Chapter 24
Carla
They drop out of the sky one by one. The first lands about thirty feet to our left, wings folding as its feet hit the ground, and the impact shudders through the earth.
The second comes in fast to the right, and I throw my arm over my face against the downdraft.
Then a third. A fourth. Another, and another, and another, each landing sending a tremor into the soles of my bare feet.
I press my back harder against Magma’s arm and try to count them as they drop out of the sky.
I lose count. There are more still up there, circling in wide, unhurried arcs, dark wings tilting slowly against the light.
They fill almost every gap in the canopy above us, and every time one of them shifts position, the air moves like a wave.
Are all the feral males coming for us?
I have never seen anything like it in my life.
I can’t breathe.
Magma gives a long, slow exhale, and he sags against me, the full weight of him settling for just a second before he pulls it back.
When I look at him, he is smiling.
Why would he smile at a time like this?
I frown hard.
“We’re okay.” His voice is a low rumble close to my ear. “We’re okay, Carla.” He sighs again.
I look back at the dragons.
One of them doesn’t have a scrap of red on it. Not on its neck or the trailing edge of its wings. That same dragon has a rider, just like most of the dragons on Draig Island.
Wait a minute! Wait just a minute.
It’s a Draig Dragon. It has to be.
“That’s one of my fight captains,” Magma says, and his voice has gone deeper, richer than it’s been in days. “That’s Inferno and his rider.” He chuckles and then groans in pain, his eyes clouding.
“What are you saying?” I’m smiling too. “Are they here to rescue us?”
I watch the dragon fold its wings to land, and I let out a breath.
Then something warm and wet runs down my side.
I look down.
A dark line of blood is tracking from underneath Magma’s arm, over my ribs, and soaking into the waistband of my underwear.
I look up fast. The wounds on his side and shoulder are still bleeding.
Worse than I thought. He’s lost so much blood already, more than I let myself register during the fight, and now that the adrenaline is starting to ebb out of me, it’s all I can see.
“Try to stay still,” I tell Magma. “You should sit.”
He shakes his head, his smile widening.
“Look,” he tells me, and I do, just as the shape of a rider slides down from the back of a Mistveil dragon.
The figure is moving at a jog but limping a little. It takes me a full two seconds of staring before my brain catches up with what my eyes are seeing.
“Oh, my god!” The sound that comes out of me is not something I planned. “It’s Flint.” I wave with my free hand. “It’s him. He’s here. Flint!” I scream, waving my free arm.
The laugh that follows is embarrassing. It comes out shaky and wet and a little broken at the edges. I’m so happy to see someone I know. Someone I recognize. I didn’t think I would get out of this. I thought we were dead for sure.
I think I might be crying again.
“We’re going to be okay,” I say, and I mean it for both of us. I look up at Magma, and his face has turned serious, the softness from a moment ago tucked away.
“Listen to me, Carla. What happened, happened,” he says. “Now we move on and forget about it, okay?”
It’s spoken quietly, and the words are clearly meant to be kind. A gift, maybe, a door held open so I can walk back through it without it costing me anything.
I feel the sting of it, even though it was meant well.
Which is ridiculous. He’s right. He is objectively right, and I know it. What happened between us… Well, it…it…is what it is.
“We need to forget it happened,” he whispers. “You scent of mud and of my blood. No one will know what happened. No one ever needs to know. Okay?”
It still feels wrong not to acknowledge it.
How do I forget?
I nod because he nods.
“Yeah.” My voice is too soft, so I clear my throat. “Of course.” I nod again and smile.
Then Flint is there.
He doesn’t slow down at the end. He closes the last ten feet at a near-run and wraps both arms around me, pulling me in, holding me tight. I can’t relax or lean into him…I just can’t. I feel wooden, but I go through the motions anyway and put my arms around him.
“Jesus Christ,” he breathes against the top of my head. “Jesus Christ, Carla.”
“I’m okay.” My voice comes out muffled.
“You are…good…shit…good,” he agrees, like saying it out loud will make it true, and his arms get a little tighter. “You’re okay. Holy shit! I thought we had lost you. We lost five females…four now that we’ve found you.”
“That’s terrible.” I feel tears prick behind my eyes, but I blink them away.
Then he pulls back and looks at me, his hands on my shoulders, his eyes going over my face; his expression is steady.
He lets me go as he looks at Magma.
Something passes between them. Flint reaches out and grips Magma’s good arm, just below the shoulder. Magma grips back. Neither of them says anything for a second.
“You crazy old male,” Flint says.
Magma shakes his head once. “Who’s old?”
Flint smiles. “You survived long enough for us to find you both. How the hell did you pull it off?”
“I had help,” Magma says, glancing at me.
Flint looks back at me and tries to keep his face straight and almost manages it. “I can believe that.”
His gaze drops down my body, and he frowns. Then he strips his shirt off and holds it out to me.
It’s too big. It falls to mid-thigh when I pull it over my head, the cotton soft and warm from his skin, and I didn’t know how badly I needed that until it’s there.
“Thank—”
A sound behind me cuts the word off.
I turn.
Magma is down.
He’s on one knee in the dirt, his hand flat against the ground, his head dropped. He moans, trying to get back up.
“Magma.” I’m next to him in a second.
“You should lie down,” Flint tells him.
I drop to my knees and help him onto the ground. Magma closes his eyes and seems to pass out.
“Magma! Magma!” I shake his good shoulder. His chest is still rising and falling, but he’s out cold.
