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“They won’t see us,” Morena reassured him, and flew east.
Breen looked down through the smoke, toward the cries of grief.
Blood, so much, and bodies. Some of the dragons barely bigger than the dog behind her. So many burned, bleeding, so still.
She took Lonrach down, jumped off. Already weeping, she knelt beside one of the young bodies, laid her hands on it.
A dragon, bleeding from wounds at the throat, burned near the back leg, limped out of the smoke. And growled.
“Let me help. Let me try to help. Please. I can feel his heartbeat, I can feel his pain. Let me try.”
With the mother—she felt the mother’s rage—watching her, Breen tried to heal. Arrow strikes—three. While he’d been playing with his nest mates. Burns from them scorching the scales, turning the green and blue scales black.
She called on all she had. If she could save one, even one, somehow.
Sharp pains, sharp and shocking. Hot breath over the skin, blowing down to bone. She let herself go, and swamped with grief, went deeper than was safe. But even one, and this one, even one. Light to light, heart to heart, power to power.
She felt him stir, felt him cry, not unlike a child might for his mother.
“Wait, wait, please wait.” Even with her eyes closed, she felt the mother move closer. “I need more, a little more. I feel his heart, his strong heart now. His blood’s on my hands, but inside him, it warms. I know it hurts, I know, I know, but it’s almost done.”
Her head fell back, and her breath came out on a long sigh.
“And I see you, I see you, Comrádaí, Finian’s dragon, flying with him on your back. Flying over Talamh.”
She opened her eyes and looked into his. “I know you, and I know your rider. But that’s to come. Go to your mother.”
He scrambled up, and his mother curled her tail around him. When her eyes met Breen’s, Breen knew her heart.
Bolstered, Breen pushed up. If she could save one, she could save another. Then she saw Marg, cradling another of the young wounded.
“Nan!”
“Some are lost, but not all. Keegan’s sent for more healers, but I think it’s for us. Any more to come will be too late. Do what you can,mo stór. Do all you can.”
She healed three more young, working her way through the blood and ash until both covered her, until the taste of them coated her throat. She knew Keegan and Harken did what they could along with Marg, but the mewling of the young in pain, the cries of the adults in grief, tolled and clanged inside her.
She swiped at her face, then stilled when a dragon set a body, so small it had surely barely crawled out of the nest, at her feet.
She knew before she reached out its heart had stopped, and its light gone out. “I’m sorry.” Weeping again, she gathered it into her arms and rocked. “I’m so sorry.”
“Here now, here.” Marg took the body from Breen, held it up. “Ah, Mother, I, too, have lost a child. I know your grief. It’s my own.”
As the mother carried her lost child away, Breen made herself stand.
“You can rest awhile,” Marg told her.
“I hoped to save just one, but we’ve helped more. We can do more. The adults won’t let me try to heal their wounds until we heal all the young that we can.”
By the time other healers came, carrying potions and balms along with their power, they’d done all they could for the young. So she sat for a moment with Bollocks beside her, to gather herself to do more.
Morena walked to her with a skin. “Drink. It’s from the Dragon’s Pool and will revive you some.”
Dazed, her mind as hazed as the air, Breen stared. “You’re back.”
“And so have been an hour. I left Amish watching while I came back to tell Keegan. He and Harken and other riders have gone to do what needs to be done.”
“How did they get through, Morena? How could they have gotten so many through?”
