Fae Reckoning (Royals of Embermere #5)

5. Do and Give and Try Till There’s Nothing Left

5. DO AND GIVE AND TRY TILL THERE’S NOTHING LEFT

ELOWYN

Xeno and I slowed along the walkway to the ruined cabin only long enough for Reed to get out, “It’s Ramana,” before the three of us were bolting the rest of the way and barreling around a demolished wall instead of bothering with the front door. Most everyone else was clustered around the doorway that led to the bedchamber. Even the black dragon, who now stood more out than in the house, craned his long neck down to peer inside.

“What the hell’s going on?” Xeno asked of no one in particular as he shouldered a path through our clustered friends and reached back for me, as if I needed an escort or protection.

He’d never been this way with me in Nightguard, when he, along with Zako, had been the only one to see me as someone as capable as the dragon protectors. When I’d been in Nightguard, wholly unaware of the dubious fate that awaited me in the Mirror World, the queen hadn’t yet tried to murder me. Despite the perhaps reasonableness of his protectiveness, I sidestepped the hand that waited to brace my arm and lead me, and stalked to join West, Ryder, and Hiroshi on my own.

Unlike the others, the three men stood solidly inside the room, along with Bertram and Bolt. The giant frog and horse stood between the wall and beds, making the space feel unbearably small. But it was safer for Bertram and Bolt beneath a roof than exposed when full-grown dragons had full-grown appetites. I wouldn’t have put it past the black dragon—with whom I hadn’t yet had the chance to bond—to take a chomp out of any of the rest of us either. Everyone here was appreciably wary, constantly alert, and watchful of any threat. As a whole, we were twitchy and on edge. Our unease practically vibrated in the air around us.

Hearing Xeno, Hiroshi turned. He cradled Saffron in his arms as if the little dragon were a baby. Since the dragonling really wasn’t, he dwarfed the tall, broad warrior drake, concealing his entire torso. Hiro bobbed his head to one side of Saffron’s wing.

“It’s Ramana. She—” Saffron pushed off Hiro’s abdomen with an ooooof from the drake, leaping straight at me in a tangle of knobby arms and legs, wings, and claws.

I scarcely had a chance to open my arms for him before he slammed into my chest. Xeno was a firm wall that caught me. While Saffron licked the blood that had dribbled onto my neck, I peered up at Xeno and rolled my eyes.

“Thanks.”

Xeno met my stare as if he’d been waiting for it all his life. His eyes gleamed with intensity. “Always.”

I forced myself to smile before looking away. He was my friend—my best friend. I’d already explained that I loved Rush. That Rush loved me. How we were mates. When I faced Hiro and the backs of West and Ryder, however, I had to resist the urge to turn back toward my friend to assure him again that I loved him, yes, but not in that way.

“She’s awake,” Hiro finished, and I slid between the bodies of the three drakes to the bed in front of them. All I could make out were Ramana’s legs: so thin beneath a blanket they couldn’t possibly belong to an adult. They were unnervingly motionless.

Absently, I ran a hand along Saffron’s back, caressing the length of his spine, and stretched my neck away from his tongue. He wasn’t easily dissuaded, and continued to lap up the droplets of my blood while I inched closer to the bed. Once I could see around West’s back, I froze; a gasp slipped past my lips.

“Holy razor-sharp dragon claws,” Xeno breathed on a shocked exhale. Only then did I register his usual protective presence looming around me like a stone wall.

Holy razor-sharp dragon claws was spot on. Ramana sat up in bed, her back ramrod straight. She appeared not to be moving at all, and I had to study her chest for several moments to make sure she was breathing. By sunshine, her face ! I steeled myself with a kiss to those still-soft scales on the crest of Saffron’s head.

Her eyes were finally open; I instantly wished they weren’t. I had no idea what hue her irises might have ordinarily been; they were now the red of fresh blood, so dark they might have been black, her pupils and the veins that snaked across her eyeballs the same. Both her eyes glowed that same eerie shade that instantly brought to mind the queen. Her skin was sallow, its pallor accentuated with how the veins along her face meandered down her neck and across her collarbones. A blanket and dingy linen nightgown concealed the rest of her body save her hands, which lay limply atop the covers. More of those dark veins traced morbid paths across the backs of her hands, conjuring unwelcome comparisons to the glowing crimson map that would sometimes surge across my skin. Her hair hung in long, greasy strands around her bony shoulders to pool on the bed. If her hair were clean, it might have been a bright sapphire blue. At present, it was the nearly black-blue of a raven’s wing.

