Page 35 of Wings of Destruction

“I’ll be on my dragon but there are carts for transport. It shouldn’t be more than a few days before we reach the Academy.”

The sounds behind us slowly dissipate with distance and a hysterical cry tightens the muscle at the back of my neck. The ache in my head goes blinding and my vision cuts out for a second. Either the tears come and I cry in front of this muck-raker or they don’t and I die of an aneurysm.

Choice two is much better than the first.

Kieran makes no more assurances. He says nothing as he walks back to whatever camp our enemies have set up. He carefully picks his way toward the wreckage of the field, and I thrash harder to throw him off balance.

Servitude begins with the stench of burned flesh on the wind and the cries of the elderly and children who thought they were safe.

People like him understand violence. They understand resistance insomuch as they dominate and crush it.

The sweet scent of blood brands itself on the inside of my nostrils. It’s coming from him, from his armor, my face tucked against his back.

Oh, no.

Who does the blood belong to? Large hazy spots threaten to overwhelm my vision and I teeter on the edge of passing out entirely.

There is pain and sharp sunlight. There is the dark one towing me along and I move behind him, my thoughts as bleak as his hair.

He’s pulling me away from everything I know. He knows I’m afraid and the realization is a sharp, ugly laugh in the face of my confusion.

I’ve lost, and he’s going to ship me off to the school of my dreams as a maid instead of a student. It’s salt rubbed in a wound. It’s having my dreams twisted and warped into something out of a nightmare.

My entire body tenses and a beat of silence passes.

Kieran sets me against the base of a slender ash tree and loops the leather straps from his ankle harness around me to keep me tethered. He spares one final look at me before glancing out the way we’d come.

“I’ll be back.”

I don’t care.

I squeeze my eyes closed until the cadence of his footsteps fades. Eventually this place will heal from the wounds of fire and ferocity. I won’t be here to play witness.

DragonSpear is harsh enough. We’ve all heard stories of its failure to protect its students. What sort of horrors await me there as a slave?

Eight

Morgan

It’s not an easy ride to the castle.

The ropes chafe permanent grooves and rough spots in my skin, and the carriage is anything but comfortable as I glance behind at the only home I’ve ever known. Within an hour, even the mountain where we’d hidden is a blur in the distance.

The men split into two distinct groups, one led by Tristan and the other by Kieran.

My luck put me in Tristan’s caravan.

Kieran led the rest of my survivors off with him toward the capital. And Fallkirk is reduced to nothing but a memory, lost to history and time’s decay.

Screw them.

Fresh tears sting the corners of my eyes and I reel them back. As soon as it’s safe. I’ll cry when it’s safe.

The choked sob is another story and the next rut the carriage bounces over on the road to DragonSpear pushes it out of me. The guards can’t be bothered to look. As long as I’m secure, as long as the ropes hold, then I’m not their problem.

Unless I make myself one.

I tried to escape the first night. My lessons were learned the hard way that although Kieran had spoken for me, something I never asked him to do, his cousin is a different sort of man. The kind you avoid on dark nights and lonely streets.