Chapter 3
Three
The dragon soared upward, the wyrm struggling in its jaws before the dragon crunched through its bones.
The wyrm fell from an enormous distance, landing in the center of the children’s meadow.
It looked as if it had been bitten almost through, its spine broken. It didn’t look so terrifying anymore.
I took a step forward, feeling my legs turn shaky beneath me, as if I were about to collapse. I cupped my hand to my eyes, trying to look up into the clouds and the bright sun, to catch another glimpse of the dragon.
The dragon was circling around, enormous wings outstretched, so beautiful that it hurt to look at, and then it folded its wings and was diving.
The dragon came out of its dive and turned toward me. It came toward me with terrifying speed.
And then it slowed at the last moment, and it was a blur of purple and smoke, and then a man stepped toward me.
He was impossibly tall. Dressed in dark leather clothes that fit him well. Leanly muscled. Bright golden eyes met mine as he moved toward me, his dark hair mussed around a face sharp and shining with otherworldly beauty.
Not a mortal man.
“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice deep and husky. I could’ve sworn that voice rumbled through my bones.
“Maybe,” I said. Like an idiot.
The look he gave me was a quick flash of amusement, an appreciative grin. “You’re brave, then. I was definitely not all right the first time I saw a wyrm.”
His eyes swept over the wound on my shoulder. I glanced at it for the first time, but it was hard to see from my angle. I had a general impression of ripped fabric, then mangled skin, then deep, deep red, and suddenly my legs were weak, and my stomach twisted like I was going to vomit.
“Is anyone else bitten?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Everyone else made it inside.”
“Good job,” he told me. “I’ll get you healed.”
In the distance, there was shouting. Both of us looked, but it was deeper within the forest.
“Those are other wyrms,” he said. “You’ll have to come with me.”
“Oh,” I said numbly.
“Keep the children safe inside!” he called toward the school.
As if there was any chance in hell Miss Hex was unlocking that door.
Now I heard the warning bells—long unused—chiming down in the village. I’d only heard them for drills.
“Ready?” he asked, and before I could say anything—as if his word had been an order, not a question—he slid his arm around my waist.
I let out a surprised gasp as he lifted me up easily, holding me against his chest.
Then he ran forward, across the field, and suddenly, his dragon’s wings opened up. But he was still a man, still holding me, as his wings caught the wind.
We soared into the air, and I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even speak to tell him I was afraid, and what would it matter anyway? Did I want to be back on the ground with the wyrms?
“We’ll take care of these wyrms and get you healed.” He sounded brisk and calm.
The world was a blur of green beneath us. Too far beneath us. I turned my face into his shoulder, pressing myself against the smooth fabric of his tunic. My arms were locked around his throat in a death grip, and I wasn’t even sure when I’d grabbed him back.
“Hey, it’s all right,” he murmured, his voice changing, as if he’d noticed my fear. “You were fearless a moment ago.”
“I was not,” I said into his tunic, the words garbled.
If I looked down, I might see the spires of the pines far below us or the edge of the glittering blue lake. But as long as I melded myself to his shirt—or more embarrassingly, his chest—I could pretend that the only thing below us was a few feet of air.
“You fought off a wyrm without a weapon.”
“My sister was inside the school,” I managed. “I’m not a hero. I just had to. And I had a shovel.”
He was descending. It felt as if the air were rushing past us, and I opened my eyes despite myself.
We were going down into a farmer’s field. A few trees dotted the expanse, but mostly there was trampled wheat. The ripped-open body of a cow was a lump in the distance, red and gleaming, and bile rose in my throat.
There were two fighters on foot and two dragons, immense and beautiful with their rippling jewel-toned scales, holding the line against several advancing wyrms. I looked up, my heart in my throat, and saw the village with its temple spires.
How close were we to the farm, to where Tay was in bed?
It took a few seconds for me to make sense of where I was.
Our farm was on the far side of the village.
“Don’t worry, we’ll get rid of the wyrms,” he said. The clearing was growing larger as we moved down, and he landed us between the fighters, ringed by wyrms. “Any others in the area should be here soon.”
He set me down on my feet. A dragon was blasting fire at the wyrms, and its heat beat painfully against my face even from here. The fighters were shouting.
His bright golden eyes were steady on mine as if nothing mattered as he kept his arm around my waist. “Are you going to fall over if I leave you and kill some wyrms?”
“No,” I whispered, to make sure my voice didn’t betray me. Then, just as he was turning away, I added, “But I could use a weapon.”
He flashed me a grin. “Good girl.”
That devastatingly handsome grin, his inhuman gaze, and the words he said in that deep, rich voice lit me with a sudden sense of warmth. Don’t get distracted, Cara; you’re in rather dire risk of being eaten, and not by the attractive man.
