The blast catches me anyway, throwing me through the air before I crash back to the earth hard enough to drive the remaining air from my lungs.
With stinging palms and knees scraped raw, I twist around, scrambling backwards as the green dragon in the sky circles back overhead with a deafening roar.
Shit!
Its massive jaws part and another jet of fire streaks across the space between me and the white-robed figure.
Wrenching my focus away from the curtain of flames before I combust from pure panic, I barely have time to register the shadow descending before Ahria's monstrous form hammers into the earth beside me.
She’s here. She’s really here.
“What are you waiting for?”she snarls, her violet gaze blazing on me as the heavy thump of wings echoes across the camp—the other dragon gathering itself for flight.
Refocusing, every muscle screaming beneath me, I race toward her. Ahria drops low enough for me to grab onto her scales. I've done it enough times with JC that my body knows what to do, but she doesn’t wait for me to find the grooves where I’m supposed to sit.
Her muscles bunch beneath me, all heat and lethal force, and before I can settle properly, she coils and launches. With my nails biting into her scales, I cling on, swinging my legs into place just as her wings snap wide and one powerful downstroke sends us soaring skyward.
Flattening myself against her warmth, I stay low, trying to shield myself from the wind tearing past as the air grows colder and colder with every beat of her wings.
“Release now,”she roars as we start to level off.
“What?”
“Release them now!”she repeats, frustration—or maybe fury—laced through her tone. I can’t tell.“Your Threads. Release them!”
Locking my legs around her, my shoulder still hurting like hell, I spread my arms wide and let go.
Magic explodes through me.
Not mine,hers.
Ahria’s Threads race through my bones, my skin, my hands, spilling into the sky, reaching out in every direction until my arms lock beneath the force of it and my eyes slam shut.
Beneath me, she roars again, but this time there’s something else in it.
Satisfaction.
The feeling reverberates through her body and into mine, fierce and bright enough that, despite everything, a smile spreads across my face, and when I open my eyes, the ground beneath us has disappeared behind a thick mist that only deepens as my magic continues spreading outwards.
They pour from me in an endless stream, catching on the moisture in the air and pulling it closer. Droplets gather beneath the pressure, thickening until the mist becomes cloud, folding around us, swallowing Ahria’s wings, the sky, everything beyond her scales.
Soon there’s nothing but white, so dense I can’t see where it ends.
And with the world hidden away, everything else simply slips from my mind. No pain. No fear of the height. No hesitation.
All that’s left is us.
Is her.
But it only lasts less than a second before reality comes crashing back.
“We have to go back,” I yell over the roar of the wind, dropping my arms as my Threads recoil inward. The backlash jolts through my shoulder enough to make me wince. “We have to go back. Talen's still there. We have to help him.”
“I can’t reach Calyxar, but Jhaecyrianthos has taken after the other dragon. Shanwyn is there now too. They can take care of it.”She snaps back. “And you don't need to yell at me. You can communicate through the bond.”
My brows pinch as I secure my hold on her hot scales. Jhaecyrianthos? Oh right, that’s JC. But I stay frowning, as how the hell did Shanwyn and Reya get there so quickly? Unless Reya was already on her way to see Lucien... but he didn't seem like he was expecting company considering how much tea he drank.
“No, we still need to go back.” I yell again, completely failing to use the connection between us. “Talen’s hurt, I... I think I took his Threads.”
