Chapter 59
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
SOFIA
Sofia watched the chaos unfold from the tree she’d been tucked in since morning.
She didn’t expect the fuse they lit to explode so quickly, but perhaps that was stupid of her to assume.
The wolfshifters and humans had been too easy to push over the edge.
A few dropped words exchanged between Javi and Juan in the darkness where the shifters could hear.
A stolen bag of grain and some dried meat.
The two groups were aching for a battle, and they simply laid the weapons at their feet.
She hated sitting and waiting. Her blood was racing for a fight.
She’d watched Fox, half-dazed and caked in dried blood and wished she were a shifter so she could sweep down there and tell him they were coming.
Instead, she watched as arrows descended around the cage, a few landing inside, missing him by inches.
She nearly leaped out of the tree as a wolfshifter crashed into the cage and clawed at him.
Her knuckles were white from gripping the branch beside her, holding herself back.
Sofia realized at the same time as the shifters that the arrows were tipped with iron.
They howled as the arrows pierced their hearts, dropping dead instantly.
She almost felt sorry for them—almost had empathy as they screamed and growled, furious at the betrayal of the men they’d helped over the past few weeks.
But she also remembered the smell of their rancid breath when they’d first kidnapped her.
She remembered the ones they’d run into in the field—where they didn’t belong—claiming the land as their own.
She remembered Lumi’s screams and their blood.
So, she watched as dozens of wolfshifters died and the rest fled when they realized they were outnumbered.
Harlow didn’t step out from the shadows until the last wolfshifter had disappeared, leaving behind the scattered bodies of their comrades.
There were plenty of human soldiers dead among the rest, though not enough for Sofia’s comfort.
She refused to feel guilty at the thought.
They’d chosen their side, and each dead soldier was one less person in the way of getting to Fox and Chalia.
She’d seen her dragon only briefly when she’d first arrived the evening before.
The rest of the resistance had been scattered throughout the forest for the past few days, laying the pieces of their plan, but Sofia had delayed coming.
She was afraid. Afraid of seeing Fox locked away and afraid of seeing Chalia’s deadened eyes.
But when she’d arrived, she couldn’t stop herself from moving toward the east where she knew they were keeping the dragons chained in their own separate clearing, growing in number with every attack.
She hadn’t gotten close, too afraid of being scented by the creatures, but she needn’t have worried.
They lay, chained and barely moving among the stumps of recently felled trees.
Soldiers watched over them, but even they were bored.
Any fight these dragons possessed had been drained from them fully, leaving behind empty husks.
Sofia had made eye contact with Chalia, chained along the outer border, but the dragon hadn’t noticed her.
She had blinked milky white eyes as flies buzzed around her face.
She saw the angry red cuts along Chalia’s neck, in the shape of a “J”.
Acid rose in Sofia’s throat and she swallowed it back down, sour on her tongue.
She ran away then, not stopping until she was far enough to vomit in peace.
Seeing Fox in his cage hadn’t been much easier, though at least she still saw a glimmer of light in his eyes.
“Jobin,” Sofia sent, reaching for the dragon who was just a half-mile south. “Tell Micael and the others we’re ready to go. The wolfshifters are gone, and the camp is going to be recovering. It’s time.”
She waited, perched in the tree until she heard the first flap of the dragons’ wings and the horn blew from somewhere in the camp.
The battle had begun.
Despite the strain in her muscles screaming at her to move, Sofia stayed in the tree, waiting.
The beat of the dragons’ wings above her counted the seconds in rhythm with her heart.
She only had a dagger with her, too afraid of climbing the tree with a sword clanging at her waist. The plan now depended on her own patience.
She watched as the dragons swept through the sky and dove into the camp, sprays of ice, snow, and water destroying tents and sending soldiers running.
The only problem with attacking at this moment was that every soldier already had their weapons out, but they had decided the surprise and chaos of the previous battle outweighed the risk.
Jobin spun, Samuel clinging tightly to his back as the dragon snatched two soldiers from the ground and threw them across the sky.
It took less time than Sofia had wanted for the Dereyans’ dragons to rise above the tree line and shoot toward the camp.
Sofia watched, breath held, only half-listening for Javi to come with her weapons.
She could see Eha, Harlow scowling from her flanks, and then she saw Chalia, a soldier she vaguely recognized mounted on her back, holding on to the collar wrapped around her neck.
Her scales were red and raw beneath the coarse rope, and Sofia clenched her jaw.
Even subdued by the magic, the soldiers felt the need to bind them.
From her distance, she couldn’t see the bones around the soldiers’ necks, but she knew they must be somewhere on their persons.
Even as she watched, one shifter jumped from the back of the dragon they were on, flipping into the air.
A moment later, a fox was running up the spine of the large blue dragon and snapping at the soldier mounted there.
The man screamed and swung his arms, trying to dislodge the fox, but he moved too quickly and the dragon jerked as the rope pulled taut against its neck.
The soldier went flying into the air just as the fox shifted back into a small human.
One hand clung to the back of the blue dragon and the other held a white bone aloft in triumph.
The shifter pulled the dragon above the chaos of the battle as best he could.
“Yes!” Sofia said. It wasn’t a loud exclamation, but there were dozens of soldiers with their swords and bows out just a few yards away.
“Hey!” one soldier yelled, and she looked down to see him squinting into the trees.
She saw the moment he saw her, his eyes widened and mouth opened to yell. An arrow shot from a tree a few yards away, punching through his throat and dropping him. But the damage was done.
