Page 132 of Ash of Midnight and Gold

“I know,” Caspian growled, his jaw clenching so hard a muscle jumped violently along his cheek, his royal blue eyes burning with an unhinged heat. “I know. But you are staying right here with me. I am taking you to the water.”

My sluggish, fading brain tried to process his words. The water? What water? We are hundreds of feet above the sea...

He burst through the final iron-bound door at the top of the tower, emerging onto the high, windswept precipice of the Drakoryn Roost.

The mountain gale hit us like a physical wall—a freezing howl that carried the scent of high-altitude snow, pine needles, and raw, primordial magic. The sky above was a swirling, dramatic canvas of dark grey storm clouds and pale, lilac morning light, stretching out over the jagged, snow-capped peaks of the northern range.

Below us, the sheer stone cliff dropped hundreds of feet into the misty, bottomless chasm of the mountain valley.

Caspian ran straight toward the edge of the precipice, his boots crunching over the frost-covered stone.

Shortly, the heavy, pounding steps beneath us died away completely.

The solid stone floor vanished.

I felt a sudden, weightless jolt—and then the freezing wind took over, howling past my ears, dragging my copper-red waves across my face in wild, tangled ribbons.

My eyelids fluttered open, heavy and slick with dried blood, as I forced my head to turn slightly.

We were no longer on the stone. We were airborne.

I looked up through the blur of my vision.

Positioned directly above us in the pale sky was a massive, terrifying shape of pure, midnight shadow.

It was Caspian’s dragon, his Umbrax.

The shadow-drake was colossal, its scale-covered hide as dark as a starless night, its wide, leathery wings beating against the wind with slow, powerful sweeps that generated shockwaves of cold air.

The Umbrax had not landed on the roost. It had swept down from the high peaks at Caspian’s telepathic command, its razor-sharp onyx talons wrapped firmly around Caspian’s leather-armored shoulders—hauling the Captain and the dying female in his arms straight up into the open sky!

“CASPIAN! NO!”

The desperate, frantic screams carried up from the high balcony of the tower below us, blurred and distorted by the roaring wind.

I strained my neck to look down.

Standing on the edge of the stone precipice, their hair whipping in the gale, were Aerynn and Dax.

My brother was leaning far over the low stone railing, his hands gripping the freezing rock, his face pale as death as he stared up at us ascending into the storm clouds. Beside him, Dax had his hands cupped around his mouth, his wolfish face contorted into pure, unadulterated panic.

“CASPIAN, DON’T DO IT!” Dax’s voice echoed through the chasm, raw and cracking with terror. “YOU CAN’T MAKE THAT FALL!”

“CASPIAN, PLEASE!” Aerynn begged, his voice fading rapidly as the Umbrax carried us higher and higher into the grey clouds, turning the two males on the balcony into tiny, helpless specks of stone and leather. “BRING HER BACK! WE CAN’T LOSE YOU BOTH! DON’T DO THIS!”

Their voices grew fainter, swallowed by the deafening roar of the mountain wind and the rhythmic, heavy thrum of the dragon’s wings.

The air at this altitude was brutal—thin, freezing, and biting like shards of broken glass against my bare, sweat-slicked skin.

I lay in Caspian’s arms, suspended thousands of feet above the earth, my blood soaking through his dark jacket, leaving a dark crimson trail that froze into icy droplets as it fell through the sky toward the distant valley floor.

My heart was beating so slowly now.

Thump...