Chapter 1
Liz
If I had to fight my way out of a hostage situation, I could.
Probably.
I mean, I might lose an eye or something, but I bet I’d survive.
But if I was being held and tortured for information? I’m pretty sure I’d crack. I like to talk—always have.
So when Azar snatches me out of the air—still straight up can’t believe I can fly—and shows me just how much better he can fly than me, I want to just tell him everything that just happened in the volcano.
One thing keeps me from doing it.
When he first bonded me, what feels like aeons ago, I had almost no leverage at all. He was a dragon, and I was a puny human digging through the trash for a broken umbrella to use as a weapon. I’ve gotten stronger, but so has he.
Now he’s a nearly-invincible dragon who can take not one, but two terrifying forms. He can breathe fire, and he can transform the very earth around us. A few weeks ago, that wouldn’t have worried me in the slightest, because I knew he would never hurt me.
But now?
He’s forgotten me entirely.
And we’re no longer bonded.
He could squash me like a bug and never regret it. And what’s worse, he could do the same thing to my siblings. The secrets hiding in my head are probably the only leverage I have.
I’m not sure why I could enter the volcano and talk to Freya, and I’m definitely not sure why she made me decide the fate of the earth dragons, but she did.
I chose to make them much more powerful, but now they’ll join the other dragons in being unable to lay eggs.
Right now, all the earth dragons are figuring out that they’ve been upgraded, but no one knows it’s my fault. Or, I really hope they don’t.
Because the massive red dragon holding me like a squeaky toy looks angry enough to incinerate me if he had the slightest provocation.
Who are you, Liz?
Who am I?
How does he expect me to answer that question? My full name and address? My occupation? What my hopes and dreams are? That I think I’m in love with him, or I was, back when he could turn into the hottest man I’d ever seen who also made me laugh?
None of that feels. . .appropriate.
Although, what would feel right to me in this circumstance?
I’m currently dangling in mid-air, his mighty, scarlet claws clamped around my midsection.
He’s thankfully giving my wings space, but he’s also smashing my right boob.
It’s not comfortable, and we’re flying low enough that the ground’s racing past at a nauseating speed. I’m a little worried I might puke.
He must be getting impatient, because his claws are tightening. I decide to answer his question with a question of my own. “Do you remember me at all?” I hate how much I’m hoping he’ll recall something—anything at all.
Perhaps, like me, he has no idea what to say. We just keep gliding along, and my stomach is liking it all less and less by the second. I close my eyes tightly, hoping he’ll either land or let me go.
I remember you shooting out from the lava while horned creatures chanted Gullveig. Nothing before that.
“You were with me in the lava—in the same place,” I say. “Though you exited a little before me, apparently.”
Along with Gordon and Rufus.
“I’m so glad they’re alright.” I shift a little, trying to find a more comfortable spot to be pinned inside his massive claws.
Are you in pain?
It doesn’t sound like he really cares, so I just grunt.
He shakes me. How wonderful. Answer my questions, winged human.
“The name is Liz, you stupid red bully, which you know, because you said that earlier.”
Bully?
“And I’m not in pain,” I lie. Because there’s no way I’m about to tell him how much it hurts that he’s right here, after all that we’ve been through, and that he has no idea who I am.
Instead of crying, I lean in to the fury flooding my body.
“How am I supposed to answer questions like ‘who are you?’” I twist around so that I can at least see his massive head where it’s looming above me, clouds whipping past. I ignore how painfully cold the air around us is.
You didn’t answer.
“Because apparently, along with your memory, you lost every scrap of intelligence. I’m clearly a human female, and I used to be bonded to you, and I just shot out of lava with a new set of wings I never had before, and now you’re toting me around like I’m your enemy or my life is some kind of game to you. ”
I realize that I still have one of my swords—it’s in some kind of leather thong that’s helpfully running through the space between my two wings on my back. I reach back and yank it free, waving it back and forth with numb fingers. “Now release me before I’m forced to cut your toe off.”
I expect him to squeeze me tighter, hiss, or roar in my face.
It wouldn’t have shocked me if he flew me straight up toward the sun until I couldn’t breathe.
I did not expect him to simply drop me.
I probably should have been better prepared.
The sword very nearly slips from my fingers when my wings begin pumping furiously. Even flapping fast, I can’t seem to get the angles right, and I’m plummeting so fast that I’m about to collide with the snow-covered earth.