“This is more than the queen draining their magic,” I said in a haunted whisper, glancing at the other four fae, all females, prone in their beds. Their appearances were as unkempt and devastating as Ramana’s. At least with their eyes closed I could pretend they were sleeping.

West turned toward me. His features were so hard, so furious … and so terrified for Ramana, if the qu een were to arrive the drake might just find the way to kill the woman, no matter what claim she lay to immortality. He’d hack her to pieces until either she died or he did.

“It’s so much worse,” West said, his voice breaking. His fists clenched at his sides. “Can you help her?”

I startled. “Me?”

Ryder faced me too, so that all three of Rush’s closest friends were looking at me with raw hope gleaming in their troubled eyes.

So as not to look at them—or worse, Ramana—I spun around. Roan and Reed studied me with a similar hope loosening their faces, arching their brows. I guessed that made some sense, since they’d been with me in the Sorumbra and witnessed me saving us from certain death through a connection to the land I still didn’t comprehend.

Pru had been there too. She’d barely left her granddoody’s side since their reunion; or perhaps it was the other way around and Edsel had scarcely left hers. The two goblins stood so close to each other as to share a shadow. Pru regarded me not with hope, exactly, but with faith—Edsel too, as if they believed I would find the way to save not just Ramana but every single creature in the Mirror World.

Zafi sat on Edsel’s shoulder. Her legs were crossed as she slumped over them, picking at her tiny cuticles. Her wings, however, betrayed her artful nonchalance. They kept stiffening as if of their own volition before relaxing.

I glanced next at Bolt and Bertram. The horse was Rush’s steed, a warrior’s steady companion. His large eyes were nervous, his head quick to jerk toward any movement. Bertram, at least, offered me an impartial waaawaaaa , which could have meant anything. I released a nervous chuckle that caused Saffron to pause mid-lick and tilt his head to one side to better study me with those curious eyes of his. I tutted and looked away, careful not to meet anyone’s gaze.

Without looking at the beds or their occupants, I waved a hand in Ramana’s general direction. “You all can’t seriously think I know how to fix this ? Why would you think I can do anything to help?”

My traitorous gaze slid up, up, and still farther up. With a clear sky as his backdrop, the black dragon met my gaze as if he understood everything I said and had been waiting for me. Was that possible? I didn’t know. After my telepathic conversation with the sapphire-blue dragon and the way Saffron seemed to comprehend what I said when it was to his advantage, I had to admit my connection to the dragons was deeper than with most.

“You’re looking straight at one of the reasons,” Ryder said, reminding me sharply that he, West, and Hiroshi had been in the throne room with Rush and me when dragons had surged up through the floor at the queen’s command—and I’d communed with the sapphire she-dragon.

“My connection with the dragons, whatever it is, doesn’t help me dismantle the queen’s magic,” I argued while the black dragon’s eyes continued to hold mine.

“How do you know that?” West asked, his voice thready with his hope. “I’ve never in my whole life seen someone do what you do.”

Xeno stepped closer so that now he and I shared a shadow too, and said, “Neither have I, and I grew up where all we have is dragons.”

Though surely nothing about our current predicament was my friend’s fault, I glared at him as if he were betraying me by taking their side. I quickly recalled how Malessa had allowed Dougal and his men to take me from my then-home against my will, and how Xeno and Saffron had been the only ones who’d protested. Xeno had taken an arrow to the chest, practically the heart, in my defense.

I dropped the glare and scowled instead. “What does my … whatever … to the dragons have to do with the queen draining others of their power and presumably keeping it for herself?” I asked of everyone while the black dragon chuffed, causing Zafi to squeal and jump—before slumping back into her affected I’m totally relaxed vibe.

“It’s not just the dragons,” Ryder said. “It’s the map too.”

I bit my lip. That one was a bit harder to dismiss.

“Your map brought us here,” Ryder added though they all already knew it. “To Ramana and the others. And before you used the map to find Odelia.”

Clearly they’d been talking among themselves when I hadn’t been privy to their conversations. Edsel had forced me to rest to better continue my healing, and even now I sensed his disapproval from the threshold, tracing the fresh cuts upon my face.

