The Bargain of Dragons (The Aelfyn Archives #4)
Chapter 1
SERENNA
Serenna sprinted across the Splitfang’s upper plateau, breath ragged as the canyon rim rushed into view. Morning heat shimmered on the horizon, dust scattering beneath her boots.
Legs burning, arms driving, she raced against her shadow.
The wind dragged at her leathers, but she didn’t slow.
If she failed to catch the sky and the canyon’s stone teeth tore her apart, no one could say she’d flinched.
It wasn’t the drop she defied, but her own doubt—daring to trust the fire in her chest.
So she ran, chasing the brink where ground fell away, fleeing the voice still whispering that she didn’t belong in the sky. At the line where the desert split open, Serenna coiled her legs and hurled herself into the abyss.
The moment her boots left the stone, she reached for the flame flickering behind her ribs. It surged to meet her, igniting with the force of becoming.
For a breathless moment she hung suspended. Silence rushed in, the canyon waiting below, her heart spinning in the pause between flight and falling. And in that fragile space where she drifted, the fire in her chest roared.
Wings tore free from her spine, punching through the slits in her armor. Unfurling like sails, their maroon membranes snapped taut in the wind. From the high bend near her shoulders, a claw jutted from each wing with three hooked talons flexing as if to seize the sky.
The canyon opened its jaws as she plunged.
Serenna’s shoulders screamed with strain as wind pummeled her from every side. She twisted, angling her spine, fighting the spin.
Her fall slowed…
Then turned to a rise.
Her wings caught the air, strokes falling into rhythm as flight took hold. Breath returned as the canyon dropped away and the sky bore her upward for the first time.
A week ago, Cinderax’s fire had torn her world asunder. Serenna remembered it with searing clarity—his roar, heat blooming up her spine, that breathless instant the blaze unmade everything she’d been and forged something new.
They’d all stepped willingly into the fire, accepting the dragon’s boon.
Not only her, Fenn, Vesryn, Jassyn, and Lykor, but all those they’d portaled from their haven in the jungle—the magus, Lykor’s warriors, Vesryn’s rangers, and those caught between elf and wraith forms—had entered Asharyn’s refuge and emerged as druids.
While Kaedryn’s people had been druids by blood, Serenna’s had been remade by flame and vow. Cinderax had charged them not only to survive a broken world, but to restore it. To mend what power had fractured and tip the scales back toward balance.
And now the dragon’s gift kindled in her chest, thrumming like a second heartbeat next to her own.
Training to fly in the days since had been swift and merciless.
Her body bore the toll in every aching muscle, every bruised rib.
Cinderax’s boon had changed them all, but hadn’t prepared them for what lay ahead.
Wings alone didn’t make her worthy. She still plummeted more than she flew. And even now, crossing the canyon felt like a victory stolen by luck. Especially when warriors such as Lykor’s wraith and Vesryn’s rangers soared the sky as if born to it.
Serenna’s gaze drifted south, toward the hazed expanse where the Dreadspire Range shimmered in the distance.
Soon, she and Jassyn would lead the druids beyond those peaks and into the Crackling Maw.
With their connection to the earth, they’d bend storms aside and seek the place where a dragon—Skylash—lay chained.
Serenna’s wings gave a betraying twitch, unease lancing through her at the thought.
Still, Kaedryn’s people bowed to her with reverence—devotion she hadn’t earned.
Whispers bloomed like weeds through Asharyn as they called her a child of earth and starlight, as if the magic in her veins made her sacred.
But every day she struggled to fly. And every day they delayed for training, the king’s reach only grew. She didn’t know if her brother had crossed the Cerulean Sea yet with the capital’s fleet, or if ships had already landed on the druids’ shores.
No time remained to squander. Galaeryn’s forces might already be hunting these realms for the elemental dragons. Only by breaking Skylash’s chains could they hope to find the other three—if the Stormstrike, Warden of Lightning herself, remembered where they fell.
As she climbed higher, Serenna didn’t dwell on what came next if Skylash didn’t know.
The world snapped into sharper focus, dragonsight carving clarity from shadow and distance.
A second eyelid slid across her gaze—a druid’s adaptation, delicate enough to preserve vision yet strong enough to blunt the wind’s bite.
Below, the Splitfang Canyon spread in molten splendor—red cliffs streaked with gold, jagged stones rising from the floor, a silver trickle of river glinting in the sun. Above, the sky unraveled in rippling currents made visible through her shaman blood, her connection to the earth.
