Chapter 19
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
ZAN
I’ve never seen Lily this scared, not when we were in danger with the sandworms mere hours ago, and not when I found her hanging upside down by the foot, facing off against a giant angry bird and a strange but gentler giant bird companion.
She wasn’t happy then, not by any means, nor was she happy when we were hiking together and simply surviving when we were first dropped here.
Nor was she pleased with the original trials that the original production team had set up for this.
But whatever she saw in those reanimated corpses has terrified her.
“They’re dead,” I tell her. “They can’t hurt you. They’re not real.”
“They can hurt me. They can,” she says, shivering into my body, her face buried in the crook of my neck.
I don’t like that she is so scared.
“Why do you fear the dead?”
It is without a doubt in my mind that those things that are traveling toward us are corpses. They smell long dead and strange, some sort of refrigeration coursing through their bodies. It is disturbing, that much is sure, but terrifying in the way that Lily is right now? Absolutely not.
“They would likely fall apart with one swing of my talons,” I tell her, trying to soothe her.
She makes a gagging sound, and it doesn’t take me long to realize I’ve made it worse.
“Alright, well their so-called human ladder is growing taller. I’m going to jump now.”
“You’re going to hurt yourself,” she says, but it’s half-hearted, she wants away from those things as fast as she can, and I am willing to do anything to make sure that happens.
I pace the length of the strange wall, gauging the distance as best I can, then run, trying to get up to speed, before I jump.
Without my wing fully functioning, I manage to get in one good flap but nearly fall short.
I manage to rock back to my toes and the ball of my foot before I can stagger backward.
We’ve left the churning mass of dead bodies behind us, but there’s still the last wall.
“It worked,” I tell her, my voice hoarse.
She’s still shaking against me, and it makes me so angry that I wish I could rage and burn this whole world down and get her to safety.
Burning the world… it sparks an idea in my mind, a dangerous idea, one that could ruin me, but if it gets Lily safe, then it’s worth it.
A last resort, to be certain.
“Nine more to go,” I tell her, ignoring the pain in my wing. The way it’s racing up through the bone, through my shoulder, down my back, the way that I’m certain that it is not right. Not at all.
I’ve suffered breaks before. I’ve suffered damage to my wings. But I have a sinking feeling that whatever was in that worm saliva has done something to me.
Perhaps the last resort for me is the only resort for Lily’s safety. At this point, I may as well be slowing her down. Dead weight.
“Don’t do it,” she says, whispering the words so quiet that I barely hear them.
I don’t listen to her.
I run again, not taking as much time to judge the distance, then leap as hard as I can.
I’ve tucked my sore wing in, buffeting just the one, and we manage to make it.
But this time, I land forward, my momentum carrying us so that Lily almost hits her head on the metal wall.
I’ve cradled her, protecting her, and absorbed the damage, but the entire structure teeters dangerously.
“I should have anchored it to the floor,” she says, her words wobbling. “They know it’s dangerous not to have them secured.”
She shakes her head.
“Eight left.”
“We can’t do this,” she says. “I don’t want you getting hurt. We’re ahead of the zombies. I think they’re still at the first—”
Her voice breaks off.
The zombies are still at the first wall, but they’re creating a chain of their bodies, making a bridge of sorts to cross from one to the next.
“This isn’t going to work,” Lily says. “We have to try to outrun them, and you’re just going to hurt your wing worse.”
She swallows whatever fear that she’s felt, her gaze clear, and she nods once. “Put me down.”
“No. I have a faster way,” I tell her. “We’ll jump to the floor and run. You understand if I tell you not to look back—don’t look back.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Lily says. “And I will not agree to it.”
She has that stubborn set to her jaw that I’ve come to adore so much. Hooking my fingers underneath her chin, I tilt her head up, planting a claiming kiss on her mouth.
She opens for me so sweetly, so perfectly, and I regret all the time we wasted before this moment when we could have been together like this.