“The land saved ya from death in the arena, lassie,” Roan said. “And in the Sorumbra it saved us all.”

“Plus, ye’re the daughter of Odelia n’ the king,” Edsel said.

“The true heir of Embermere and the whole o’ the Mirror World, some might even say,” Roan added.

My scowl deepened. I had very little idea how to use whatever magic I possessed. It was as new to me as the realization that, yes, I was ostensibly the true heir to the throne. I hadn’t asked for the role, and I sure as shit wasn’t prepared for it, but I was the best chance we currently had. It meant our odds of long-term survival were dismal at best.

Tilting up my chin, I straightened my shoulders and pretended I didn’t have a dragonling lapping up my blood because I’d been foolish enough to put myself in range of a killer flower. “I don’t know much more about what I can do than you do,” I announced with a resigned sigh. “But whatever it takes to save us all and kill the queen, I’m in. Until there’s nothing left of me.”

The ensuing silence was loud until a waawaaa broke it.

“So what do we do next?” I asked. “Other than take them with us, obviously.” I glanced at Ramana and how very wrong she looked. If anything, her eyes only glowed redder still. I gulped. We’d have to hope not only that the queen wouldn’t find and kill us all before we could stop her, but also that Ramana and the others were safe to keep around us. How far did the queen’s interference reach? Almost certainly too far . “Then start traveling from point to point on my map, freeing everyone we can? Hmmm, our group will keep getting bigger, harder to hide. And how do we even disconnect them from the queen’s hold? If we take them with us?—”

West growled.

“ Since we’ll be taking them with us,” I amended, “how do we keep the queen from knowing where we are through them?”

“She’s already got Az, lassie,” Roan answered. “He can find ya just as well.”

I swallowed again, the lump in my throat feeling a lot like panic. “So we need to get out of here. Maybe I can go, leaving some of you at different spots to free whomever she’s got at them, and then I’ll keep moving on with some of you. We’ll go faster that way.”

“I’m staying with you wherever you go,” Xeno said in a deep grumble that brooked no argument.

I nodded. “And I’ve gotta get to Rush. I need him for the map.”

That, of course, was an excuse. I did indeed need him to most easily access the map—or at least, I thought I did. Regardless, what I most needed was Rush for me . I needed my mate at my side to settle the beast that couldn’t be sure she was safe until he was. The beast that had growled at the contestants of the Nuptialis Probatio until I’d learned how to muzzle her. Deep inside me, the beast wasn’t settled; she was snarling and thrashing and roaring—desperate to reunite with Rush.

For all their earlier restraint, everyone who could speak did so all at once. I ignored the rest to listen to Hiro, who was saying, “We’ll go with you to find Rush. He’s probably still at the palace?—”

Xeno interrupted with a snarled, “She’s not going to the palace. It’s too dangerous.”

“Yes, Mistress,” Pru agreed, wringing her hands in a way I hadn’t seen since she was first assigned as my attending goblin.

As Pru and Edsel shuffled closer and Pru’s big, dark, pupil-less eyes implored me not to return to the den of the viper, I renewed my vow to kill the queen for Pru. My goblin friend had only just begun to relax into some confidence, and now all that progress appeared lost.

“It will be off with your head, Mistress,” Pru said, blinking away the sudden sheen to her eyes. “Pru doesn’t want that.”

I sighed and took a step toward her. Xeno shadowed my moves. Ignoring Xeno’s large presence, I dipped my head low to meet her stare. She tipped her head up to mine.

“Pru,” I said softly. “Remember, call me Elowyn . We’re friends . Friends call each other by their names.” It was, arguably, the least of our issues.

She shuddered when I slid Saffron to one hip to press my free hand to her small shoulder. From her side, Edsel watched on with open wonder. Zafi feigned continued interest in her nails while glancing up at our interaction from under her lashes.

“Mistress … Elowyn,” Pru said. “You can’t die, not now. Not when?—”

Bolt snorted, tossed his head, and pawed at the dirt floor.

Swiftly, we silenced. Even Bertram held back his waawaas .

“If you finally know where she is, Azariah,” came a damning, disembodied voice that chilled my very blood, “after an unreasonable time to find one silly, foolish girl, then what’s the delay now?”

The queen sounded as if she were in the room with us. Thank sunshine she wasn’t.

Eyes wide with alarm, we exchanged frantic looks. She’d found us. Or rather, Azariah had. It was a guess, but I suspected a good one, that the unisus was trying to give us a warning.

