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Me.

The heavy weight of its gaze hit my chest like a physical blow. It wasn’t looking at me like prey. It was assessing me. The slitted golden pupil dilated, its long black nostrils flaring as it drew in a deep, lingering scent of the hot air rising from my skin.

It was smelling my blood. It was smelling the Remnikai that had exploded at the altar—the dual gifts of midnight and gold.

The beast let out a low, vibrating click that echoed deep within its chest, making the daggers in my belt hum against my thighs. It didn’t strike. It didn’t roar.

With one massive snap of its leather wings, the emerald dragon banked sharply, launching itself back into the storm clouds and disappearing into the dark peaks.

It hadn’t missed us. It had left me alive.

“Tauriel!”

The call was nearly lost in the roar of the fire.

I pushed myself onto my hands and knees, vision swimming through black soot and floating embers. The dragon’s fire had done its work. A massive wall of roaring green flame now stretched across the ridge, splitting the terrain in two.

The collapse of the overhang had dropped tons of burning rock and petrified wood between the rear fissure and the riverbank.

“Caspian!” I screamed, stumbling toward the blaze, shielding my face with a burnt sleeve. “Caspian! Dax!”

Through the thick waves of heat and green glare, I caught a fractured glimpse of a broad silhouette on the opposite side of the fire.

Caspian was hacking through collapsing rubble, his leathers covered in ash, broadsword drawn. His face was contorted in a wild, fierce look. A sight that chilled me far more than the dragon. His blue eyes burned through the smoke, locked onto mine across the barrier of flame.

He lunged forward to clear a path, but the ground between us buckled. A fissure opened along the riverbank, fire spilling into the gap, creating a twenty-foot gulf of churning rock and green flame between us.

“Stay back!” Caspian’s voice tore through the inferno—a rough command raw with panic. “Tauriel, do not cross!”

“Caspian!” I tried to step closer, but the blistering heat drove me back, singeing my hair.

“Take the high trail!” Caspian roared, his frame outlined against the green blaze. Dax appeared at his side, face bloodied, clearing their flank. Caspian’s eyes pinned me to the spot. “Keep moving toward the interior caldera! Do not stop for anything! I will find you!”

“Caspian—”

“Go!” he bellowed, the command vibrating through the earth.

A section of the basalt cliff above them collapsed, dropping a curtain of rock and thick black smoke between us, wiping him from view.

The wall of fire was absolute. We were split.

A hand clamped around my upper arm, pulling me back from the edge.

Mal stood beside me, breathing heavy and ragged, the shock gone from his eyes, replaced by the grim focus of a soldier who knew time was out.

“We can’t stay here, Tauriel,” Mal rasped. “The smoke from this blaze is going to draw every flyer on the mountain. We have to push deeper into the trees.”

“They’re on the other side,” I said, my voice shaking. “Caspian and Dax... they’re cut off.”

“Caspian is High Captain of the Black Guard,” Mal said firmly, forcing me to turn away from the blaze. “He survives. That’s what he does. But if we stand here staring at the fire, we won’t live long enough for him to catch up. Move!”

I needed to move, I needed to put one foot in front of the other.

I swallowed the ash in my throat, setting my jaw.

We turned our backs on the inferno and plunged blind into the unburnt, pitch-black woods to the north.

The dark of the interior forest swallowed us instantly.