Chapter 18 #2
When he craned his neck to meet my lips, I didn’t fight. He was soft and tender, and I wished to recoil. I prayed he couldn’t taste my desire or my intention. His fingers traced down my hip, and through the linen, I felt the outline of metal—the key.
I parted my lips for him in one last attempt to fully distract him—and he took the bait. I shoved my fingers into his, hooking the ring and pulling it free. At the same time, I pushed him—hard. He crashed into the table with wide eyes and open lips.
I took far too much joy in slamming that door and locking it with trembling hands. But the click was hollow. My feet could hardly keep up with my heart as I darted through the path.
The deafening banging was instantaneous.
Every hair on my body rose as the wind picked up around me.
The roads were only illuminated by whatever moonlight traced through the barren canopy, with the temperature steadily dropping.
Another loud bang echoed through the forest. If there were any birds, they would have fled.
The third crash was so intense that the bulbous trees dropped their white-packed powder as I ran past and into the stables. He must have broken free. I had minutes, or seconds to make it into the air before he’d inevitably pin and choke the life from me.
I thought my heart couldn’t beat faster as I ran to Mourn and rapidly unhooked his collar. The mechanism was simple and required no lock. It was meant to cage someone without the use of hands. It came free and clattered to the floor, along with the chains.
“We need to fly,” I crooned, my voice trembling as I tried to guide the beast. But he practically bowled me over as he rushed out the open doors and into the violent flurries.
I should have expected him to be thrilled to touch the sky. But I narrowly hooked my arms around his neck before he beat his leathery wings. The vicious whoosh eclipsed the muffled screams that approached.
Within seconds, he separated from the ground. When he took to the air, I screamed, fighting slipping from his back. At the last second, my fingers caught beneath his scales. They separated from the skin but held firm as Mourn roared in pain.
My heart thundered as I half-dangled and maneuvered until both legs were around him. The wind whipped and cut through my threadbare cloak. The thin fabric did nothing to stop the onslaught of cold.
And yet, I couldn’t bother to care. The sun was gone, somewhere below the horizon, and we were above it.
Gliding above the trees, the city—everything.
Even the highest spire didn’t come close to where we soared.
I could’ve reached out with a hand and grazed a cloud, if I dared to release the beast, which I didn’t.
But we passed silver, ice-encrusted towers, gliding closer to the immense wood that stretched across the horizon, and my heart thundered once more.
We were going the wrong direction, and quickly.
I needed to fly toward the gorge. I began tugging at his neck and shouting down, but the wind and beats drowned out my cries and protests. When I tugged, he merely shook his great head and ignored me. He couldn’t hear me, or didn’t care.
A song, a song.
I began a melody praising the gorgeousness of the gorge. Yet he ignored it until I mentioned the great braziers that lit the wall. That’s when the surrounding air heated. It steamed. But he didn’t change direction.
Shit.
In my utter despair, I grabbed his head and tried to shift him.
Anything to make him swing around! But it did nothing.
He did not change course. With every beat of his wings, the chill and hopelessness set into me.
The dragons weren’t messengers of the gods, but bringers of doom. The messenger of my death.
I wrapped myself around his neck and whispered, “Please turn around.” My voice shook, either from the cold or the terror. I wasn’t certain which, but it mattered not, because he didn’t care, and my despondence only grew, spreading down to my trembling fingers.
I blinked and gave myself a few silent tears. The pounding in my head worsened, and a vile metallic taste filled my mouth. I was going to die.
When I dared to look at the river, ice plunged deep into my veins. The shadow of a dragon emerged from the tree line. With every great wingbeat, it grew closer. Not the shadow of a dragonling, but a full-grown dragon. Massive. I already knew who trailed us.
Aelen had come for me.
Had he come to bring me death? I pressed Mourn forward—in the wrong direction.
But then he shook beneath me, bucking against the wind. His beats grew further apart, and he dipped every so slightly. Strain resonated in his beady red eyes and I gripped him harder. He was running out of strength fast.
Their muscles aren’t strong enough.
