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Zabriel looks so hopeful that I can’t find it in my heart to crush that light in his eyes.
“I’ll think about it,” I finally concede.
I’m supposed to want to fly, aren’t I? This is yet another expectation that I’m failing to meet because every time I think about being on a dragon, my stomach feels queasy, and I want to throw up.
24
Zabriel
Vivid red and orange explosions burnish Scourge’s wings and the low clouds in the night sky. He banks around the battlefield, his bulk protecting the wingrunner flying beside us. The wyvern is so close that I could reach out and touch it.
Its rider is a spellbreaker, one of only two to survive into New Maledin, specially trained by theHratha’lenin counter-magic. The other spellbreaker is with Stesha and Nilak, circling the battlefield across from us. The fierce women in red robes draw orbs of power into their hands and hurl them at the buildings below. The orbs explode, making the magical barrier fizzle and shudder, but it remains in place.
I remember spellbreakers being sent into battle just once in my life, when a group of Grendu outlaw necromancers raided a Maledin town close to the border, slaughtering farmers and their families. They were caught by dragonriders and spellbreakers and sent in chains back to Grendu. The King of Grendu sent my father a dozen silver peacocks to apologize for the slaughter. The peacocks had a nasty temper and destroyed my mother’s favorite flower garden at the castle, but I’m sure the king meant well.
Brethren archers attempt to pick the women off, and Scourge and Nilak send bursts of dragonfire toward the ground. It’s always spectacular fighting at night. Dragonriders and wingrunners have the advantage of seeing better than most in the dark, and dragonfire terrifies our enemies. We won’t be able to burn anything if the spellbreakers can’t shatter that barrier.
A dozen wingrunners slash across the battlefield, ripping apart the Brethren Guard. They’re protecting a shabby collection of farm buildings on Maledin soil that’s filled with barrels of poison. Realizing that they’re losing the war, the Brethren have resorted to cruel tactics, poisoning rivers so that people die and crops wither.
There’s an almighty crack, and the magical shield over the farmhouses vanishes. Scourge roars in furious triumph.
I glance over at Stesha and nod, and he waits for the spellbreaker with him to join me before he and Nilak dive for the buildings. Nilak opens her jaws and rains down fiery death. Within the burning structures, I glimpse the barrels of poison. They explode as they burn, showering the fleeing Brethren with flames and sparks. The wingrunners swoop in to pick off the remaining enemies.
A robed archer stands by a burning wagon and takes aim at one of the spellbreakers. The archer’s arrow is tipped with a gleaming greenish substance that makes the back of my neck prickle in alarm.
I’m about to shout a warning when the archer looses his arrow. The spellbreaker’s wyvern screams as the arrow tears through its wing, and it buckles in midair. The spellbreaker is going down with her mount, and she’s too precious to lose.
“Ashton, grab her,” I shout across to the wingrunner captain.
The man swoops in on his wyvern and plucks theHratha’lenoff her dying wyvern.
TheHratha’lenclings onto the captain, watching in despair as her wyvern crashes to the ground. The arrowhead didn’t strike a vital organ, and yet the wyvern died instantly.
The robed archer is drawing again, this time aiming at the other spellbreaker.
Oh, no you fucking don’t. Scourge plunges toward the archer and snatches him up in his teeth. Clamped in my dragon’s jaws, his body pierced by dozens of sharp teeth and slowly bleeding to death, the archer’s face blazes with malice. Our eyes meet, and I can count the stubble on his chin. See his cracked front tooth. With the last of his strength, he draws back on his bow. I zero in on the arrow tip which is glistening with the same greenish poison that felled the wyvern.
I tug a dagger from my belt and hurl it at the archer at the same time he looses his arrow. Our projectiles pass in midair. The dagger sinks into the man’s chest, killing him instantly.
The arrow rips along Scourge’s flank, and he roars in pain. I feel it in my own side, the vicious burn of poisoned steel. Scourge falters in midair, dropping the man into the fire where he disappears among the flames.
Scourge.
He’s laboring with every wingbeat, and the wound in his side is oozing blood.
I look quickly around. The Brethren are dead. The buildings are burning. There’s no need for us to linger here any longer.
“Take the spellbreakers back to the castle,” I call to Ashton, who nods. He rallies the wingrunners, and they vanish into the darkness, heading north.
I urge my dragon toward open ground and he lands with a jolt. As soon as my boots hit the dust, I hasten to his wounded flank, and my gut wrenches as I gaze in horror at a seven-foot-long greenish, bubbling wound. I’ve never seen anything like it before.
Behind me, there’s the sound of running feet behind me. Stesha is at my side, and he places his gloved hands on either side of the wound on Scourge’s side, feeling the scales and examining the torn flesh. A moment later he runs to Nilak and comes back with a bag of powder, which he begins applying to the wound.
“Ypergraf root,” he mutters, working quickly. “To soak up the poison.”
I grab handfuls of the powder and follow Stesha’s lead, pushing it into the wound. Pain flares in my head. Pain that doesn’t belong to me.
“Don’t let that stuff touch your skin,” he warns me.