The murderous queen was coming.

There’d be no outrunning her, not with her preternaturally enhanced speed once she was within pursuing distance. The only way to throw her off our trail was to use the map again—and to hope with a desperation I despised that it would work. Once again, the lives of every person and creature I cared about depended on me and my fumbling use of my newfound powers.

“If you’re delaying to help them,” the queen said from somewhere I hoped was very far away, “you’ll pay, pegicorn. I’ll take your head and mount it next to the dragons’.”

My affronted inhale was barely audible. That she would threaten such a magnificently magical creature was despicable. It was also not a surprise.

“No, Your Majesty,” assured Azariah’s shaky voice. “I’ll deliver us there post-haste. My magic is strong at the moment. Shall I bring Ivar too?”

I exchanged a look with Xeno that mutely said, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck ! She can get here as fast as we did?”

“Yes,” the queen hissed. “Of course you will.”

“And his mount?”

“Azariah, I swear…” The queen’s voice faded out, as did the unisus’, his warning delivered.

Sensing our communal alarm, Saffron trembled in my arms as he attempted to burrow into my chest. My skin and muscles stung all over. The many wounds that hadn’t fully healed wept. I didn’t acknowledge their pain. I was already reaching for my link to Rush, praying I’d be able to feel him again. That no matter the distance that separated us, or whatever spell Braque had placed on him that forced him to forget me, that Rush’s love for me—our mate bond—would be stronger.

Waving my free arm in a hurry, hurry motion, I gestured to all of them, making eye contact with the black dragon to confirm he was paying attention.

“Right the hell now—link up!”

This time, I didn’t have to remind someone to touch Bolt so he’d come along with us. In seconds, everyone, including the scary-looking Ramana and her comatose buddies, were connected to me in one way or another, directly or through someone else.

The very instant Rush responded to me, when I felt him close, as if his lips might alight on mine for a tender kiss, I opened my eyes that had closed on their own.

My skin was glowing that same eerie red I’d last seen in Ramana’s eyes.

“Hold on tight, everybody,” I muttered grimly.

Around Saffron’s body, I reached under my leathers and blindly ran my hand along my glowing skin. So long as I didn’t take us to the points along my abdomen or collarbone, we should end up someplace new—in theory.

I dragged my hand along my back until it was drawn to what felt like a significant point on the map. I pressed my palm to it. The shambles around us began to vanish?—

Along with the queen’s furious visage that hadn’t yet fully taken shape, yet was definitely there, tangible, in the cabin, in the process of solidifying.

She’d seen us.

Her bellow followed us through to wherever we were going. A dooming echo, it rang in my ears long after she and the hovel had completely vanished from view.

CHAPTER SIX: A Horrid, Dirty Little Secret of a Pit, Where I’d Be Stupid and Stupider Stew for Dinne r

~ Rush ~

That intentionally induced dread, yet another weapon in the queen’s vast arsenal, didn’t abate even a little bit. If anything, it grew worse the farther from the wall Larissa and I moved. Like a large-game meat hook through the ribs, it did its damnedest to yank us back out of this horrid, dirty little secret of a pit—and oh how I would have loved to put the palace behind us, never to step foot on its accursed grounds again. Of course there was no turning back—not at this point, after the dubious choices I’d made were leading us farther down a route with no obvious escape.

With no urging from me, Larissa quickly crossed the terrifyingly narrow and unreasonably long stone bridge. Every one of my senses was on high alert, but the wall to the fae dungeon muted all sound, and I heard nothing to indicate pygmy ogres were heading our way on this side of it.

When Larissa and I finally stepped onto the perpendicular walkway carved from the bedrock, I whispered to her, “We’re going all the way down, as far as we can go. But careful, when we get there, they’ll be dragons.”

She whirled on me so fast her lumoon took a moment to catch up, casting her face in shadows until it shifted to float in front of her. “ Dragons? Please tell me you’re kidding right now.”

I frowned. As if I thought there was a single thing to joke about here in the dungeons. My fingers flexing to reach for the blades I wore, I glanced in all directions, relieved to find stillness, then looked at Larissa. “There’s no time for this. Pygmy ogres live down here.”

Her eyes widened. “Rush, what?—”

What the hell were you thinking? I guessed she was about to say. I cut her off with a sharp shake of my head.

