SERENNA #2
Skyshatter tore free of his sibling, clipping the other dragon across the snout with his tail before wheeling back toward Serenna. His tongue flicked through the fresh gap between his teeth, pupils contracting to slits at the sight of the fang.
“Give that back!”
The words hissed through her mind, sharper than the impressions he usually managed. He circled beyond her reach, gaze fixed on the fang in her palm.
Serenna curled her fingers around it. “What, so you can choke on it?”
“It’s mine.”
“You left it in my armor.”
Skyshatter tucked his wings and arrowed toward her.
Serenna dove and folded close to the wall of the nearest island, stone rushing past until a gap opened between the lower chains. She peeled away and shot through it.
Lightning struck the cliff she’d left behind, blowing a crater into the rock.
Skyshatter pursued on long wings that had once looked absurd on a hatchling. Now they ate through the distance separating them.
A shadow swept over Serenna.
She pitched left as Skyshatter’s sibling dropped onto him from above while another surged up from below. Membranes collided with a crack. All three dragons folded into a tangle of gnashing fangs and slicing wing claws.
The struggle rolled into the clouds, lightning flashing through the mist long after their bodies disappeared.
Serenna watched until no dragon burst from the clouds after her, then banked toward the spectator islands.
Druids, wraith, humans, and elves crowded stone terraces carved along the isles’ slopes, their attention fixed on the trials. Serenna descended toward the largest.
Koln stood taller than everyone around him, Sharyne perched on his shoulders. Her boots knocked against his chest whenever she twisted to follow another flier through the course.
A thick blue coat swallowed her to the knees. At least they’d remembered.
At the sight of Serenna, Sharyne lurched forward with a shout, nearly pitching herself from Koln’s shoulders before he caught her by one ankle.
Serenna settled into a hover above the terrace, her wings working against the crosscurrent.
She lifted Skyshatter’s fang, the ivory point wickedly sharp against her palm.
“I found something for you.”
Sharyne’s eyes widened as Serenna tossed the fang to Koln.
He caught it with one claw and turned it between his fingers, his gaze dropping to the torn leather at Serenna’s shoulder. “Tussle with Skylash?”
“One of her little terrors this time.”
Sharyne leaned over his head to see. “Mine?” Her hands stretched toward the fang, but Koln kept the tooth out of her reach.
Serenna nodded toward him. “He can add it to your collection.”
It had begun in Asharyn with a brass dragon Fenn and Vesryn bartered for at a market stall because Sharyne refused to put it down.
Not long after, her shelves started holding pieces of every place she visited.
A shell from Vaelyn. One of Trella’s white feathers.
A black Asharyn stone veined with ruby, its edges worn smooth.
Lately, some of those treasures had begun finding their way back to Serenna, pressed into her palm whenever Sharyne decided she needed one. Serenna kept them all.
They took Sharyne wherever life allowed. Human villages and druid jungles. Kyansari’s library and Centarya’s halls. Wraith dwellings loud with too many voices around the table. Crowded markets where wings and claws drew less notice every year.
Serenna wanted difference to become ordinary to Sharyne before anyone taught her otherwise.
In Asharyn, Sharyne spent half her days at the home Velinya and Kaedryn had built for those orphaned by the war, where human, elf, wraith, and druid children learned one another’s games faster than anyone else had learned peace.
Sharyne would return filthy from whatever mischief they’d invented, her pockets stuffed with spoils.
Serenna knew everyone indulged her. Too many people carried sweets for her, too many chicks and hatchlings permitted her touch where they tolerated no one else, and neither Vesryn nor Fenn had ever managed to deny her anything with conviction.
Sharyne reached again toward the fang in Koln’s claw.
He closed his fist around it.
When he opened his fingers, the tooth was gone.
Sharyne gasped and grabbed Koln’s wrist. “Where?”
Koln turned his empty palm over for her inspection. “Magic.”
Sharyne stared down at him, silver eyes narrowing with suspicion. She searched his sleeve, then hooked two fingers at the edge of his eye patch and pulled.
Koln caught her hand before she could peel it off. “Not there.”
He reached behind one of her pointed ears and drew the fang free.
As she squealed, another horn rolled across the Aetherveil, followed by the rush of wings. A crosscurrent shifted against Serenna’s wings, nudging her toward the island until she corrected with a harder beat.
Movement flashed between the iron spires at the station she should’ve been holding.
