Chapter 33
thirty-three
A dragon.
An actual dragon with wings and claws and fangs and spikes, its skin black, its eyes wide and dark, its throat orange.
With fire.
The three of us ducked down and moved back on instinct, farther away from the eggs, and I wasn’t sure if I screamed or not, but if I did nobody heard it from the sound of the actual dragon landing on the ground in the middle of that small opening.
Just when I thought I’d seen it all, I was looking at a beast at least ten feet tall, with a large tail that seemed to go on forever, tipped with spikes as big as my entire hand.
It all happened so fast.
Rune shouted, “Run!” and we turned to do just that. The three of us made for the tree line, except the dragon must have jumped or something because the ground shook like a fucking earthquake just hit it, and the three of us lost our balance at the same time.
We fell. I wasn’t sure how I turned and how I got back up to my feet, how I came to find myself staring at the monstrous creature with large, bat-like wings on its back, but the image would be imprinted in my mind forever.
Rune was between us, shadows spilling out of his hands while the throat of the dragon turned an even more intense orange, like burning coal in a fucking fireplace.
Then its long jaws opened, and I saw all its teeth clearly.
They were bigger than my fingers, and the roar that came out of it shook the entire world.
The ground groaned. The shadows coming out of Rune’s hands began to spin around the dragon like a vortex, taking him out of our view.
It must have been a scene from a horror movie because no way was this real.
No way was that creature, surrounded by burned and skeletal trees, engulfed by a tornado of shadows, standing there possibly not ten feet away from us.
Then Rune turned and our eyes locked before he shouted again, “Go!”
My body finally reacted. The magic in me roared just like the dragon, and I hardly heard it from the sound of the shadows spinning—a storm.
It sounded like I was in the middle of the storm, and I wasn’t the only one.
The Unseelie heir who’d landed on the ground beside me was there, moving back slowly, his eyes on the shadows.
I wanted to talk to him, to tell him to move, get back, stay safe, but don’t run, except it still felt like I was inside a movie, and things were happening as suddenly as if I really were.
The fire came seemingly out of nowhere, broke the shadows Rune had put around the dragon, and shot forward within a second.
I didn’t think—I moved. It was all instinctual because I couldn’t think straight to make a conscious decision to be brave.
I just knew that that fire was coming right toward where the Unseelie heir was standing, and I needed to stop it before we were all fucking doomed.
Ice slipped out of my hands so hard it tried to throw me back.
But I was standing between the fire and that man now somehow, and I held my ground and gritted my teeth, screamed at the top of my lungs, I thought, and released every bit of energy I had in me, without any clear goal in mind other than to stop the fire.
That’s all that mattered—stop the fire that could kill the heir, and could kill Rune, and could easily kill me as well. Just stop it so we could run.
The magic came. My arms, my hands, my throat was numb seconds in, but the energy released from me, and there was no more orange light behind my closed lids, but it was silver now. Almost white.
For a second there, I thought I made it. I thought the fire was gone and that I could move back, run together with the heir and Rune, get the hell away from here fast, but no.
Because the fire was still there, and it still broke through the bright light of my magic and hit me straight in the chest.
I was flying.
I was falling.
I hit the ground so hard every single bone in my body should have broken, yet somehow, I was still conscious. Somehow, it was almost like I’d been out of my own body while I’d fallen, and now I was trying to blink my eyes, to see clearly, to find where Rune was. Where the heir was.
Where the fucking dragon that was roaring so loudly was headed.
Back.
The dragon was moving back toward the eggs, and someone grabbed me by the arms and pulled me to my feet in one movement. Rune’s face came in front of mine for just a split second, and then I was upside down again, and I was moving. He’d hauled me over his fucking shoulder, and he was running.
I must have fallen in and out of consciousness while he did, because what felt like just a few seconds later to me, we’d stopped, and suddenly I was perfectly alert.
“Put me down, Rune, put me down,” I said because I needed to see him. See where we were, where the dragon was—again.
My feet hit the ground. My legs held me. My eyes worked.
I was…okay.
Holy fuck, I was okay, and I could have burst out in laughter had I not looked down at myself to find that there was a hole in the brown shirt I had on. The edges of the sleeves were burned. My skin was covered in grime.
The fire had really hit me, had thrown me back. Dragonfire—and yet my skin didn’t look or feel burned.
“Wildcat.”
A hand around my chin, and my head moved up, my eyes locked on Rune’s. We were both breathing heavily, and his hair was a mess, but there was no blood on him. No scorched clothes. He was okay, too.
“What the fuck just happened?”
The heir.
I moved back, stepped to Rune’s side to find that the Unseelie fae was there, indeed, his clothes as torn as before, but he didn’t look burned. He didn’t look wounded in any way.
Instead, he looked panicked as hell as he pointed his finger at me, and his eyes moved from mine to Rune’s every other second.
“Why—why would you get in front of dragonfire for me? What the fuck, woman?” His finger shook at Rune’s face. “Who are you people?!”
“Calm down,” Rune said, and I closed my eyes for a second, willed myself to breathe deeply, because we were still in the forest, apparently, but the dragon wasn’t here. The trees here didn’t look burned that I noticed. The silence was a dead giveaway, too. No shaking ground and no roars.
“Answer me—who are you?” the man demanded, his voice thicker, rougher.
“This is Nilah Dune. I’m Rune Kalygorn, and we’re not here to hurt you.”
Laughter.
