Chapter 32
Icrashed to the floor, my knees smarting on the hardwood. Panic filled my mind as I scrambled to my feet, legs tangling in my sheet as voices hissed at me through the darkness.
“Get up.”
Vanya was sitting upright in bed, hands pressed to her mouth, in the faint moonlight streaming through the window.
Luther and another third year were standing over me, barking orders at me.
Holding my arm with a firm grip, Luther dragged me from the room, barefoot.
As my mind accepted the fact that my family wasn’t in danger and I was not actually being attacked, anger set in.
A boy was hustling me along, half shoving me, half leading me.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked as we spilled into the hall. Scarlett stood there, arms crossed, a satisfied grin on her face.
“You’re out,” Luther said. “We found out who you are. And we aren’t letting a toxic little bottomdweller spread your rot here. Should have done this ages ago.”
A few faces popped from doorways to watch the miserable procession.
“But I’m bonded,” I grunted, stumbling along beside Luther until we reached the stairs.
“We’ll see about that,” Scarlett said.
“You first,” Luther said, shoving me in the back.
“Where are we going?” I demanded, whirling on him at the bottom of the stairs.
He spun my shoulder toward the far wall and pointed at the exit. “Out.”
The other boy, whose name I didn’t know, opened the door and preceded me into the cool night. The stones of the courtyard were cold under my feet, and the air held the smell of rain.
I didn’t have time to wonder or to ask where they were taking me. A massive dragon swooped down from above, his claws clicking as he landed. Luther ran toward the dragon, climbed in the saddle, and the two quickly lifted into the air once more.
Gaping at them, I wasn’t prepared for what happened next.
The dragon stretched out his back legs, talons splayed, and encircled my arms with his claws. I screamed as my feet lifted off the ground. The talons weren’t piercing my skin, but as they accepted my full weight, the dragon’s grip tightened, and my skin pinched beneath my shirt.
In seconds, my feet dangled over the school’s turreted rooftop. I thought I might vomit. If I fell, I’d surely die.
But the dragon did not let go. We soared over the city, my legs trailing through the fog that had settled over the buildings. Yellow streetlamps cast a sickly hue over the gray streets like an infection deep in the city’s veins.
Fighting the urge to pass out from fear, I tried to orient myself to where we were going.
West. There was the spire of the second-largest cathedral.
There was the wide avenue marking Birch Street.
The library. I got lost after that, not recognizing anything.
We’d moved into the industrial complex, warehouse after warehouse passing below.
Even at this hour, smoke plumed the air, making me cough.
Luther’s dragon stopped and hovered, lowering to the ground with a few flaps of his mighty wings. My feet crunched on cobblestones, then I dropped to my knees as the dragon released me and flew off into the night.
My body collapsed when I tried to catch my weight with my hands, all the blood gone from my arms after the brief, uncomfortable flight. I lay there on the frigid pavement, cheek against the stone, breaths coming in ragged, sawing gasps.
Slowly, I picked myself up. My skirt stuck faintly to the fog-dampened street. To my left was a warehouse and to my right were smokestacks like spires of the new religion of industry. A few lights burned in the windows of the brick building adjacent to the warehouse.
I headed for those lights, not sure where else to go.
Someone in there could help me. I had to make it back before classes began.
My bare feet grew cold from the stones though the night wasn’t below freezing—the puddles between cobblestones were still liquid.
The air held enough moisture to feel heavy, trapping in the stench from the smokestacks.
Luther’s face swam before me, and I thought only of punching him when I returned to school.
There was no way Headmaster Vaughan would allow this if he knew about it.
As I approached the brick building, I noted the letters painted on the door.
Kipton Steel. The Kiptons were some of the richest people in all of Cavaria, but they were not from noble blood, originally, and thus had no part in the realm of dragon riding.
In fact, the Kiptons were adamant that they would replace dragon riding with their trains, leveling society once and for all.
I paused outside the door. Of course Luther would drop me here. The Kiptons especially hated dragon riders, and Bennett had mentioned that one of his friends in the Serpents was a Kipton. Maybe if I told them who my brother was, these people would help me?
But Bennett being in a gang with a Kipton didn’t mean whoever was here late at night would want to help me.
They would see the school’s crest on my sweater, and that would be that.
I tapped my mouth with my fist, fighting off fears of what the night employees might do if they found me. Best not to alert them to my presence.
Sprinting from the door, I angled back in the general direction we’d come from.
I had until morning to return, but I didn’t actually know what time it was.
I had no coin purse on me, no money at all, but if I could hop on a train headed across town, I’d make it.
I’d never ridden on top like the vagabonds, but I’d do it tonight, for Myth.
“Oy, you there!” a deep voice shouted behind me, followed by a door clanking shut.
Fear blossomed in my chest and I ran faster. Footsteps followed.
Every scream I’d ever heard in the city, every warning I’d heard from Mama, from Bennett, from my own worst nightmares, echoed in my head as I ran for my life. My knives were sitting, useless, in my dorm room. I had nothing but my fists.
Up ahead, a pile of bricks lay at the base of a ruined wall in an abandoned part of a building scarred by flame. I snatched one up as I ran and glanced behind me.
The man was still there, but walking. Not in any hurry, which scared me more than his haste.
I bolted down the narrowing street and stopped short as three shadowy figures stepped into the road ahead.
Two wore bowler hats, and one was bald. The faint glint of pistol barrels hung at their sides. One man tapped a machete against his palm.
“Saints,” I hissed.
“Boys,” shouted the man in the middle. “They’re giving us a little welcome gift.”