“We’ve gotta keep moving. Down, fast, and lower your lumoon.” I softened the glow of mine too. “If they hear us…” The we’re fucked went unsaid, and that was before considering that the dragons had shaken the palace hard enough to demolish the throne room many stories above us once already.

Larissa swallowed visibly, nodded as if to steel her resolve, then faced forward. Her lumoon’s light dimmed so as to barely illuminate at all as she raced on bare, quiet feet across the walkway until rock rose on all sides to engulf it into a tunnel. She paused only a moment before continuing through it, eventually taking stairs that would lead us to the dragons.

All the way down I kept thinking how swiftly Millicent had died. How easy it was for a fae in Embermere to lose one’s life. Not only was I driving my sole surviving sister toward a dead end, but by running from the queen I’d also severed her access to Braque’s life-saving treatments. Her long-standing illness had been the entire reason my parents had given me to the queen in the first place. In exchange for my loyal service, the royal alchemist would treat my sister. There was no cure for her ailment, but with Braque’s intervention she could live a full life with minimal discomfort. Without him…

I began to wonder if the queen would forgive me if I prostrated myself to her and did everything she ever wanted for the rest of my miserable life. Would that even be enough to save Larissa? And what of Elowyn? She was my mate . Though I was loath to admit it, that was a bond that surpassed even my commitment to protecting my little sister.

Without seeing any way out of the tangled clusterfuck I’d woven for us, I forced my damning thoughts to quiet. If there was any chance of our survival, I needed to remain sharp and aware.

Larissa started down what I believed was the final set of stairs.

“Hold up,” I said so softly even she, immediately ahead of me, might not have heard.

She stopped and turned toward me, expectant.

“Let me go first,” I said.

Although time was working against us, I pulled in several steadying breaths before taking the final steps at a measured pace. I was about to confront dragons. By any standards, they were savage beasts—and these were caged and tortured savage beasts.

When I emerged into the cavern, I was once more struck by how very vast it was. I couldn’t begin to make out its farthest walls. The ceiling was high enough that I sensed it more than I could actually see it. The remains of the pygmy ogres the burnt-orange dragon had charred to a crisp were still down here, their bodies little more than bones, with the occasional clinging clump of blackened flesh, some teeth strewn across the floor. Their remains mixed with those of so many different dragons, in all sorts of sizes and colors, in varying states of decomposition.

In death, captor and captive weren’t all that different.

Larissa gasped softly at my back as I looked to where the burnt-orange dragon had last been. The creature had been badly injured and chained, but no less magnificent for it. Hiroshi and I had unchained the beast but hadn’t otherwise been able to free it.

Where the dragon had stood, a much smaller one hunched in its stead. This dragon was a brilliant, iridescent green whose luster hadn’t suffered despite overwhelming evidence of his ill treatment. When he crouched into his front legs, he hissed at us like a serpent. Though my survival instincts roared at me to tuck tail and run, I met his punishing black eyes head-on. In response, he added a snarl to his hiss. The combination made the hairs along my body stand on end.

“That can’t be good,” Larissa muttered nervously.

Unlike the burnt-orange dragon, who’d been restrained by metal chains, this creature was shackled by the same shadow-links Ivar had used on us before, which meant both the dragon’s power and his body were bound. The dragon’s torso was perhaps four times the size of Bolt, who was a massive stallion, one of the largest ever of his kind.

Grooves as wide as my wrists raked down both sides of his ribcage, the raw flesh a deep, dark violet that pooled with blood in more of that rich hue. A puddle had collected beneath him. All four of his legs had been sliced apart until muscle was exposed, hanging free from the leg in one instance like a lolling tongue. The barb that had been the cusp of his tail lay on the floor, discarded like trash. My breath hitched—the poor bastard had been castrated as well. His ball sack lay on the floor next to the end of his tail.

Bile burned the back of my throat as undiluted rage came to a swift boil in my veins.

“The queen did this?” Larissa asked me on a thready exhale that sounded as devastated as I’d felt the first time I’d been down here.

Now I just wanted to punish the queen as badly as she’d hurt these creatures—as much as she’d hurt me and those I cared about. I wanted her to comprehend true pain, to experience every agony she’d ever caused another a hundred-fold—a thousand-fold!

“You haven’t even seen the worst of it yet,” I said miserably.

“What? How can it get worse than this?”

