Page 165 of Wings of Destruction

My brows furrow together. You’re being bossy and irritating.

He goes silent but his presence lingers. He’s listening and waiting, impatiently, for me to fall in line. And because he rarely demands something of me this way, I push away from the window.

I am sick of my position, so sick of being pushed this way or that way when it suited the whims of someone stronger than me.

Instead of heading down, I take the hall toward the dragon aerie. Several roosting dragons stir from their perches and one of them cracks open an eye, fixing me with a steely gaze at being interrupted.

Shadows stir with their wings, and I’m almost tempted to stomp and wake them. I fight to hold myself back.

My cousin’s red dragon is conspicuously missing from among the ranks.

A brisk night breeze dives down the collar of my tunic as I march toward our spot on the edge of the cliff. I duck my head against it as the wind picks up to the force of a battering ram.

Mozi waits for me.

He flicks his wings around us to create a bubble of silence and protection from the wind, a black presence, darker than the night. His eyes glow like two amber orbs.

What were you thinking? He rips into me the moment I get close.

I hold my ground when his wings seal me inside, trapping me, making sure I don’t take off.

“I was thinking that I’d found a valuable asset and when presented with an opportunity, you take it,” I snap.

I’d lost too much control tonight to keep the words at bay.

“Spare me the lecture I know is coming. I’m supposed to be this perfect person all the time and have my life figured out when I’m in the middle of everything. My father is pushing me, you’re pushing me, and I’m one man.”

Mozi’s jaw clenches.

You’re impetuous, he says, craning his neck down to bring his face level with mine. Why? Why did you do such a thing when we are already poised on a precipice? A single wrong move will get us all executed by Omram and yet you want to throw it all away. You know all this. It isn’t about being perfect, Kieran, it’s about tact.

“I slip up one time—” I start.

Slip up? Word of this will surely reach your father and when he realizes what you’re trying to do, then failure will be the least of your concerns. There will be no more mediation, no more playing both sides. Right now, we must execute damage control and do something about this. Although your choices leave little to be desired.

He growls to make his point.

“Or maybe my father will actually kill me and put me out of my misery. Scorch it, why shouldn’t I throw myself off this cliff right now?”

His expression darkens. You’ve done this to yourself. Rather than see the bigger picture, you’re hyper fixated on the current location of the pieces on the board. You’re hoping to find the winning maneuver now instead of understanding that the odds are stacked against us. This is a long game. There is no way to win without suffering.

Because he’s right and my guilt already flutters inside of me like a butterfly preparing to shift into another iteration, I glare at him. I’ll be eaten alive if I pay too much attention to the sensation.

His reprimand hits a note deep within me. Now isn’t the time to lose sight of our goals. I want to burn through this resistance and put an end to the suffering he mentioned before more people are hurt.

But the pieces have to matter. The pieces are people and I’m one of them.

It has to count for something, doesn’t it? Or maybe the hyper fixation, as Mozi puts it, is going to destroy us all. There’s no way for me to know.

“You expect me to ignore her? When she’s useful? What if she is the one who makes a difference down the line? I would never be able to forgive myself if I lost her to this place without at least trying to do something. Do you blame me?” I demand. “She’s just a girl and if I didn’t step in, then she’d have disappeared outside of our reach.”

Our reach? Mozi repeats. He grows taller, crowds closer. Do not rope me into this. I had nothing to do with your choices. You decided to cut me out of the entire situation, didn’t you? Or maybe my memory is lax, and we had a conversation I’ve forgotten?

Tension snaps between us and my stomach does a ragged flip. Mozi growls again and although flames swell in his throat, they go no further. And because the sight of it does something to me, because I’m already lightheaded, I force myself to step closer.

“There was no conversation, as you well know, because I felt like it was the right thing to do.”

Standing up to a dragon, even an adolescent like Mozi, is a terrible idea. I do it anyway.