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Rain spits against my wings as I bank to the left and spew a controlled line of liquid fire from my jaws, lighting up a section of the city wall. Soldiers drop their weapons and writhe, tiny four-limbed creatures flailing in the glow, crumpling quickly onto the stone.
My fire is a mercy. Hotter than the flame humans typically wield, it brings death in mere seconds. When I’m precise with it, I can explode stones into ash.
For the survivors, the ones forced to surrender to the King of Vohrain, death will come much more slowly.
A heavy beat of wings on my right draws my attention. Mordessa glides beside me, her golden wings spanning wider than mine.
“One more battle, maybe two. And then home,” she says in Dragonish.
“Home, with the Merrinwold Isles as our reward,” I reply.
“We will have all the food we need for mating season and the resulting brood of hatchlings.” She slow-blinks her golden lashes in my direction.
I search within myself for the answering warmth I’m supposed to feel—the surge of joy, of harmony. The most I can summon for my Promised is a feeling of friendship, of pleasant loyalty. It is enough.
It will have to be enough.
A gust of wind passes over both of us—a speeding black shape with white patches on her wings. My sister Vylar, aiming lines of searing light at the remaining guards along the city wall.
“Stop ogling each other and get back to work, you two,” she advises.
I dive lower, avoiding an acid bomb launched from a nearby airship.
We must finish this battle, here at Guilhorn, and then suffer through one more to take the capital city and force the Queen of Elekstan to surrender. We expected her to yield weeks ago, but her pride proved more formidable than any of us anticipated. She has sent droves of her people for us to slaughter. By now, she must have barely anyone left, and almost no supplies or weapons. What kind of ruler destroys her own nation in this way?
Our Vohrainian allies have suffered losses, and my clan has endured the deaths of two dragons. But we have slaughtered the Elekstan troops by the hundreds.
Just a little longer, and then we win. A little longer, and my bone-oath to my father will be fulfilled. No more war or killing. No more watching the humans dance like charred insects in Mordessa’s lightning or turn to smoke beneath Vylar’s intense rays.
The female dragons have been most intent on winning this war. They know what’s at stake—the survival of our race. A primal urgency has spurred them through each battle and carried them to a place beyond guilt, where necessity and fear blend into savagery. I’ve watched it happen, and longed for the day when we’re all home again and the dread of extinction no longer drives them.
Vylar mounts higher in the sky, calling orders in Dragonish. She is the chief liaison with the army of Vohrain, and knows what moves we’re supposed to make. I’ve been in the war meetings too, but even though I am the firstborn of the Bone-King, my sister has a better head for battle, so she has taken the lead in this campaign.
A large red-and-black dragon bursts out of the smoke ahead. Grimmaw, mother of the Bone-King—my grandmother. One of the oldest in our clan, and still a formidable warrior despite the occasional aches in her tail and wings. My father took a bone-oath from her, too, before he died… but I have never asked her what promise lives in the piece of his spine that she wears around her neck.
“Guilhorn has fallen,” she says, hovering near Mordessa and me. “The highest tower of the fortress bears a black flag.”
“The sign of dishonor and a dark day.” I dip my head, relief flooding my body. “It’s over then. Perhaps the Queen will finally yield and we can avoid an all-out battle against the capital.”
“Perhaps—” begins Grimmaw, but before she can continue, a spasm runs through her body. Her jaws gape for a moment, as if she’s trying to speak.
Then she falls. Wings lax, neck limp, tail inert… she falls.
I plunge after her, but a great golden shape catches my eye. At first I think Mordessa is diving to help me catch Grimmaw—and then I realize she is also plummeting to earth, unconscious.
Grimmaw smashes into a building and rolls into the street in a shower of bricks. Humans run screaming from the scene, but several are crushed immediately as Mordessa’s golden body thunders to the ground. One of her wings demolishes three rickety buildings, sends them toppling aside one after the other.
I land between my grandmother and my Promised. With a roar I warn the humans to stay back, and they scatter.
As I turn to Grimmaw, I see the thing I most feared—a smoky serpent gliding from her open jaws. It writhes into the sky and vanishes before I can cry out.
I whirl to Mordessa in time to see her spirit leave as well, a serpentine wisp of golden mist. It climbs high before evanescing into the roaring chaos of burning buildings and smoking towers that once was the prosperous city of Guilhorn.
From the canopy of the night sky, I see more dragons falling, one after another, scales flashing, necks and tails limp, wings at strange angles. The sound of each impact reverberates through the city. A deafening boom for each heavy body. The tumbling roar of destroyed buildings, the quake of the earth at the concussive force of death.
“Kyreagan!” cries my brother Varex, his voice taut with grief and terror. Varex, Vylar, and I were all born in the same hatching season—a rarity among dragons. “Kyreagan, what is happening?”
