Chapter 63
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
SOFIA
The soldier lunged at her, screaming in rage, and Sofia jumped back, letting herself slide down Chalia’s scales and to the ground.
She landed, the impact rattling her bones.
The soldier didn’t follow, but Sofia wasn’t paying attention to him anymore.
She was watching Chalia’s eyes as they followed her.
The dragon’s jaw hung open wide as she continued to spit attacks, each just shy of hitting her.
The soldier’s screams on her back grew more frantic with every miss.
Chalia was defying him, but Sofia wasn’t sure how long it would last.
There were soldiers around them fighting, though they had started to pull back, leaving the dragons to finish the dirty work.
Sofia’s breath caught in her throat as she saw Fox moving across the field in her direction, his entire focus on her.
She couldn’t draw her gaze away, her eyes sweeping over his body of their own free will, taking an accounting of every one of his wounds.
She saw the way he moved, stiff and with a slight limp.
His hair was streaked with blood, bruises bloomed across his face, and his clothes were nearly torn from his body.
But he looked more beautiful in that moment than she could fathom.
He was free from the cage. And he was coming to her.
The soldier on Chalia’s back laughed, and Sofia’s attention was drawn once more to him. He grinned at her with something like triumph in his eyes. It took only a second to recognize why he looked so gleeful as Chalia twisted her head, no longer aiming at Sofia, but toward Fox.
Sofia acted before she could form a coherent thought. Time slowed and her mind replayed the thunk of the axe as Mina was murdered. She saw her mother’s body fall as blood sprayed. She saw Ian struggling with his last breath.
She couldn’t do it again, even as she saw Fox’s eyes widen in realization.
He’d asked her not to sacrifice herself. She was fighting for their future together.
She would make it. She had to make it.
A spear of ice shot from Chalia’s throat, sparkling in the red sunset.
She threw her body between the spear and Fox, her eyes meeting Chalia’s even as the impact of the spear sent her stumbling back. The pain didn’t register until she was on her back in the mud and snow, looking at the broken shard embedded in her stomach.
The ground shook beneath them. Chalia roared. A few soldiers fell to their knees, and the dragon writhed in pain. The soldier on her back clung to his reins with white knuckles, barely holding on.
“Sofia.” Fox was suddenly beside her, hands flying to her stomach, and the shard of ice already melting. “Shit, don’t move.”
She barely heard him, reaching down and yanking the ice blade from her body. She only had eyes for Chalia.
The dragon let out a keening wail that reverberated through the clearing, and Sofia felt the bond that had been between them snap back into place. The emptiness that had been aching through her these past few days vanished, and Chalia was there again, like another piece of her soul.
“I missed you,” Sofia said, and she felt Chalia wrap herself in those words.
The sky opened up above them, growling like a dragon, and then fire lit the clouds, blades of it striking the trees nearby. Soldiers screamed, but the dragons went silent, holding their breaths.
Chalia reared back and shot into the sky, even as streaks of fire and light circled her, and then she contorted her body, her jaws opening wide as she snatched the soldier from her back, wrenching him back and forth before throwing him into the trees hundreds of yards below.
Sofia didn’t see his body land, her eyes shining as Chalia spread her wings, a silhouette against the sky.
A charge lit up the air, as if the fire were a part of Chalia and her both, and she closed her eyes for just a moment, letting the power of it wash over her.
She felt a buzzing at the tips of her fingers.
“Sofia,” Fox said, breathless beside her, and she opened her eyes to see him staring at her wound.
She realized in that moment what she had done, tearing the ice blade from herself.
Flor would have had her head for it. But no pain washed over her as she looked down at the tear in her shirt.
The wound wasn’t even bleeding. Her skin had knit back together with only a pink line across her stomach to show where she’d been stabbed.
Her breaths stuttered in her chest, fingers splayed across her stomach. Her throat was dry, and it hurt to swallow.
And she remembered all the times Flor had told her she’d been healing too fast. She remembered every cut and scrape that had disappeared, leaving her wondering if she’d actually been wounded.
And she felt the power moving through her blood like a storm.
Chalia swept down, the air vibrating with her rage, and ice sprayed from her jaws, cascading across the ground and tossing soldiers into the air.
Above it all, Sofia heard Harlow’s roar of fury.
She found him in the chaos, leaping from Eha’s back as the dragon shot into the air and straight at Chalia.
Aurelia followed, and then suddenly the humans were left on the ground, alone.
“Sofia?” Fox’s voice shook as Harlow advanced on them, his sword raised.
“Go make sure the others are okay and help free the other dragons.” Sofia stood, retrieving her sword from the ground. “He’s mine.”
She looked back one last time, meeting Fox’s eyes. “I love you.”
He stepped forward, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her into him. He kissed her hard and fast, a thousand words condensed into the press of their lips against each other. His breath was ragged as he broke the kiss, and she saw the agony in his eyes as he let her step away.
“I love you, too, my captor,” he said, his voice tight. “Don’t get yourself killed.”
“I don’t plan on it.”
She turned, sword held up between her and Harlow. Everything else around them blurred at the edges, and her entire focus was on him. She’d been waiting for this moment for a decade, and she was ready. Only one of them would walk away from this alive.