Aelen was right. Mourn lost altitude at an alarming rate, and we rocked from side to side as we fell from the inky sky. “Get down,” I shouted at him.
But he didn’t listen. He held fast, gripping the drafts until what I imagined would be both of our last breaths.
Shit, shit, shit.
Aelen’s dragon was fast on our rear, but it wasn’t quick enough. He couldn’t save me.
The world twisted around us, and the ground came ever closer. Fear gripped me and pumped through my veins. What element could help me? Fire, ice, wind? My mind flicked across every idea, but I only found panic in my search.
Panic, anguish, and visions of a broken bridge I wish I could’ve walked across.
If only I had a bridge.
Tears streamed down my frozen cheeks, and I pretended it was from the unyielding cold. Mourn lost another gallop of altitude, and we dropped. Every wing beat was weaker than the last as we bobbed through the air. And I sang.
Of the broken bridge, and the life it could have given me.
Of the many what-ifs that I had played back in my mind.
But we dropped again, and his wings beat their last. I shoved my fingers deep into Mourn’s flesh, slipping them beneath his scales.
He cried, his roar raking across the wind, but my fingers glowed, and the steady pulse behind my chest poured from my fingertips into Mourn.
In an instant, his claws shone gold, like he bounded on the very sun itself. As his feet danced, I realized it wasn’t his feet that were glowing—it was the air beneath them. Small blocks of pure light formed as he galloped further.
A bridge of hope.
But it was to be short-lived—Numen met us in the air, so colossal his claws just about grazed the treetops. He slid along us, and a single wingbeat almost threw us to the ground, but Mourn flapped a few times to readjust himself on my luminescent bridge.
I peered at the horizon, enjoying what could be my last sight. The great moons hung above us, nearly within reaching distance. Despite the bitter cold and bottomless fear, we were surrounded by a sea of infinite ink and the whisper of midnight.
Dread spread across my skin, but what a glorious vision to die to.
All along the castle walls were peeling and faded paintings of Eltide, but nothing could have prepared me for this. And as I searched the distance, a glimmer quickly came into view. I pressed Mourn forward, though I wasn’t sure he listened.
A giant crystal, or a misshapen shard of glass that shot up from the forest. The closer we edged, the chillier it got, until flurries surrounded us and every exhale produced a thick, peerless mist that swallowed me.
As expected, Numen swung closer. His beats were far more staggered than Mourn’s, and five times more powerful. They edged toward us until I could make out Aelen—screaming. The wind’s roar cast away everything he yelled.
But the magical barrier beneath us flashed with every jog, and the distant crystal came close enough to see. It wasn’t a shard or glass—it was solid ice. Encased inside were great spires, and the remnants of a city, one that looked identical to Eltidian.
My song ceased, as I gasped in a breath and tried to grapple with the great reality before me. A city. There were other cities. How had I never stopped to think about the great world around me, about its vastness? And when I found it… It was dead.
Were there people encased inside, too? Locked in ice for eternity? I racked my brain at just how long this eternal winter had lasted. But I came up short.
Mourn flapped his great wings—the light beneath him was gone, and as much as I tried I couldn’t make the lumen slip from my fingers again. I tried and screamed, but found the well behind my breastbone empty. I couldn’t find the lumen to keep us upright.
Mourn rocked. He beat as hard as he could, but soon we dipped from Aelen’s side. Numen hung above as we spiraled out of control. As the trees rushed closer, I swear I heard his screams.
Just as fast as we soared into the sky, we fell from it.
He tried to right himself but could not. My fingers dug deep into his scales as we drifted toward the ever-approaching ground. The barren tree line grew closer, barreling toward us at terrifying speed.
My heart drummed, a lone elegy in my blisteringly painful ears. We dropped. A great hickory came into view, and to save himself, he turned—enough to save him, but not me. My arms were wrenched from his scales. I slipped and then tumbled through the sky.
The ground grew, the great white bastard. I rolled and slipped, grappling for the purchase that never came.
Then the snowbank swallowed me and ate me with its great big darkness. There was pain. So much pain. And then there was quiet.