Wraith dove and flew through the chasm, warping into shadows mid-flight as they slipped between stone spires spearing from the ground. Ahead of them, a squad of Kaedryn’s druids plunged through a broken arch, trails of flame spiraling from their wings as they led training drills.
The canyon itself had become a gauntlet, the air alive with heat, motion, and magic.
Stationed on the cliffs, those with both shaman blood and Essence—the children of earth and starlight—bent the wind into whirling blades, forcing the fliers to veer. Bursts of power shimmered, punches of force knocking wings off course.
Those in the air struck back, channeling their new druid flame, whipping fire toward the cliffs as they dodged and wove through the carved path, every maneuver a race against time.
Breathless and weightless, Serenna soared above. Her wings adjusted by instinct, carrying her with a balance she’d only begun to trust. She’d paid for this flight in bruises and grit—in days of crashing, choking on sand, dragging herself to the healers with shredded pride, every muscle frayed.
But now the air held steady.
A pulse of proximity sparked through the bond. Not Fenn, who she sensed flying with the wraith below, but from higher above.
Vesryn.
Perched on Naru, he circled over the plains as rangers assembled atop their dracovae, opening portals south to scout the outer mountain range of the Crackling Maw.
Between the dracovae wheeling overhead, Serenna glimpsed a flash of obsidian scales and maroon wings. No larger than a fox, Cinderax, the Emberhart hatchling of fire, streaked through a portal, leading the charge as if hope itself burned in his wake.
“Nice wings, Princess,” Vesryn murmured, telepathically coiling around her mind. “Took you long enough to stop eating sand.”
Serenna scoffed, scowling at his silhouette as he coasted lazy circles on Naru. “Must be nice,” she fired back, “lounging up there like a glorified saddle ornament.”
His snort echoed through her mind. “Keep talking like that, you harpy, and I’ll come down there just to silence you properly.”
“As if your wings could ever keep up with your mouth.”
There was a pause, then maddening laughter. “You wouldn’t last five minutes before begging this mouth to never stop.”
Stars, even his thoughts were smug. Heat pricked Serenna’s cheeks, and she nearly climbed the sky to roast him on principle. But the threat of charring Naru’s feathers stopped her.
“I still haven’t forgiven you, by the way,” Vesryn added, too casually, “for knocking me out of the air with that punch of wind and calling it ‘training.’”
“You deserved it.” She’d only done it because he’d singed the tip of her braid, too busy flaunting his new fire to notice where it landed.
“Did I?” His voice curved slyly. “Either way, the view from the ground proved exquisite. Flat on my back, watching you descend like a storm.” He let the words linger before adding, “Next time, if you ask nicely, I’ll stay down longer.”
“Better let Naru keep flying for you,” Serenna snapped, the talons on her wing tips clacking. “It’s safer up there.”
Vesryn’s chuckle softened into words, slipping through her mind like wind through feathers. “I always knew you were meant to claim the sky.”
Serenna’s breath snagged where his warmth curled behind her ribs. For a heartbeat she drifted, unsure whether flight or his affection held her aloft.
Then Naru banked into a portal, and Vesryn vanished with the other rangers.
Tender moments hardly lingered in their world, but the feeling he left behind still burned. She longed to continue rising into the vision he held of her—someone who effortlessly claimed the skies rather than falling into the dunes.
That first attempt had been anything but graceful, sand hardly a merciful landing beneath a ruthless sun, grit scraping her throat as she’d tumbled down the slope. A wretched gust had slammed her sideways the instant her wings caught lift, hurling her spinning to the ground.
Fenn had been with her that time, cackling as he landed beside her—obnoxious when he hauled her up—until she’d snarled, snatched at his power in their shared Well, and blasted him with a volley of force.
Serenna lost count of how many drafts she’d failed to catch after that. But now with the currents steady beneath her wings, her mind slid forward to what came next.
Tomorrow, she and the prince would fly north to scout a Bramblemaw den, once the nesting ground of an earthen dragon. Kaedryn had spoken of Starshards buried in its roots, and Serenna would meet with the druid leader that afternoon to learn more.
With a jolt, she realized the canyon’s far ledge rushed to meet her.
Focus narrowing, Serenna slowed her wingbeats, dipping into a glide. At the last instant she flared the membranes, air ripping taut across the leather. Her boots struck stone and skidded, momentum jolting through her legs, arms flung wide for balance as she sprinted forward.