Chapter 36
the drake banks left, soaring in formation with its bloom as Brielle clings to the reins. The isles emerge below them like green jewels, a storm of clouds whipping up around them.
‘This is Mira’s work. A storm is coming,’ she calls to the others as she strains her eyes through the spelled goggles, assessing the terrain below.
The armada are all dark shapes and blots, the Ennor fleet engaging them far fewer in number.
The ruling-council forces have not yet breached the wards and landed upon the isle’s shores.
She releases a ragged breath. She is not too late.
It seemed to take an age for them to train, to learn to ride drakeback.
Even now, Dreska and Inesh ride behind two trueborn riders from the Spines.
In truth, Brielle found herself not wanting to leave.
For her, Lowri is family and Ennor is home, but in the Spines she found another home, somewhere to which she would want to return, again and again.
A piece of her heart is now held somewhere in the ice and thick furs and wooden walls of the coven house.
But the coven had deemed them ready, and together they answered the call from the Fortunate Isles.
They flew in formation, ready to defend a people ruled by leaders who want to control, not protect – just as they’d been, the peoples of the Spines, before they rebelled, before new rulers were elected.
A sharp whistle from the witch on her right, Skanni, signals the bloom to loosen formation and Brielle looks around, feeling the unease in the drake she rides.
Wyvern. A swarm of them, their batlike bodies hovering on the air currents flowing over the armada, poised to strike.
An air current most likely created by a witch.
She glances at the vessels below, sweeping her gaze over the ships, and discerns a faint shimmer, then a matching one in the sea.
A rival coven, then, doing the ruling council’s bidding.
Here to help wipe out an island and bring the Fortunate Isles to heel.
She grimaces, the thought of her own kind turning on humans like this leaves bile coating the back of her throat.
There is one person she is sure will be part of this armada: Captain Spencer Leggan.
If she sees him, if they’re on opposing sides today, it will not end well for him – at her hand, or at an islander’s.
He is on the list of those long past redemption, along with the ruling council themselves, and Captain Renshaw.
The drake beneath suddenly releases a low-pitched call and the bloom to either side of Brielle takes it up. She frowns, first checking on Dreska and Inesh, on drakes with other witches behind her, then she sees a creature soaring up from Ennor. Another drake. With no rider.
Brielle gasps in awe as the drake answers the call, bronze scales glinting, her body almost feline, sleek in the way that the male drakes are not. She slinks up into the clouds, opening her wings wide and sunlight glances off them, casting a web of rainbows out over the land and sea.
‘What a beauty …’ Brielle breathes. Then realisation hits her.
It’s Tanith. The librarian of Ennor, giving up her human form, all her human memories, to fight the wyvern.
To save Ennor. A lump forms in Brielle’s throat as she pats her drake’s side.
Such sacrifice, such majesty. She narrows her gaze on the wyvern moving in to harry Tanith, and crouches low over her drake’s back.
She won’t allow these wyvern to kill another she cares about.
A shrill whistle pierces the air and Brielle’s heart thumps with the roar of her drake.
Then her drake beats its wings, lifting them out of the air current and into a smooth, practised dive, straight for the swarm of wyvern.
Brielle leans into the drake’s scales, gripping the reins in one fist, freeing a blade with the other.
The other drakes dive all around her, the air whistling against their scales and she eyes a wyvern with claws stretched for Tanith’s side, readying to rake her beautiful bronze scales.
Whispering a witch word to guide her hand, with a practised motion she flips the blade and throws it, striking the eye of the wyvern.
It shrieks, claws retracted, batting back and forth into other wyvern, sowing chaos and panic in its swarm, before falling for the hungry sea.
Brielle smirks in satisfaction as her drake veers round the swarm and she flicks blade after blade, drawing them from her sash, piercing the tightknit horde.
Tanith herself roars, the fierce bellow of a female finding her voice.
She extends her claws, gripping a wyvern and tossing it into another, blood painting the clouds.
She wickers as another dives for her, but with one flick of her long, scaled tail, the wyvern is beaten from the sky, falling in a daze into the sea beneath.
Soon they are scattered, allowing Tanith to soar upwards.
Brielle’s drake rises to greet her. Tanith inclines her head, gaze sweeping to meet the drake—
But with a shriek a wyvern swoops in, claws digging into her side. Tanith’s cry of pain shakes the skies as more wyvern latch on to her, moving in for the kill.
‘No!’ Brielle cries, but it’s too late. The swarm tear into Tanith, shredding her wings before swooping free.
She beats the ruined remains of her wings once, twice, trying to gain height before the horde fly in for the kill.
But she can no longer fly. Brielle watches, heart in her throat as her drake unleashes a mournful call.
Tanith calls back, a bleat of desperation and of fear.
She tries once more to beat her wings against the air, to gain purchase on the air currents, but to no avail. She spirals down in a freefall.
Right over the Isle of Ennor.