Nasi let out a sharp breath. “You think we dragged you this far just to drop you halfway home?”
Georg’s warning echoed in my head, his expression grim when he’d pulled me aside before we left.
“The vampyres are fleeing north,” he’d said. “The lykoses are driving them. Tearing through anything they find.”
“And us?” I’d asked.
“Stay in the sky,” he replied without hesitation. “Do not engage. Not unless you have no choice.”
Small patches of vampyres were in these woods, starved and dying. The lykoses chased them further north to pin them against the mountains, away from the human kingdoms and witch enclaves.
At the time, it sounded simple.
Two days into the journey with a fading, sick draken between us, it didn’t seem quite as straightforward.
It was a good plan, minus us having to fly above them.
Did we land to rest for the evening and risk an attack? Maybe if we had one of us on guard, it would suffice to warn the others in time. Maybe I should ask the others what they thought? I couldn’t risk Perri. The air was the safest, though most tiring, option.
Having to make decisions was for the birds.
I blinked. This tightness in my chest, this constant calculation, this awareness that one wrong call could cost lives, this was what Benedict carried every day. With me, with Kieran, with all of us.
I’d spent so much time questioning his decisions, pushing against them, thinking I understood the weight of leadership.
I hadn’t.
Not until now. Now I understood why his trust was such a fragile, important thing.
“Ronan,” Nasi warned suddenly.
I looked up just as I heard it: a sharp whistle cuttingthrough the air. We jerked harshly to the side, the arrow whistling right past us.
Canavar jerked violently, a roar tearing from his throat as his wing buckled. A slash appeared in the membrane of his wing, an arrow piercing it cleanly.
For a second, he tried to hold himself steady.
“Veskor, fly!” Nasi ordered him, and immediately dropped him to dive after Canavar.
The sky rushed past in a blur as we dove hard. The wind tore at my wings as I pushed faster, trying to get to him before he hit the ground. Perri screamed, crying out in fear.
A dark blur flashed past us, quicker than both of us. Veskor reached him first, the fastest of us all even in poor health. He wrapped himself around Canavar’s large torso and flared his wings as hard as he could, every muscle straining as he tried to slow the bigger draken’s descent.
“Argh!” he cried out.
Nasi reached him next, slamming into Canavar’s front and latching on, flaring his much bigger golden wings. He strained up, up, up, but even he couldn’t fully stop it. I took an arm and clutched Perri tightly and pumped for the sky.
We slowed dramatically, but still fell.
Canavar was too heavy.
At the last moment, I let go of him and tucked my body around Perri. We tumbled into the plains, onto hard ground that was void of any soft snow to land on in a tangle of limbs and wings. Pain shot through my legs, but I ignored it, immediately shifting my focus.
“Are you all right?” I asked Perri, uncurling around her. Her eyes were big and round with unshed tears, her lower lip trembling dangerously, but she nodded.
I let out a breath.
Canavar was already trying to stand, but the arrow hadtorn deep, and blood soaked the ground beneath him. He skittered on his legs, his body in shock as he tried to get his feet under him.
