Nerissa whirled around to her younger daughter Nava, who cowered under her much shorter mother. “You animal! I know back on our island we give out distress calls like candy, butnot here! Not after what these drakens have been through!”
The two of them started arguing instantly.
Wren rubbed her temples. “I’m going back to bed.”
Kaida followed her. “I’ll help you. Those little ones will be coming any day now!”
Benedict hovered anxiously after them. Under my feet, the ground rumbled again.Hadn’t they said the volcano was dormant?
I glanced around, but if anyone else had noticed it, they weren’t saying anything.
Kieran sighed. “I need a drink.”
When everyone finally began to disperse, Enya gave me one last long look.
“You did well,” she said.
I didn’t know what to do with the warmth that flooded my chest. So I bowed my head.
And for the first time since the fighting pits, I felt like maybe—maybe—I wasn’t so alone.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
RONAN
Ihad been attempting to solve a problem that no longer respected logic.
The plans for the ritual to fix the wards were spread across the low table in the treehouse, maps of Lyoness marked with inked lines, revised anchor points, notations in the margins where Nerissa and Nuva had argued over placement and structure. I had redrawn the configuration three times already, adjusting for altitude weaknesses, for volcanic interference, for the strain of new magick on an old framework.
None of it was holding.
The realization sat heavy in my chest. I had spent weeks trying to solve this correctly, carefully, intelligently, and the island had reached the point where none of that mattered anymore.
I put down my pencil and considered getting some lunch. The sun was high and warm against my scales. Where had everyone gone?
A female draken’s distress call shrieked through the air, like clawing raking down my spine.
I flinched and nearly snapped my pencil.
Not Wren. It wasn’t Wren.
I dove out the window, flying toward an already large group down by the lava tubes. What was going on? I adjusted my descent, circling once to take in the full scope before landing. The tension was immediate, visible in posture and spacing. Canavar stood forward, weight pitched slightly ahead as if he expected violence at any moment. Nasi remained close to him, though less rigid, his attention split between the crowd and the male at the center of it.
Veskor. Of course.
As I landed, a low, unfamiliar vibration rumbled through the ground.
Oh no.
Not now. We were not ready. The anchor calculations were unfinished, the stress tolerances still theoretical. We were running out of time faster than Nerissa or I could solve the problem.
Maybe I’d imagined it. But the sensation deepened, spreading outward, becoming something more tangible. I landed next to Wren and Kieran, and Benedict shot me a knowing look as another tremor raced through the ground.
I immediately turned and scanned the horizon. The volcano loomed in the distance, unchanged in shape, but not in presence. There was a pressure around it now, a distortion in the air that suggested movement beneath the surface.
My stomach tightened. I knew that pressure. The wards were straining. If they failed completely, Lyoness would not survive the collapse intact.
Another tremor followed, slightly stronger.
