Chapter 11 Frostbite & Firelight
Chapter eleven
Frostbite I’ll have to beat the manners back into you until you remember your place.”
My hand flew to my mouth as I gasped in horror. Mikhail was a monster! If this was how his family treated him, no wonder Yuri had run away!
What if the reason Yuri had suddenly pulled away at the diner was because he had spotted his brother? What if he had been trying to spare me from Mikhail’s vitriol? From his violence?
He had seemed tense, but insisted on walking me home. But why? Why had Mikhail waited until Yuri was alone?
A series of thuds echoed through the late night air as Mikhail pummeled Yuri. I saw the glint of claws before blood sprayed onto the cobblestones.
His scales! Why weren’t his scales protecting him? Had he forgotten to form them even after that lecture he gave me?
“Your punches have gotten way weaker, Mikhail. They used to hurt a lot more than this,” Yuri wheezed, half-straightening to glare up at him. “Or maybe you’re just frightened a scary fire drake might hear and come looking?”
“Shut your filthy mouth!” Mikkhail slapped Yuri so hard that he staggered. Claw marks scored his cheek. “Clearly, you haven’t learned your lesson yet.”
Mikhail stepped back and transformed into his dragon form. Massive white wings unfurled from his back, and he grew in size until he was nearly as large as the surrounding houses. His tail was tipped with a bulbous club, and his scales glittered like ice under the light of the moon.
Yuri transformed as well. Where his brother was built like a tank, Yuri had the lean build of a lithe fighter. There was an elegant tilt to his neck, and to the wickedly curved dagger shape of his tail.
The two white dragons launched into the air, the downdraft from their wings causing a windstorm below.
Yuri roared his defiance as Mikhail swung his tail at him and missed.
Claws and fangs gleamed in the moonlight as the battle raged, and I saw a handful of windows in the houses below light up—including the one near which I was hiding.
When Mrs. Morelli, Clove’s mother and the local hedgewitch, scurried out of her house in her bathrobe, she gaped up at the two battling dragons. I couldn’t blame her—I’d never seen two dragons fighting so fiercely before, either.
A roar of pain ripped through the air, followed by another. I bit my lip as I watched. Yuri was not winning. Crimson streaked his flanks, his wings. But the marks he’d managed to leave on Mikhail hardly seemed to slow him down, if he noticed them at all.
At this rate, I was afraid that Mikhail might actually kill him.
Even if I didn’t agree with his methods, Yuri had tried to protect me, in his own way. And here his older brother, the person who was supposed to protect him, was tearing into Yuri instead.
The way he treated Yuri made my blood boil with righteous fury. It drowned out my hesitation and my fear in a fireball of certainty. I was not about to sit back and watch the one person who could cool me down and light me up at the same time, ancient enemy or not, fall.
“Mrs. Morelli!” I stood up from my hiding place and walked to her wrought-iron fence. “I need your help!”
“Mei-Mei, dearie, what on earth is going on?” She clutched her purple robe closed against the fierce and sudden gales eddying around us.
“Yuri’s being attacked by his older brother for running away from home,” I explained.
She tutted disapprovingly. “I can see why he’d want to leave!”
“I have a plan to chase the brother away, but I can’t do it without your help. I need you to cast a spell on me!”
The hedgewitch’s violet eyes lit up with mischief. “I would be delighted! What did you have in mind?”
It was the work of only a minute for her to cast the spell on me, but in that time, dark patches of frostbite began to bloom on the scales of both dragons. I took a steeling breath, and for once, let my fiery fury loose.
I transformed into a ruby dragon with a flaming spine and wings that rained sparks down below. With a mighty roar, I launched into the sky, and seven mirror copies of me did the same, thanks to the spell.
Both ice dragons whipped their heads around, shock widening their glacial eyes.
Before they could react, my chest scales glowed like magma, and I exhaled a powerful stream of flame directly at Mikhail’s chest. He couldn’t defend against all eight streams of fire at once, which quickly shattered the flimsy ice wall he threw up defensively.
The larger dragon screeched in pain as the fire licked at his scales, blackening them.
Mikhail flailed wildly, striking Yuri in the process.
Yuri’s eyes rolled back in his head and he plummeted like a stone.
Without a second thought, I dove after him, catching him in my claws and flaring my wings wide to slow our descent.
The heat from my claws charred his scales where I held him, and I grunted with the effort of keeping another dragon aloft.
Thanks to a sudden updraft from Mrs. Morelli, I was able to set him safely down on the cobblestones. Immediately, I released him, wincing at the twin marks of frostbite and the burns that marred his pearlescent scales.
Returning my gaze to the skies, I could see a smoking Mikhail glaring down at me and Yuri. But his angry eyes flicked between us and the various fire drake clones that hovered in between us, and he balked.
He wouldn’t think twice about ganging up on a lone dragon, but he was too much of a coward to take on what he thought was an entire fleet of fire drakes. With an angry, pained roar, he turned tail and flew away, leaving a trail of snowflakes and ash in his wake.