Finally, I pull apart, pull her into my arms tight as can be even though she squirms, trying to get away, pounding her little fists on my chest, and I jump.
My wing flares out. The other broken beyond even being able to extend it, flapping uselessly on my side.
But we make it down. It’s not far. Not for a Draegon, not for a military Draegon, and least of all for me—the best of them all.
Lily looks up at me with a mixture of surprise, gratitude, and most of all, rage. It burns in her eyes, and I know that will keep her safe more than anything.
I press another quick kiss against her perfect mouth, and she pushes my face away with a snarl of pure distress.
“Good,” I tell her. “Keep that anger.”
She’ll need it soon, and it will keep her safe more than anything else. More than I can.
“Run,” she growls at me.
And with that, she takes off, her bare feet pounding against the ground.
I run too, as fast as I can, but at some point during our free fall when we landed, I hurt my ankle.
But still, I can keep pace with a small human female.
A quick look behind me tells me that our opponents have not yet caught on to our new strategy.
Lily slips, staggering and almost falling to the floor. I catch her around the waist, ignoring her cries of disagreement as she tries to get me to put her back down.
“I know you’re hurt,” she says. “You’re gonna make it worse.”
“You almost fell,” I tell her.
The pain in my wing is severe, traveling down my spine now to my hip, where it seems to fester, burning. I can already tell the motion is making it worse, my own heartbeat likely speeding up whatever poison was in the worm saliva.
I’m not nearly as fast as I should be, not nearly as fast as I’d like to be, and by the time I toss Lily onto the dais, the creatures she calls zombies are lurching toward us steadily, spittle foaming from their gaping maws.
“Are zombies common on your planet?” I ask, heaving myself onto the platform.
“No, they’re completely fictional,” she says. “But to be clear, aliens were supposed to be fictional, too. We all thought they were until the Roth showed up.”
She gives me a strange, sad look, and I hate it. I want to wipe it off her face.
The Roth coming to Earth was an unspeakable act of violence. We’ve made peace with them now, the old emperor deposed by one of his long-lost sons, but the damage is done, and Lily’s people and planet have suffered.
“Don’t look at me like you feel sorry for me,” she says, tossing her short black mane of hair. “We need to get this flat-pack made before the zombies eat us.”
A short huff of laughter follows that as she rips into the strange paper box, revealing a set of instructions that she glances at before throwing aside.
“Do you need help?” I ask her.
“Keep the zombies off me.”
I nod. I can do that.
“And whatever you do,” she says, not looking up from the box, pulling piece after piece out, “don’t let them bite you.”
I don’t tell her it won’t matter now if they bite me. Whatever toxin they have is not nearly as deadly as the one already in my system.
She needs to finish the construction so that she can move on with or without me, and I must keep her safe, because these things—she’s terrified of them, and I will not let them touch her.
Instead, I tilt my head, cracking my neck, rolling my shoulders, stretching.
I’ll give it a go as long as I can before I have to use the final option in my arsenal.
“Can I have a kiss for luck?” I ask her, the words slightly stilted.
It might be the last time I touch her, but I’m not going to take it when it’s so much sweeter when she capitulates.
“One kiss for luck, Romeo, and then we gotta get going.”
A fighter to the end, I think to myself, cradling her face in my hands. So tiny, so delicate compared to me. So absolutely perfect, filling every hole in my heart.
“I love you,” I tell her.
And then I kiss her, and I put my whole self into it.
She pushes me off her, eyes slightly glazed, the scent of her heat once again overtaking her fear.
If that is her last memory of me, at least it will be a good one.
“Go kill some zombies, you silly Draegon,” she says, slapping my arm. “Don’t get bitten. Don’t hurt yourself,” she adds, crouching down next to the pieces of the object, picking up a shiny, strange-looking, and seemingly useless tool.
I jump off the dais, then walk to what will certainly be my last battle.
For her, I would do it a million times.