from my foreclaw went rigid as my form expanded, scales erupting across my skin, wings unfurling to catch the warm coastal breeze. Airborne in moments, I swept low and snatched the second creature from where Tyrin had it pinned beneath his boot, ignoring its furious attempts to bite through my scales.
Banking over the water, I flew until the island was nothing but a dark smudge on the horizon. Then I released the retched creatures.
They shrieked as they plummeted, striking the water with twin splashes that the darkness swallowed whole. I circled once, watching the surface. A single arm breached the waves, clawing at nothing, before a wave dragged it under.
Can they swim with one arm and one leg?
Truly, I did not wish to find out. The ocean and its predators could keep them.
I angled back toward the island but did not immediately descend. The air was different up here, warm and thick with salt and the fragrance of unfamiliar flora. Stars crowded the sky in numbers I had never witnessed from behind my sire’s ward. They appeared so close I could reach out and touch them, and I suddenly wondered if I could fly high enough to do just that.
The moon painted a silver highway across the water. The waves, wind, and distant hoot of an owl wove together a melody that could never be replicated. After a lifetime of observing my ancestors’ accounts of the world, I had believed I knew what to expect, but no stored memory could have prepared me for this.
I never want to go back.
The thought ambushed me, and I shoved it aside with the discipline of a dragon lord who knew his duty. My people depended on me. This freedom was temporary.
But the experience was mine, and I would store it in my hoard to revisit any time I needed an escape.
I descended in slow spirals, studying the island from above. Even in moonlight, its strangeness was arresting. The umbrella-shaped trees stood like sentinels, their canopies so uniform they appeared sculpted rather than grown. White sand beaches gave way to limestone plateaus scored with turquoise pools that glowed faintly, suggesting magic far older than anything I had encountered.
Toward the center of the island, ancient trees rose from avalley shrouded in mist. Even from this height, power radiated from that place, pressing against my awareness like a forming thought. I banked away from it, unsettled by the depth of natural forces I sensed. Whatever slept in that valley was old. Possibly older than my bloodline.
When I landed on the ledge, Tyrin was cleaning his axe with a rag. A fresh cut across his forearm was stitching itself closed.
“A third one came while you were gone,” he said, answering my unasked question. “I threw it off the cliff. It is still down there, trying to hop back up.”
I peered over the edge. Sure enough, the creature lurched against the base of the ledge, leaping and falling. Its single eye blazed with mindless persistence.
“I will handle it.”
After dispatching the third nesna to the same watery fate as its companions, I returned and settled beside the dying fire. Dawn was still hours away, and the gargoyle needed rest.
“Sleep. I will take the watch.”
“Are you certain, m’lord? You have not rested enough.”
“I am a dragon. You are not.”
He studied me, concern furrowing his brow, but the exhaustion carved into the hollows of his face won the argument. He settled against his boulder, axe within reach, and closed his eyes.
Silence reclaimed the ledge, broken only by the soothing rhythm of waves slapping against the shoreline.
I let my thoughts unspool.
I wondered how Jameson fared. Would he do as I commanded and remain safe in the inn? Would he still be there when I returned? Or would he vanish with the silver I had given him? How had the orphan boy ended up a prisoner? Who had taken him, and why were they forcing him to feed his magic into a machine?
Having no answers about the youth and his plight, my thoughts drifted to the little thief.
