Kingdom of the Seven Rivers (Fallen Angels #2)

1

Burn Bright, Little Star

Melody

A volley of violet, bristling magic formed into vicious arrows spears for us, cutting through the sky.

“This is a coordinated attack. They’ve been waiting!” Blair behind me shouts over the wind.

I pivot on Aris’s scaly back, following her gaze upward, and gasp. My heart crawls into my throat.

Holy fucking hell.

Suddenly, the airspace above us is filled with a squadron of Nefarians .

Warriors. Elves with demonic wings with a vicious claw at the apex and long, deadly, black claws instead of fingernails; their blood running rich with power.

There are dozens and dozens of them. I can feel the evil thrum of their magic even from here.

Some of them carry long, black swords in their hands.

Nefarian steel, able to cut through any form of magic, siblings to the sword I carry strapped down my own back.

I watch with horror as their leader, a man with long, black hair throws me a vicious grin as he stretches out his left hand, fisting the air before opening his palm. Another lilac arrow springs from it, the other Nefarians following suit. They unleash their arrows with a flip of their wrists.

“Dive! Now!” The order is barely past my lips when Aris plunges us into a descent so rapid it feels like freefall.

Too slow. We’re still too slow!

The arrows strike Aris, piercing even his hard, azure-blue dragon scales, burying deep into his flesh.

I scream, but the rush rips my voice from me, and Aris wounds a living echo in my own body. I don’t have time to suck down air before they unleash another volley at him. They strike him everywhere, those fucking, hellish arrows. Piercing his legs. His neck. Shredding his wings.

He roars in agony, and I clench my teeth so hard I fear I might break them as I feel his pain over the bond.

We fall, and I slip off his back, plummeting through the air toward the hungry ocean beneath. My world is spinning so fast I can’t keep track, my life rushing by in a blur.

Above me more Nefarian magic flickers like lightning, the demonic-winged warriors blotting out the sky like a black cloud. A few are tucking their wings in tight, swords drawn, diving for us as if having us crushed against the surface of the ocean isn’t enough.

The world whips past me in a rush of dawn as gravity keeps claiming us. Where the hells is Aris? And Blair?

It all happened so damn fast. One moment, we were flying over the clouds, toward freedom, after we broke through Caryan’s wards that shield his kingdom. The next, those arrows were cutting through the air, their archers coming out of nowhere.

“Where are you?” I mentally shout down our bond, ice-cold panic seizing my heart as the ocean rises to meet us. Fear. Fear—for him, for all of us—doesn’t let me breathe. It doesn’t matter that I’m gonna be dead in a few seconds anyway.

But a furious screech fills the sky and my lungs, like the precious oxygen they need, before familiar, blue, leathery wings appear over me once more, moments before a giant claw catches me midair, holding me in a cage as his massive wings beat the air into submission.

He’s alive. I could cry with relief.

“Aris, how?” His wings were shredded a moment ago. I can still feel his bone-grinding pain, alive like a wildfire in me, throbbing along our bond. But his injuries…I can no longer see them, his wings whole again.

“That is why I am a shapeshifting demon, not merely a dragon,” he growls in my mind with more wrath than I ever thought possible.

“Block me out, so you will not feel my pain, little one,” he roars as he rears his massive, four-horned head, his bluish scales catching the first light of the sun as he climbs the horizon.

“I won’t. We’re in this together,” I retort, gritting my teeth against it. Gods, it hurts.

He snorts mentally. “Stubborn as ever.”

“Where’s Blair?”

“I caught the witch too—but only because of your ridiculous human heart. Say the word and I open my claw and we forget about her once and for all.”

“Don’t you dare! You almost sound like Caryan, you know.” I peer through his talons to find Blair snarling and caged in Aris’s other foot, teeth bared at everyone and no one.

“No, Aris—wait, what are you doing?” I ask, my voice coming high-pitched down our bond as I find him flying right toward the Nefarians.

“I’m going to remind them,” he snarls , “that I am not just some winged mount. I am death.”

I stare as his massive jaw opens, his tongue curls, and then—

Blue, demonic fire turns the dawning day into something I’ve never seen before. The group of Nefarians who chased us alight like a torch before they plummet from the sky. I feel sick as I watch their charcoaled bodies rushing past, as we fly right through that blast of unbearable heat.

Screams and smoke tear the air like ghosts.

“This is war, little one. Get used to it,” Aris says in my mind, gently, his tone so at odds with his teeth, ripping into the crowd of those Nefarians who’ve stayed back and avoided the blast, and are now franticly dispersing like a swarm of bees.

Blood sprays through the air, coating my face, running in rivulets down Aris’s snout as he snatches them out of the air, one by one by one.

Wingbeats vie with screams and smashed bones as Aris soars above them.

They desperately try to get away from his teeth or the deadly swish of his morning-star tail.

“They’re gathering!” I scream, terror in every fiber of my body.

But all I can do is watch from the cage I’m trapped in as those remaining warriors regroup, more deadly, lilac magic dancing at their fingertips.

There are just so many. And I feel Aris’s strength leaking out of him with every powerful heartbeat.

There’s going to be another attack. We should have fled.

Aris could have outflown them. But not now. It’s too late.

“Of course, there are too many, little one,” is all Aris says.

My heart stops. Shatters as I realize that he knew all along that we could never take them on alone. That the counterstrike was only meant to stall them as he spears for a mighty forest that stretches along the coast, its trees so dark they look black against the dawning gray of day.

“No. No way. You’re not going to fucking drop me,” I say, because I know exactly what his plan is. He fucking lied to me!

“I’m wounded. I can’t keep up this huge form much longer. I hate to say it, but stick to the witch in this forest, little one. She’s your only chance of survival.”

“No! Aris, no! Please! Don’t do this to me!” I thrash and scream, desperately throwing my hands against his claws as he dives.

With a last caress against my mind, his voice smooth as polished glass, he says, “ Goodbye, my little star. Burn bright. Brighter than the deepest night.”

With that, his claw opens and I fall again.

As I sail down, I see him flinging out his wings wide and then spinning around midair, heading back over the sea, right at those Nefarians. I hear Blair screaming, catching a blur of silver hair in my periphery while she falls.

Aris!

NO! NO! NO! I claw at the bond within me—desperately trying to rip him back.

To get him to obey and come back to me. The bond that’s just been forged but might as well have been there all along I feel that attached to him already.

It’s right next to the black vortex that is the dark bond I share with Caryan.

But nothing happens, no matter how much willpower I throw into it.

All I can feel is his remaining strength flickering out like a candle in the wind before he blocks me out entirely.

Where there was our connection, I meet a solid, deep-blue wall of ice.

“No! Aris! Aris!” I scream and scream, inwardly hitting the wall, my imaginary claws trying to cut through the ice.

But in vain. I slide off every time. “Don’t do that, Aris please!

” I beg and cry, tears streaming down my cheeks, my heart ripping apart as our bond cracks and fissures and I know he’s dying.

I know it deep in my soul. I sense his remaining strength fading.

The blast of blue fire has eaten up the rest of it.

The last thing I see is him erupting in blue flames before I slam into the canopy and my own world turns dark.