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Behind the wall of fire, Brenna’s dragon breathed an inferno on our grove of cleverly disguised ballistas.
It was over.
Or would have been if I hadn’t held one ballista back, just in case.
I turned to Nisang, watching as he pushed his paper-thin blade into another enemy, taking advantage of a crack in the man’s armor at the knee. Thorn went in and the soldier fell to one knee, not dead, but out of the fight.
When Nisang turned, his wings were near translucent, the blisters weeping. Bloody flecks speckled where the blisters had already burst.
I hesitated, knowing what I had to ask him, what it would cost.
But there was no choice. I had promised Cian I would bring him a victory. That was no longer possible, but if I could buy him a chance of winning the war, if I could take out that dragon, I had to try.
“I need to get over the fire, Nisang!” Another soldier closed, swinging his sword at my neck. I blocked sloppily and ran him through low and to the left. “There’s another ballista further back. If I run for it…”
Nisang looked at the fire, at me, at the dragon burning our best idea and my men to nothing. “Where?”
I pointed.
He sheathed his sword, picked me up and winced, stretching his wings. I closed my eyes and tried not to hear the awful scraping sound they made, tried not to watch as more blisters burst and wept, as the all-too tender skin stretched near to breaking. Nisang took a shaky breath and pushed off the ground.
We didn’t move anywhere near his normal speed. He couldn’t. Every flap of his wings was pure agony. I could see it in how his face paled, the mask of sweat, the trembling arms, felt it in our shaky, uneven flight path.
I hated myself for asking this of him, knowing what those wings meant.
But he didn’t acknowledge the pain any more than he had to, didn’t give it an ounce of power it didn’t make him. He bore me over that wall of fire, the open grass plain stretching out before us—
I heard the tear when it happened, ripping up his right wing to the sound of torn upholstery. He gritted his teeth and banked hard to the left, losing altitude fast. To keep from crashing to the ground, he leaned into that left wing until it, too, tore.
Nisang rolled me away from him before he hit the ground. I went to the side while he bounced against the dirt and rolled right onto those broken wings. Bone snapped and twisted with the second bounce. He skipped over the ground a third time before rolling to a stop and did not get up.
“Nisang!” I forgot about my own bruises and ran to him, falling to my knees next to him.
He was on his stomach, shredded and twisted wings jutting in jagged lines from his back. Between the fire, the flight, and the fall, they were little more than twitching, bloody scraps. The rest of him wasn’t much better. His entire face was bloody and coated in dirt. He tried to push himself up, shoulders and shattered wings trembling.
“Stay here. I’ll get a healer.” But even as I looked around, trying desperately to spot a medic, I knew that no magic could heal him.
“There’s no time,” Nisang managed, his voice hoarse. “The line is broken. The aerial unit is… gone. If you don’t… stop it...” A labored, wet breath. “Make this mean something.”
The earth quaked. I turned my head and watched in horror as Brenna’s ivory dragon touched the ground just a hundred feet away. Yellow feline eyes settled on us. Brenna’s wicked smile practically glowed in the dark.
A familiar choking sulfuric stink filled the air.
“Get out of here!” Nisang growled. “Leave me!”
But even if I had found my feet and run at full speed, I wouldn’t have been able to escape the blast of dragon fire aimed straight at us.
I should have been terrified to die, should have been rooted in place with the fear. Instead, I looked at Nisang’s shredded wings and saw myself, broken and angry at my parents, who had loved a music box more than me. Brenna’s glowing smirk became the red-hot end of that poker, every angry fist I’d met on the streets, and Jerrith. She was just a bully with a dragon. No, not even a dragon. It was a mask, a crutch. Something for her to hide behind. She was nothing without it.
Something snapped in me. Anger, red hot and burning, spread through my veins. I stood, ignoring Nisang’s pleas for me to run.
It’s only fire.Trian’s voice in my head, coaching me through my first days at the forge.Fire is neither good nor evil. It is a tool.
But Trian was wrong, limited by his narrow view of the world. Fire was more than a tool. It was a weapon like any other, and like any other weapon, I could take it from her.
The air around me rippled with heat. Power, will, and intention. I held onto those things, letting go of the fear, the worry, the pain. My hair stood on end, tiny sparks of blue lightning racing over my fingertips. Fire spun out from the dragon’s throat, whirling toward us. I shifted my stance, bearing down to keep my balance and extending my hands in front of me like a shield. Flame roiled closer, faster, burning the very oxygen out of the air.
You cannot burn me. Not anymore. I’m made of lightning and I burn five times hotter than the surface of the sun.No one would ever burn me or anyone I cared about ever again.