Ice had replaced her lightning, covering for her. Spears erupted across the route in staggered waves, forcing one flier into a wild dive and another into a turn sharp enough to nearly clip the stone. From this distance, Serenna couldn’t tell if it was Aesar or Lykor hovering.
Then a wall of ice scythed across the course and scattered two novice fliers in opposite directions, a volley of sharpened hail chasing them from the turn.
Probably Lykor.
She needed to take over before he put someone in the healer’s tent.
Serenna angled toward her station, but her attention snagged on the empty space beside Koln and Sharyne. “Where’s Fenn?”
Koln readjusted his eye patch. “He had something to take care of.”
Serenna raised her brows. “Did he?”
Koln’s expression gave nothing away.
Sharyne lifted one hand and waved hard enough that Koln caught her ankle again. “Go fly, Renna.”
Serenna glanced back toward the course, where a barrage of ice exploded across the sky.
“Okay, I’m going.”
She turned and soared away from the island.
Pressure vanished beneath her left wing.
Serenna dropped. She flared for the neighboring current, but the lift slid away before her membrane could catch it. A gust struck from the right and flung her clear of the course.
She corrected.
The air fled again.
Then a blast rose from below with enough force to wrench both wings wide and hurl her upward. Serenna rolled through the ascent, sunlight breaking across her vision as white membranes swept through the open blue.
Vesryn flew into view, silver hair loosening from its braid as the wind tore past him. Two years ago, Veyrix’s gift had bleached the maroon from his wings, leaving the leather pale enough for sunlight to filter through.
One corner of his mouth lifted.
“Don’t start,” Serenna warned. Wind had made him far more dangerous to her patience than fire ever had. “We’re supposed to be setting an example.”
Vesryn tipped a wing. “I am.”
The air under Serenna curled sideways.
She let the roll carry her until Vesryn crossed her sightline again. Irritation sparked lightning through her arms, and Serenna hurled it from her palms.
Vesryn dropped beneath the bolt and cut past close enough that the wake from his wings struck hers, pitching her sideways.
Serenna recovered on a hard downstroke and wheeled after him. Before she could close the distance, the current above her collapsed and shoved her sideways. Vesryn glided overhead with scarcely a beat of his wings, riding air that changed shape faster than Serenna could read the sky.
She slipped between his next gusts, flipped onto her back, and cracked lightning toward his exposed ribs.
Vesryn reacted too late.
Violet light skittered along the edge of one white membrane, snapping the wing off rhythm.
Satisfaction streaked through her, bright and vicious. “Are you finished?”
But Vesryn was already bearing down.
His wind slammed into her, hurling Serenna backward through a fringe of clouds. She tucked one wing, braced the other against the pressure, and burst back into sunlight.
They crossed too fast to stop.
His wing claws snatched hers in passing, and her own traitorous talons locked around his before momentum could tear him away. Their joined grip swung them into the same turn, the sky wheeling around them.
Serenna twisted into him, close enough to plant one palm against his chest.
Vesryn released her before lightning flew from her fingers.
She spun free to find him several spans away, already weaving through the island chain with a taunting grin.
Beastblood surged hot through Serenna’s veins until challenge became pursuit. The exact feeling the trials were supposed to teach their inexperienced fliers to control.
She chased him anyway.
Vesryn glanced back, silver eyes bright with provocation as he cut through a narrow divide between two islands, stripping the lift from her wings. Serenna drove through his next gust and closed the distance in three hard strokes.
She rammed her shoulder into his ribs.
The collision tore a grunt from Vesryn and knocked them both off balance. He caught her around the waist, white membranes rasping against amethyst as the wind battered them sideways.
Vesryn’s grip tightened at her hips. Loose strands of silver hair lashed across his cheek, and when his eyes found hers, the laughter there sharpened into want. His thumb pressed into the dip in her waist, his gaze falling to her mouth.
Desire drew tight and low through Serenna. She lifted her chin, closing the last sliver of distance between them without quite touching.
Vesryn’s mouth curved.
For one suspended instant, his breath warmed her lips.
Then the wind seized them.
Their tangled wings tore apart. Vesryn folded his and sent them plunging.
Serenna screeched as her stomach lurched into her throat.
Lift vanished. Vesryn controlled their fall while she writhed in his grip, lightning lashing from her palms.
“Vesryn!”
He angled them into a steeper dive.
A small island swelled ahead, roots streaming from its base, a cavern gaping open in the upper shelf.
“Vesryn—”
“Shift.”