“You don’t want to know.” I didn’t want to be the one to tell her that the dark recesses of this putrid pit were lined with dozens, maybe hundreds of dragons. The world was bad enough as it was; I didn’t want to have to be the one to reveal to her what true evil looked like.

The dragon crouched his crested head farther down and hissed another time—before drawing in a deep, filling inhale, just as the burnt-orange dragon had done moments before incinerating the pygmy ogres that were currently crunching underfoot. Without taking my eyes off the dragon, I shoved Larissa back into the stairwell. My sister was mid-protest when I released her and raised my hands toward the dragon, remaining in the open space of his prison, but not so far that I couldn’t jump back behind the protective stone casing of the stairs should he breathe fire.

When. When he breathes fire , I corrected. His chest was expanding alarmingly. He’d exhale fire at any moment.

“Hey,” I snapped at him, not knowing anything better to do to draw his attention and distract him from his attack.

The dragon pinned glassy, accusatory eyes on me—and held his breath.

“I mean you no harm.” I gestured with one hand behind me. “ We mean you no harm, I swear it.”

I couldn’t tell if he understood me. Elowyn theorized that Saffron knew what she said and just pretended he didn’t to suit him. But she hadn’t confirmed it.

I inched my lumoon forward so it would reveal the sincerity in my face. “We want to help you. We want to find a way out of here for all of us.”

The dragon didn’t release the breath he was holding, but a cant of his large head suggested he was listening.

“We’re enemies of the queen too?— ”

He hissed brutally, over and over again, reminding me of a sneakle about to attack, its fur on end, its back arched, teeth bared.

“Maybe don’t mention her,” Larissa whispered as she peeked around the edge of the stairwell. “Be careful, Rush!”

“I promised the dragon before you,” I told the green dragon, “and I promise you too: we’ll find the way to free you all.” I bit my lip in regret as I realized it probably wasn’t the best idea to mention his predecessor when the burnt-orange dragon was almost certainly dead.

The green dragon hissed some more—again and again and fucking again. My nerves were strung tighter than a bow.

“He doesn’t look like he likes you,” Larissa added.

“Not helpful,” I told her out of the corner of my mouth. “And I wouldn’t like me either if all I’d ever known was pain and imprisonment.”

“Fair point.”

“Will you stop with all the commentary? I’m trying to focus here.”

“Oh. Yeah. Sorry.”

I raised my hands higher. After studying the dragon’s dark, pained eyes for several beats, I decided to do what was either extremely stupid or absolutely necessary. Slowly, as if moving too fast were the only danger here, I bowed my head to the dragon.

“By the Ethers,” Larissa wheezed, sounding more panicked than I’d ever heard her. “What are you doing?” she whisper-shouted. “Don’t do that! The dragon’s going to eat you!”

Indeed, the dragon very well might. I’d become stupid and stupider stew for dinner. But it was what I’d witnessed Elowyn do in the throne room. Yes, my heart had nearly given out when I’d seen her expose herself like that before an apex predator—such a senseless risk! But I’d also observed the blue dragon bow her head to my mate, something I would have struggled to believe had I not been there to see it.

“Rush,” Larissa implored. “Please don’t.”

But though my asshole clenched, and my feet seemed seconds from tearing off into the stairwell all on their own, I forced myself to keep my head down. Courage, Rush. If your mate can do it, so can you.

I wasn’t as sure as my pep talk. Elowyn was the most extraordinary fae I’d ever known.

“Rush,” Larissa pled with the start of a sob.

The dragon’s hissing ceased. I waited for several steadying breaths before I looked up at the dragon from under my lashes.

He was studying me, open curiosity seeming to dance across his eyes—a vast improvement over about to char you to death .

My lips already parted to assure the dragon some more—and then presumably find an unlikely, miraculous way out of here for all of us—I snapped them shut as I felt Elowyn … tug on me? My tattoos flared to light as I sensed her so acutely it was as if she stood at my side. Dazed, I blinked, hardly able to keep myself in the he re-and-now, aware that a very dangerous and very lethal creature stooped above me.

Larissa was saying something—but I couldn’t make out what. The dragon was maybe hissing again—or maybe it was the whooshing inside my ears.

Stumbling, I backed toward the stairwell, when a series of thunderclaps slammed into the stone and dirt around us. They shook the ground and knocked me to my ass, where I landed on hard protuberances that could only be the bones of the dead.