It was so sudden that I was tempted to believe I’d made it up, but no. The guy was laughing, and the sound of it was silky smooth, too. Which threw me off.
“Oh, I see how it is. The bastard king himself—and the Sunny who broke me out is the Seelie King, you said?” More laughter. “What’s next? You’re gonna tell me she’s the Ice Queen now?”
It was like he’d shoved a hand between my ribs and pulled my heart right out of me.
Rune and I exchanged a look. The laughter faded.
“I was promised that everything would make sense when he broke me out of prison, as soon as we got away.” A step closer, and orange light pulsated on the palms of his hands. “I see no sense in anything right now. Where is the Sunny?” he demanded.
And that just pissed me the hell off.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?! He left you,” I spit.
“Are you serious right now? He fired a beacon and left you for that dragon to eat, and you’re demanding answers from us?
” I was moving, too, going closer, and Rune followed, and the heir moved back—but I didn’t stop until he was right in front of me, and he looked confused as all hell.
“I almost died trying to save your life, you prick. The least you can do is not laugh at us and believe us when we tell you—we do not want to hurt you!”
It wasn’t his fault, I knew that. It was everything, all of the uncertainty and guilt and fear I was carrying, and to hear him laughing right after I literally was attacked by a dragon was the last straw.
My thoughts were raging, my hands were glowing, and he saw just fine.
The way he looked down at my hand as I dug my index finger into his chest said that he knew exactly what was going on.
The man wasn’t afraid, though. Not when he stepped back and said, “Then what do you want from me?”
I was prepared to answer. I was prepared to tell him the entire truth exactly as it was, even though I was half convinced that he was going to laugh at my face again, and then run or something. Or attack.
But I never got the chance to say another word before Rune grabbed me by the arm and pulled me back, a split second before a ball of fucking fire fell onto the ground right where we had been a second ago.
The roaring and the shaking of the ground followed.
I was thrown back for the second time, and this time I did feel it when I hit something hard with the back of my head.
I did feel it when all my lights almost went off but didn’t, and I was moving again, magic rushing through my veins, burning me with its cold.
It took me a few blinks to understand what was happening, to see that Rune had a shield of shadows in front of him as he tried to block the fire spilling from the dragon’s mouth.
I couldn’t see much, only its large tail full of spikes, and its right wing just as it spread out all the way, and then the fire stopped.
The shadows retreated. The dragon flew in the air and roared.
Rune and the heir were running toward me, shouting something, screaming, but the sound of that roar was still in my ears, and I couldn’t hear them.
What I did see was the way Rune was waving for me to move back, and so I did.
I turned and I started running just as they reached me.
I wasn’t even sure how my feet were touching the ground, but the dragon was over us, flying close to the tips of the trees, and the fire was just there, burning in his throat.
I saw it each time I looked up. It was right there one second, and then it rained upon us from above.
My body came to a halt because I knew, even in the state I was in, that there was no running away from that fire. I could never be faster than a dragon while he was flying over me, and so magic it was.
My hands glowed silver, and the magic spilled out of me just like it had before.
Frostfire, I thought, because it hurt so much my arms turned numb seconds in again, and in my mind all I saw was a shield.
I wanted to create a layer of protection, in whichever form, maybe a dome, or maybe light like Vair had done to protect me from King Helem—it didn’t matter.
A shield that would keep that fire away from me, from us.
The heat reached me. My hands were over my head and silver light was mixed in with shadows like they were threads on a piece of fabric.
Yes, the heat did reach us, but not the fire. Because Rune was beside me, and he, too, had his hands up while his shadows spilled over us to keep the fire away.
Magic spread all around us within seconds, silver and darkness, beautiful to look at, but the fire coming through from the other side pressed against it, made it weak.
I cried out as the magic poured out of me, and I had no clue how long I could keep this up.
“Move!” Rune shouted, and at first, I thought he was talking to me, but no.
On my right was the man, the Unseelie heir who was just scrambling to get to his feet because he’d been on the ground. He was standing up, crouched over halfway, looking up at the dome of magic still holding around us.
“Help us!” I thought I shouted, but the sound of fire and roars swallowed my voice.
Even so, the guy must have read the words on my lips because he raised his hands and they had a fire of their own in them. He looked terrified when he said, “I’m not strong enough!”
His voice, too, was swallowed by the roars, but we read the words as he said them just fine. And Rune shouted, “I will need one minute! Just one minute!”
He stood right beside me, so his shout I heard. And the heir understood.
Orange magic like I’d never seen before spilled out of his hands and onto the silver and shadows that were wrapped around us still.
It was beautiful, I thought, but there were dots in my vision spreading faster now, and when the shadows retreated from the silver light, it was too much light.
White and orange, and the heat coming from the fire that dragon kept spitting at us from outside was trapped underneath the magic, too, and all that energy leaving me, all the pain taking its place was getting too much.
Fucking hell, I couldn’t see. All that light around me, and I couldn’t see.
My life flashed right by me in a blink. In the center of my mind was Rune’s face, my sister and my dad, my best friend.
They were right there, the memories as fresh as if I was reliving each one.
Was it over? Because I couldn’t tell anymore—whether it was hot, or whether I could breathe; whether there was light behind my closed lids, or if the darkness had already claimed me.
A hand on my shoulder.
“Let go.”
I’d know Rune’s voice anywhere, even on the brink of death. I’d trust Rune in whatever hell we were trapped under, too.
So, I let go.