Artemis was already exploring, journal and compass in hand, completely absorbed. She knelt, turning the compass, aligning it with the map, mutteringsoftly to herself.
I tried to focus on the island. On the impossibility of trusting a relic to bring us here. On the enormity of what we might have just found.
Instead, I watched her.
There was no hesitation or fear in her posture. She was in her element when she had to find meaning in patterns. She bloomed with life, which was both thrilling and terrifying to witness.
I pulled my phone from my pocket out of habit. No signal, as expected.
Artemis’s head snapped up.
Her gaze locked on the phone like it had personally offended her.
“Oh,” she said, flat and horrified all at once. Then her face changed. The shift was instant. “Oh no.”
I took a step toward her. “What?”
“Your phone,” she said, already on her feet, pacing once. “We should have ditched your phone.”
I frowned. “Ditched it?”
“Yes,” she said sharply. “They could be tracing it. That could be how those other dragons keep finding us. Ugh.” She dragged a hand through her hair. “Amateur move. I should have caught that sooner.”
I stared at her, then down at the phone. “They can do that? You have yours.” I had never cared too much to make myself literate with human technology.
“Yes,” she said, waving it off. “But I’m a human. They don’tknow who I am. You’re like a prince—and you’ve been after this information for a long time.”
“Alpha,” I corrected automatically.
“Whatever,” she said, already reaching for the phone. “You’re important.”
The corners of my mouth lifted despite everything. “You are brilliant.”
She huffed, annoyed. “Flattery will not save us.”
“What should I do with it?” I asked, holding it out.
She reached for it, but before I could let it go, the air shifted. Every instinct I had screamed at once.
I looked up.
The sky darkened as shapes cut through the clouds. One. Then many. Wings beating in a pattern I knew too well. Smaller dragons fanned outward, forming a loose ring, and behind them?—
One very large dragon.
Its presence bent the space around it through sheer force of will.
I snarled before I could stop myself, stepping in front of Artemis, my body already angling to shift and shield her.
So much for subtlety.
We had been found.
My body went to full alert.
Wings. Distance.Numbers. Angles.
The shapes cutting through the sky resolved quickly enough that my pulse eased instead of spiked. The formation was familiar. The lead silhouette unmistakable.