Vomit churned in my throat, but I kept it back. I raised the brick.
“Oh, not a gift, then.” The man chuckled.
They were only a few steps away now. My whole body was shaking. The three men paused within throwing distance, but one brick couldn’t take out all three of them. The man behind me was stalling a little ways back, his own weapon drawn. He wasn’t with the other three, then.
This was a meeting. This had nothing to do with me, and I needed to keep it that way. Now I wished I’d listened more when Bennett boasted of his gang and their power.
Reeking ash. I lifted my brick.
The man with the gun pointed at me elbowed the man beside him. “Look, a fighter. I like her.”
The man in the middle squinted at my uniform. “You’re a fancy one. A student at the king’s school.”
I swallowed. Cardan Lott was founded by a queen, technically, years ago, but to bottomsiders, the royalty-named schools were all the same: above them.
The man whispered something I couldn’t hear. Then the man with the pistol aimed at my head jerked the gun sideways.
“Come with me. You can leave that brick.”
I adjusted my grip, aiming for his head.
“Look, sister, I—”
A dark shape blasted from between the smokestacks, shooting directly between me and the three men. They stumbled backward and a gun went off.
I screamed. The man behind me sprinted for the empty building.
Then the shape returned and spread his wings.
“Myth!”
A figure leaped from his back, landing with a roll a few steps away.
Blond hair whipped from his face as he hopped to his feet in a liquid movement, charging at the men.
Startled by Myth’s appearance, the men didn’t redirect their course fast enough.
Rush punched the nearest one so hard the man spun and fell flat on his face.
The others were scrambling now, backing away from my dragon.
Myth settled on the stones beside me, claws clicking and nostrils flaring. His eyes were bright and furious, and tongues of firesparks lit the darkness in little whorls around us.
Relief threatened to collapse my bones, but I feared the pistols that could still harm us.
“This one has flame!” someone shouted, and at once the men scattered, charging back into the shadows.
Another gunshot split the night, but their aim was poor and Myth didn’t flinch. He marched in a circle around me, snorting bright orange sparks with each breath. Rush, satisfied the men were running, turned to me, chest heaving.
“Are you hurt?”
I shook my head.
Rush nodded, then we darted toward Myth, who was flattening himself to the pavement, wings extended.
I set a foot carefully on his wing where I hoped it wouldn’t hurt him, and I jumped, reaching for one of the spikes on his neck.
Rush grabbed my foot, helping me up. I lay against him, just to the side of the spikes on his spine, terrified I wouldn’t be able to hang on without a saddle.
“How did you ride here without a saddle?” I asked as Rush climbed up in a similar fashion, his muscles straining as he held his weight with his hands.
He grunted. “I didn’t really think about it.
I was waiting for you, and Myth started going berserk.
I knew something was wrong. I just jumped on.
” He glanced at the man he’d knocked out, then dropped back to the ground.
Without a word, he ripped the man’s jacket off and hurled it over Myth’s back.
I caught it, draping it over Myth’s spikes.
When I swung my leg over, it was uncomfortable but not impossible to bear.
Rush climbed back up, reaching around me to grab Myth’s neck spikes, pinning me to Myth’s back. His pulse pounded like typewriter keys against my back.
“Hold on,” he said.
Myth ran a few steps and leaped into the air.
My fingers tightened, and I clutched him with all my might, feet pressed against his sides.
Rush’s body held me in place, like the saddle straps meant to keep us from plummeting to our deaths.
But if his grip slipped or his hands gave out once we rose above the buildings, we’d both be dead.
When the factories shrank beneath us, my stomach tried to climb into my throat.
“I won’t let you fall,” Rush whispered.
A strange calm threaded through my veins as Myth’s wings beat steadily.
“Thank you. A million times thank you,” I said to them both.
In that moment, I didn’t care that four gang members in Treston now knew I had a dragon with his flame.
I didn’t care that my dragon, the one the duke had been hunting for months, had shown himself tonight, and in connection to students at Cardan Lott.
Some of the men might have even recognized Rush.
In that moment, all that mattered was that they’d come for me.
Myth had come for me.
Rush had come for me.
A dragon wasn’t supposed to be able to feel emotions from a bond across an entire city. Everything I’d read about dragon bonds said they were intense only when dragon and rider were in close proximity, when they were together.
Myth’s steadily beating wings, along with the almost catatonic levels of calm he was pumping into my head, nearly put me to sleep as the dawn turned a pale gray, then a faint yellow.
We landed in the rotunda. Rush helped me down, his hands encircling my ribs as he lowered me gently to the stone floor.
“Thank you,” I said, tucking my hair behind my ears.
“What happened?” he asked, slipping his hands into his pockets.
“Scarlett found one of your notes. Then Luther showed up with a gun.”
He raked his hair from his face and cursed. “I’ll bet they checked my room too. Saints. I’ll tell them I was at Jackie’s—no. I’ll tell them I was at my father’s.” He squared his shoulders with mine. “You go ahead. I’ll put Myth up. Class starts in a few minutes.”
“You’ll be late.”
He shrugged and started walking backward toward Myth’s den. “Want to bet on that?”
Minutes later, my bare feet smarted as I hurried across the gravel from the lair to the back entrance of the school.
A small shout of angry relief fell from my lips as I rose to the terrace where Scarlett and her friends had hurled dung at me. The gothic exterior of Cardan Lott, pointed and fierce and lovely, like the fangs of a dragon, wasn’t the haven of knowledge I’d once thought.
They thought they could get rid of me, but it wasn’t going to be that easy.