Chapter 2
Mara
Pain drags me back to consciousness like a fishhook through flesh.
Not the sharp, clean kind that tells you exactly what’s broken.
This is raging, total, ribs screaming with each shallow breath, left arm bent wrong, something wet and warm trickling down my temple.
The world flips sideways because I am sideways, wedged between what used to be my seat and what once was the helicopter’s windshield.
I force my eyes open. The cabin swims into focus through a haze of smoke and shattered glass.
Metal twisted like someone wadded up a soda can and threw it at a wall.
Beyond the cracked windshield, I see pine branches jutting through the fuselage like spears, one close enough to my face that I can see the needles.
Blood on the instruments. So much blood.
Please don’t let it be mine. Please…
I try to move. Bad idea. My chest erupts with fresh agony, white-hot enough to make my vision swim. Fractured ribs, maybe worse. I’ve broken bones before—skateboarding mishap when I was twelve, TikTok stunt gone wrong last year. But this is different. This is… catastrophic.
Pain. Sweet Jesus, the pain!
I’ve been bitten in half, that’s what’s happened. It’s the only explanation. I’ve been bitten in half by a tiger shark.
Get a grip, Mara, you’re two thousand miles above sea level.
I take in the damage on autopilot. I’m out of my harness and dangling halfway out of the windshield. Left arm pinned beneath debris. My legs are free, but my right ankle throbs with a steady pulse that suggests nothing good.
And my chest. God, my ribs… And my belly. Each breath feels like someone’s driving a knife right through me.
I’ve had broken nails that made me whine for days. This… this is beyond words.
Don’t pass out. Don’t you dare pass out.
“Ember?” My voice comes out wrong. Hoarse, weak. “Luke?”
No answer.
Terror claws up my throat, sharp enough to cut through the pain.
They were right there—Ember beside me, Luke in the pilot’s seat.
The helicopter flipped during impact. I remember that much.
The world spinning, gravity becoming suggestion rather than law, my harness cutting into my chest hard enough to crack something before it came loose as the metal holding it tore free.
But after that?
Nothing.
I crane my neck, trying to see through the thickening smoke. Every movement costs me. My left shoulder grinds against something that feels like bone fragments. I taste bile, swallow it down with effort.
“Ember!” Louder this time. It sets off a coughing fit that makes my ribs feel like they’re trying to saw through my lungs.
Still nothing.
The cabin’s layout is all wrong now. What should be floor is wall. The pilot’s seat hangs at an impossible angle, harness dangling empty. Luke’s not there. Neither is Ember. Her seat’s been ripped clean away, leaving just twisted metal and frayed safety straps.
They got out.
They had to get out.
I’m the one who’s trapped.
Somewhere to my left, I hear groaning metal. The helicopter shifts, slips. My stomach lurches with it. I know what that sound means—the wreckage is moving… fast. Preparing to finish what the crash started.
Move. You have to move.
I try to twist free from the metal that has me trapped.
Pain screams through my chest as I move, and something warm trickles down my ribcage, soaking into my shirt.
I scream without realizing it, then bite back the sound.
Fuck. It hurts! But now’s not the time to lose control. I have to get out of here.
Phone. Where’s my phone?
The pocket where I kept it is empty except for torn fabric. Probably crushed or flung somewhere in the crash. A crazy thought flits through my mind: what a waste of content. The footage would’ve been epic.
God, I’m messed up.
So messed up that when I catch sight of the dark screen glinting in the wreckage beside me, I reach out, curl my fingers around the familiar shape.
Heat builds suddenly, coming from somewhere behind me. Not the residual warmth of impact, but something active. Growing. The chemical smell intensifies, mixing with something sweeter. Fuel.
Oh, no!
Something pops overhead, a sharp, electrical crack that makes my pulse spike. I look up.
Fire.
Small, for now. Dancing across exposed wiring near what’s left of the console. Blue-orange flames licking at melted plastic, feeding on whatever they find. The smoke shifts color—from gray to black, from black to something tinged with orange.
“Help!” I scream it this time, raw and desperate. “Somebody help me!”
The words disappear into smoke and burning rubber. No one’s coming. Luke and Ember are gone—safe, I tell myself, they’re safe—and I’m here, pinned like a lab rat in a trap that I practically walked into.
