Page 166 of Wings of Destruction

Because curse him. Curse my father and his agenda. Curse Morgan and her bitter refusals.

Curse my desire to retaliate.

“We’re both young.” I shift tactics instead. “You and I. We make mistakes. We do things we think are correct in the moment that turn out to be disappointments.”

A puff of smoke winds out of his nostril and his slitted pupils contract until they’re nearly invisible. You’re blaming your actions on youth?

I widen my stance, stubborn. In part.

You need to stop proving the elders right by making poor life choices.

“That’s not what I was trying to do,” I insist out loud. “I saw something in her that spoke to me. She’d be useful to the cause. The spark that ignites the greatest weapon.”

We don’t have a weapon. We have you and your small band of humans who are attempting the impossible. Mozi crowds closer until my back presses against the thick leathery wing.

“You don’t need to remind me.”

Apparently, I do because you are out there doing Ether knows what in an attempt to prove you made the right choice by leaving this girl alive. I keep telling you to consider everything before you make a move and yet you constantly rush ahead as though you know better than anyone else.

“I’m doing the best I can.”

Your best is pathetic. Dragons think of things in terms of centuries. If you considered your life with the same care, then you might see how your paltry game with this girl is a drop in the bucket of time and space.

“And what if she’s the key to everything? Have you considered it? You don’t know her the way I do.”

You don’t know her! She’s a ghost to you. She is a pretty face and a distraction, and you’ve gambled with more than your own future, boy. You’ve gambled with mine.

Mozi is small for his age, but his jaws are capable of crushing me. He might not be able to devour me whole, but piece by piece is entirely possible and acceptable, based on the way he’s looking at me.

Then something he said finally clicks into place and I pull up short. Wait. The elders said something about me?

Mozi bristles and arches his head. With his wings enveloping us, the individual scales on his horns stand to attention. His eyes provide the glow better than any candle. If he gets to be even half the size of Omram, then those bony crests will be capable of skewering through livestock, if he chooses.

I’ve always felt blessed to be chosen by a dragon at a young age. What if it was nothing more than luck?

They warned against bonding with a man who hasn’t been tested yet. They marked it as a mistake of youth. He spits out the word. As you said. We’re both young. They had serious hesitations about a match between us and did not believe me when I said I saw greatness in you.

“The royal line is chosen by dragons much earlier than sixteen,” I remind him. “Or do the elders have something to say about that tradition, too?”

Mozi pauses, and then says, You are no royal, Kieran Ryson.

The chill in my blood disappears and this time it’s heat, penetrating and inescapable. He takes a step closer, but I refuse to back down as his steps shepherd me closer to the boundary of the cliff.

He won’t let me fall. His wing still blocks me from pacing, from doing anything except being forced to face him.

But I have my doubts. They curdle inside of me like milk spent too long in the sun.

“I may not have their blood, but I’ve tried to be a good man, the kind of person my mother raised me to be. I’ve fended off my father’s teachings, haven’t I?” I stomp into motion, sending gravel skittering away. “I’ve done everything my father’s asked me without hesitation and at the same time, I’ve risen up against him. You chose me young, but it wasn’t a mistake.”

It stings, knowing the elder dragons, with their secrets and their impressively long lives, have whispered in Mozi’s ear about me. Tried to turn him off of his choice. Why? Do they see something in me I’m incapable of seeing? A darkness, tainting me from the inside?

Or do they think I’ll become my father?

“I know what I’m doing. It’s a risk worth taking. I put myself on the line for her, didn’t I?” I sweep my arm out to make my point. “I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t believe in her potential.”

Disdain drips from Mozi’s expression although his features don’t change. My father has called them nothing but fire breathing lizards, few in number, and drama queens with wings.

Some of them are massive like Omram but most are the size of a thunderbird. Hard to take down. Huge egos. If I remind Mozi of any of those things now, we’ll be finished. I know it.