Where I’ll crumple into a pile of Liz goo.
That’s a twist I didn’t see coming. So much for leverage.
I close my eyes, but a split second before I hit, the same unyielding red claws clamp my torso and bank to the right and upward. Azar slams into the side of a building in the process, shearing off chunks of the roof as we shoot back upward.
You’re the worst flier I’ve ever seen.
Seeing as I’ve been doing it for eleven seconds. I can’t seem to breathe, so answering him telepathically is my only option.
You weren’t oriented the right direction. Your wings were pushing you down.
I finally draw in a breath, and then I cough until I can make some kind of sound.
“I wonder how much your first flight sucked, you stupid red bully.” My sword’s still dangling from my hand, my fingers clenched so tightly around the hilt that I’m losing circulation in the hand. “I need to resheathe my sword.”
The one you were going to use to cut off my foot?
“Not your foot—just a toe. You’d barely have noticed.”
The massive, toxic red dragon who seems to hate me starts to laugh. I can tell, because he’s shaking and heat’s puffing around us both as he snorts.
I shiver hard when the cold air rushes back.
Are you cold?
“Is there snow on the ground, big red bully?”
Are you implying that was a stupid question for me to ask? I know only what I’ve researched about humans, and you’re the first winged one I’ve ever seen.
“Me too,” I say. “I’m also the first winged one I’ve ever seen.”
Azar blows a column of fire straight out into the air ahead of us. This entire place is quite cold.
“Totally agree,” I say. “It’s almost offensive how cold it is.”
He veers hard to the right until we reach the ocean, and then he follows the line of the water until mountains spring up to the left. He makes a hard turn, and lands on the top of the closest mountain, dropping me from a few feet.
I drop my sword, roll twice, wrenching my shoulder on a very hard rock, and finally stop without breaking anything. I think. If I’m limping a bit when I walk back toward my sword, well, anyone else would too.
You’re fragile. You should have used your wings to balance when you landed.
“I’ve had wings for less than half an hour,” I say. “When you saw me fly to Selfoss, that was my first-ever flight.”
Selfoss. His beautiful scarlet head tilts, smoke streaming from his nostrils. Iceland?
I can’t help my smile. He may be a bully, but he’s my gorgeous, brilliant bully who studied up on Earth before coming. Before I swiss-cheesed his memory, he was doing pretty well with human stuff. “Yes, we’re in Iceland. That’s why it’s so cold.”
Why are we in Iceland? We were going to Houston.
I sigh. “You know, you could get this information from people you actually know and trust if you just head back to the volcano.” I frown. “Don’t you think that would be a better use of both our time? I doubt you’ll believe anything I tell you anyway.”
We were bonded.
I nod.
Why?
“Are you even going to believe me?” I pick up my sword and clean it on my weird white tunic.
“And for the record, you never told me why you bonded me in the first place. You did it without any explanation—but I think it was a mistake. You didn’t know how to bond a human, and you didn’t know you could in your earth-dragon form. ”
Dragon? His frown hurts my heart. I remember the first time I ever saw it—it’s just the same now, but it’s also totally different. Because it’s not the first time for me. We are not dragons. We’re the blessed.
“And to us humans, you’re dragons.” I carefully flip the sword up and over my shoulders, sliding it into the nifty sheath Freya must have magicked thoughtfully for me before flinging me back out into the world I just jacked up.
Hey, that’s my sword.
“Correction. It was your sword. Its partner was stuck in Hyperion the last time I saw it, but you gave them to me before you decided to forget everything, and you can’t have them back.”
Since I have no recollection of giving them to you, I won’t be taking them back.
“Thank goodness for that.”
I can’t take back what was never yours. You may either return my stolen property, or I’ll forcibly take it.
I’m going to ignore that until he actually tries.
I glance around at the sun and decide that if I head down the way we came up and follow the line of the beach, I should be able to reach Selfoss in, say, an hour of hard flying with my new wings.
I jog and then leap off a ridge, my wings pumping hard, and this time, they’re turned the right way.
That’s probably why it actually works.
Sure, I’m slow compared to Azar’s coasting speed, but I’m just learning. I’m proud of myself. I won’t get stranded on the tops of mountains, on the tops of skyscrapers, or in cells with high windows—not anymore. I’ve become more capable of defending myself in a world with changing rules.