I agreed to this mission. Volunteered, even, because I thought I could redeem myself for exposing the existence of dragonkind to the human race. Maybe get some good footage of a yeti while I was at it.
Now I’m going to burn alive for content I’ll never get to post.
The irony would be hilarious if I had oxygen to laugh.
Another sound cuts through the crackling behind me. Metallic, ominous. Something giving way under stress and heat. The fuselage shudders, metal groaning like a dying animal.
The fire’s reached something critical.
I know it before I see it, feel it in the sudden surge of heat, the way the air itself seems to ignite. Behind me, through the twisted gap where my seat used to be, orange light blooms into gold. Something makes a muffled whumpf sound that rises to a roar.
This is it.
I close my eyes… because watching myself burn seems like adding insult to fatal injury. My last thought is absurd, mundane: Mom’s going to be pissed I didn’t call more often. That I was too busy chasing conspiracies to be a good daughter. Maybe if I’d tried harder, we could’ve had something more—
Something explodes.
Oh God. Oh God… I’m going to die.
Then everything changes.
Pressure.
Not pain. Not exactly. Something wrapping around me. Heat slides over my skin like silk, impossibly gentle for something that should be peeling flesh from bone. Not burning. Just… present. Aware. The sensation moves across my arms, my face, seeps through my clothes without igniting them.
It starts at my chest, where my ribs are screaming. Warmth seeping through fabric and skin, sinking deep into bone. It doesn’t hurt. It should hurt; it’s heat, fire-heat, the kind that blisters and destroys.
But it doesn’t.
It feels like… safety.
Like being held.
My eyes snap open.
Gold. Everywhere. Streaked with purple.
The fire’s not fire anymore; or it is, but wrong. Beautiful. It moves like liquid light, coiling around me in patterns that seem almost deliberate. Almost intelligent. Where it touches exposed skin, I feel pressure instead of pain. Like being cradled rather than consumed.
I should be screaming. Should be thrashing, fighting the inevitable with every last second of consciousness.
Instead, I just… watch.
Maybe this is what death feels like?
The flames form shapes. Abstract at first, then more defined. Something spreads across my field of vision, massive and terrible and alive. For half a second, I swear I see eyes in the blaze—ancient, knowing, fixed directly on me.
Then the fuselage detonates.
The sound is biblical—a roar that swallows every other sensation. One second, I’m staring at the golden glow. The next, the world explodes into noise and heat and violence.
The light around me surges. It wraps tighter, cocooning me in molten gold. The heat intensifies, but still—still—it doesn’t burn. It presses against my skin like a second body, shielding, protecting.
I see flames through the cocoon. They lick at the golden barrier, hungry and furious, but they can’t penetrate.
Physics stops making sense.
I’m moving. Not falling, not flying, just moving through space as if the explosion’s concussive force has become a current I’m riding. The cocoon carries me, turning what should be violent into something almost smooth.
I catch glimpses through the golden haze: twisted rotor blades, seats ripped from their moorings, trees blackened and burning.
Then cold hits.
The transition is instant, jarring. One moment I’m suspended in molten gold, the next I’m in snow. Actual snow, soft and yielding, cushioning impact that I barely feel. The cocoon lifts me, pulls me through the inferno like I weigh nothing.
The light releases me.
It doesn’t fade gradually—just stops, withdrawing as suddenly as it appeared. One second, I’m wrapped in living fire, then suddenly, I’m lying in a snowbank, staring up at pine branches silhouetted against gray sky.
Steam rises around me. I’m lying on wet earth and slush, watching black smoke pour into the sky, visible for miles.
My body should be destroyed. Crushed chest, broken arm, internal bleeding, burns covering every inch of exposed skin.
But my chest only aches now—a distant, manageable pain. Something impossible just happened. Something that defies every natural law I know. And some unnatural ones too.
My head is reeling. Lights flickering on the edges of my vision.
“What…?” I swallow, trying to work moisture back into my throat. The word is almost inaudible, spoken to no one, to the universe maybe. “What happened…?”
A shadow blots out the light. Dark, looming.
“Shhh…” a voice says, deep and resonant. “You are safe.”
Safe?
I’m safe.
Holy shit!
It’s my last thought before darkness claims me.