I reached out as he pulled one of his weapons loose, but to my surprise, he took my hand and flattened my fingers out in his, laying the hilt of his long knife on my palm.
“I’d give you my sword, but it’s too big for you to swing.
Don’t worry, I’ll make sure they never get close enough for you to need it. ”
Then he was gone, running toward the wyrms.
My heart clenched with fear. My grip on the knife’s hilt was so tight that my fingers ached.
Two wyrms exploded out of the forest behind me.
“Dair, watch my mortal!” the shifter who’d rescued me shouted. “Maura, take him!”
The most drop-dead gorgeous man I’d ever seen, with black braids pulled into a ponytail—must be Dair—whipped his head around, and his eyes lit as he saw me.
Almost at the same time, a sleek purple dragon launched herself into the air.
She had a wyrm gripped in her powerful jaws that she spat out in two pieces, and Dair leapt over the rolling corpse pieces as she swooped toward him.
He made an inhumanly high jump, and she caught him out of the air, her talons wrapping his body, only to drop him beside me.
“Well, hello,” he purred, right before the twin wyrms reached us. Suddenly, a sword was in his hand.
He moved with inhuman speed, slicing one in half and turning to meet the other. The wyrm slithered across the ground fast, its terrible mouth gaping open at me with what felt like delight—as if it were only focused on swallowing me and not on the dangers.
But before he could attack the wyrm, the purple dragon—Maura—dove. I ducked, feeling a creeping up my spine at having her talons so close, but she was just ripping the wyrm away from me. Dair’s slash opened up its soft underbelly as she yanked it up into the air.
“Rude!” Dair called after her. “I was taking care of it!”
“I don’t mind,” I said shakily.
He grinned at me. “So how do you know Fear?”
His eyes were a striking shade of purple, wide with black slits—dragon’s eyes. Then he blinked, and his pupils looked like mine though his irises were still that startling purple.
“Who?”
“The one who brought you to the dance?” he asked, pointing toward where Fieran fought. His wings were still out, flying and fighting the wyrms. He was the only one who’d half-shifted. “Our leader? Fieran?”
“He rescued me,” I said.
“Ah.” He looked disappointed, but barely. He winked at me as if in apology for his reaction. How did he want Fieran and me to know each other? “Well then, I promise you’ll stay rescued.”
“Stop flirting with my mortal and get back in here!” Fieran shouted, landing lightly on the ground between several wyrms.
Dair backed away from me with a mischievous grin and spread his arms wide in a shrug. “What did you do to him, mortal? I have never seen him so possessive.”
Then he was running, launching himself into battle alongside Fieran.
He made another impossible leap over the gaping maw of a wyrm who was very interested in eating him, and the two of them closed up back to back, fighting together effortlessly—as if being surrounded by wyrms was part of their strategy.
More wyrms were coming—wriggling through the forest, bursting into the clearing, as if they had all been called here. The ground vibrated under my feet with their movement.
A few of the wyrms launched themselves up, flying toward us. The two dragons soared to meet them, fluttering their powerful wings to hold themselves suspended in the air as they aimed blasts of fire at the wyrms.
“Az, on your left!” Fieran shouted in warning.
The other dragon—this one deep black, bigger, with silver horns curling from his head—was moving before Fieran even finished speaking. Several wyrms tried to barrel into him, their mouths open to rip at him, but they couldn’t find purchase on his scales.
Still, they pushed him through the air with the force of their bodies. They were too close for him to breathe fire. I cringed, feeling the shadows of all those enormous bodies crossing over my fragile mortal life.
“Anayla! Get them away from him!” Fieran shouted.
A woman with a scar across her jaw and throat and an elaborate plait of blue hair ran toward where Az was writhing in the air, trying to get the wyrms off him.
Maura was brutally dispatching every wyrm who dared leave the ground.
I ducked away from half of a falling body, and suddenly Fieran was there, lifting me up in the air.
He’d distracted me—and so had the bits of wyrm raining down around us, thanks to Maura—and so I was surprised when I turned back to the battle to see Anayla riding on Asrael’s back, lightly and easily confident as she kicked and slashed at wyrms. They soared toward the sun until I lost sight of them.
Fieran beamed with pride. “Aren’t they incredible?”
He didn’t wait for me to answer before he set me on my feet again, now that there was no more aerial combat or falling bodies.
Anayla and Az swooped back, and Anayla slid from his back as he dipped low to the earth. The two of them moved in tandem so perfectly.
It had been my mother’s decision to keep me here, far away from the dragon shifters. By the time I understood that she would have been expected to take me to the capital and leave me with strangers to train as a shifter, I hadn’t wanted to leave my sick father, our farm, or my precious baby sister.
But as I watched them move so fluidly, so dangerously, with so much care toward each other as they fought, a sudden well of yearning choked me.
It felt just as deep and dark as the longing I felt for my long-lost magic.