“Ground attack!” another soldier screamed as he swiveled around, bow taut, looking for the enemy. Sofia didn’t move a muscle. A dagger would be useless against these men.
An arrow shot from a tree on the other side of her, but the soldier was ready, pulling his right arm up to block with his small shield.
Less than a second later, he’d let loose his own arrow, and Sofia heard the hiss as it hit its target.
Whoever was in the tree didn’t fall though, and she hoped it had been a shallow wound.
A sharp whistle broke the silence of the forest at her back, and Sofia smiled. It was her time to shine.
She dropped from the tree in three leaps, staying low once she was on the forest floor. A few arrows whistled toward her, puncturing the ground a few feet away.
Javi whistled again, and she found him hiding behind a thick tree. She grabbed the sword he was holding out to her. It was heavy in her grip, and she breathed—once, twice—trying to remember everything Fox had taught her.
“Ready?” Javi asked.
“Let’s go,” she said.
She and Javi dashed forward, running from one tree to the next. The shapeshifters in the canopy covered them with a volley of arrows, though it was nothing compared to what the soldiers sent back.
By the time they’d made it to the border of the camp, they were left facing a thin line of soldiers.
Bodies already littered the ground from the archers and the dragons, but there were more soldiers left than Sofia would have preferred.
Her heart was in her throat as a sword came swinging down toward her.
Her body reacted before her mind, and she brought her sword up to block and spun to the side.
The energy of the man’s swing went to her left, sliding off her blade and allowing her to step back and return the blow.
He blocked before she could make contact with his leather-clad side, and the clash of their blades vibrated up her arm.
She clenched her jaw as she fought, ignoring the burning of her arms as she kept her sword raised.
She focused on her feet, stepping side to side and staying far enough away from the soldier that he had to move toward her.
At last, the roar of a dragon above drew his eyes.
It was a split second, but it was the opportunity she had been waiting for.
She stepped and swung. The blade of her sword cut through his side, in the crease between his leather vest and the tassets that protected his hips and thighs, exactly where Fox had shown her.
He dropped with a cry, and she kicked his sword away before she moved onward.
Around her, the battlefield was in complete disarray, soldiers swinging swords as rebels swarmed the camp and shapeshifters slipped in and out of their human forms. And above them the dragons still fought and magic fizzled in the air.
Sofia caught a flash of Javi’s hair to her right as he spun around a soldier.
Through the fighting mass, she could just see the bars of Fox’s cage, gleaming in the evening light.
She thought she could just see him, hands clinging to the bars as if he might bend them by his will alone.
She tucked her sword to her side, bent her head, and ran.
She dodged left and right, between fighting pairs, nearly tripping over her own feet as she ducked under a swinging sword.
The battlefield was a muddy mess. She was so close and yet so far as Fox looked up, his eyes meeting her own.
He looked so nakedly scared. She felt his fear shudder through her.
He was trapped, helpless until she could get to him.
A roar from above had her stumbling, the ground beneath her quaking with the dragon’s call, and she looked up to see pale blue scales shooting down toward her.
Ice landed directly in front of her, shards shattering against the ground.
She screamed, covering her face as splinters sliced across her exposed skin.
Only after the air stilled did she look up. Chalia’s fogged eyes gazed at her from a couple feet away.
“Chief Commander Harlow said you’d be stupid enough to come back for them. I didn’t believe him.” The soldier sitting on Chalia’s back pulled at the rope, and she saw it bite into her neck. The dragon wheezed, stumbling back a step as the soldier looked about to lose his seat. “Stop moving!”
“Stop pulling at the rope, you dumbass.”
“I’m not the one that just walked straight into a trap.”
“You don’t have me yet.”
She reached out, pressing her thoughts against Chalia’s, trying to get her to hear her—to notice her.
But there was nothing there beyond a buzzing sense of something.
It was like reaching into the air and feeling the vague sense of heat or coolness with nothing tangible to hold on to.
The familiarity of Chalia’s mind, so intrinsically intertwined with her own, was gone.
She swallowed back the scream that threatened to slip from her. Hot tears burned at the corners of her eyes.
Wind whistled, and Eha slowly lowered to stand beside Chalia, Harlow looking as if he’d already won the war.
“Like rats when it floods, you come scrambling out of the shadows.” His sneer was icy. “You had to know it was a trap, yet out you still came.”
“We don’t abandon our own,” Sofia said.
“Under different circumstances, I might respect whatever you and Fox have between you. If it wasn’t extremely inconvenient.”
“I’m sorry to inconvenience you. I should have stayed conveniently locked in your office reading and writing exactly what you wanted me to. Never thinking for myself or questioning my place.”
“You are just proof that your kind can’t handle learning. I should have taken your hand and thrown you out on the streets the day I caught you.”
“I am proof that the Dragonborn had every ability to think and reason until the king took that right from us. I am proof that you are no better than us—that every bit of your superiority is built on oppression, control, and fear.”
“I am the last line of defense for our kingdom between civilization and chaos. Your people, with their animal shifters and dragon gods will destroy Suvi in your fight for power. You want freedom? From what? The food and water the kingdom gives you? From the protection the wall provides?”
“Control isn’t protection.”
“Enough,” he snapped. “There is no reasoning with animals.”
He raised his hand, and before Sofia could understand the signal, a blast of icy water threw her back, slamming her into the muddy ground.
She looked up to see Chalia staring at her, jaw opened wide.
The wind danced across her wet skin like sharpened blades, and she felt something break inside of her.
She was going to have to fight Chalia, and she didn’t know if she had the courage.