“He’s going to be alright.” Flint’s voice comes from just behind my shoulder. He crouches next to us, one hand going to Magma’s chest. “That’s a nasty wound.”
“He has one just like it on his back.”
“Shit! He’s lost blood. He needs a doctor, but he’s going to be just fine…I swear it. The old dog has been worse off than this before, believe you me.”
I look back up at Flint. “I hope so.”
“He will be. We’ve been searching for you both since late afternoon yesterday,” he says.
“There was too much unrest to attempt it before then. We had to wait for it to quieten down before it was safe to fly in. The moment it was, we came, but the jungle is thick in parts. We weren’t sure we’d find you. ”
He puts his other hand on my arm.
“He’ll be alright,” he says again, and I realize that my gaze is back on Magma.
I nod. I make myself believe it.
Two figures come out from between the grounded dragons, moving toward us with the easy, unhurried confidence of people who know they’re among allies and have nothing to hide.
They are completely naked. The male is broad across the shoulder, with dark tattoos laced through with threads of red that catch even in this dim light.
The female is tall and dark-haired, her own markings running from her shoulder blades to her wrists in patterns that branch like roots.
She is toned, with narrow hips, a flat stomach, and perky, little breasts.
She’s very pretty in that effortless way of shifters.
“The wounded one needs a healer,” the male says, addressing Flint directly. “Do you want us to take them to Draig, or do you have a preference for the castle? The castle will be quicker.”
Flint looks at Magma, crouched with his hand in the dirt, and makes the assessment fast. “Draig Hospital. He can handle the trip.” He glances at me. “You good with that?”
I am so ready to go home that it isn’t funny. If I never see Mistveil again, it will be too soon.
“Draig is good,” I say. “Yes.”
A low sound draws my attention down. Magma has his eyes open. They’re glassy and not entirely focused, but they’re open.
“Water,” he rasps.
Flint already has a canteen off his belt. He gets it to Magma’s lips and angles it carefully. Magma gets two long pulls before Flint eases the canteen away.
“Easy.”
Magma gets his focus back by degrees. His gaze is on Flint.
“You came,” he says.
“Of course I came.” Flint puts the cap back on the canteen. “You thought I was going to leave you out here?”
Magma almost does the thing that might be a smile. “Didn’t want to presume.”
“Idiot.” But there’s no heat in it. There’s nothing in it but warmth.
“You ready to go home?” Flint asks.
Magma looks out at the trees.
“Am I ever.” He smiles, and that dimple pops out.
The two Red-marked shifters move back from us toward a small open gap in the line of grounded dragons.
The male rolls his shoulders once. A sound comes out of him, something low and internal, and then his skin splits.
It’s like a seam opening, something the body has always been capable of and is simply deciding to do now.
The wings come first, tucking open from somewhere behind his shoulder blades.
The rest follows fast, joints reorienting, the spine curving, the whole frame expanding and shifting outward with a sound that is more of a pressure change than a noise, and then there’s a dragon where the male was.
Dark markings, a flash of red along the ridge of the wing, the same gravity to it that the male had.
The female shifts a half-second behind him, and it’s just as extraordinary to watch. I am reminded of how different they are.
“Are you good to fly with me?” Flint asks, pulling me from my thoughts.
I glance over at Magma, who has moved to a sitting position while I was watching the dragons shift. His gaze softens, and he gives me the smallest of nods.
“Yes…sure. Thanks,” I tell Flint. “Will you be okay?” I ask Magma.
“Just fine,” he says. “That pretty Red Dragon female is taking me.” He gestures to the female dragon.
I feel a pang of jealousy, which is stupid.
“Come on,” Flint says, and I follow him.
Then he puts his hand out to me as we approach the dragon, and I take it.
His grip is easy and steady. The dragon lowers slightly when we approach, not quite kneeling but accommodating, and I can see there’s no saddle, nothing to grip, just scales and the broad ridge of the neck where the head joins the shoulder.
It’s a long way up.
“Arms up,” Flint says from behind me, and his hands close on my waist and he lifts. I grab the ridge with both hands and find the footing, scrambling up the last of it on instinct. Then I’m up, and the ground is a long way down, and I am trying very hard not to think about it.
Flint pulls himself up behind me in one smooth move, no effort at all, and positions himself against my back, his legs on the outside of mine. His arms come around me.
“You alright?”
“Fine.” It comes out steadier than I feel.
“Good. Don’t let go and don’t look down. I’ve got you.”
“That’s good to know.”
I look over to where Magma is. He’s on his feet.
The other dragon, the one the female shifted into, is crouched low nearby, wings half-open and waiting.
Magma looks up at me and then away.
The dragon under us shifts its weight, and I feel the muscles bunching through my thighs.
The Red Dragon female grips Magma in her great taloned claw, and she launches.
I twist to keep my eyes on them.
“He’ll be just fine,” Flint says.
My eyes follow her up until she clears the canopy and tips her wing south and disappears into the gray of the sky.
We’re ascending too, the ground falling away so fast that my stomach doesn’t know which direction to protest in. I have two fistfuls of ridge-scales, and the horizon suddenly feels very large and very present in every direction.
Flint’s arms pull tight around me.
“I’ve got you,” he says again, his mouth close to my ear.
Below us, the jungle shrinks to a vast green blanket, the individual trees disappearing into a continuous spread. The air is cold at this height, and I breathe it in, deep and slow.
I scan the sky ahead of us, looking for Magma. I can’t find him anywhere.
This feels wrong. It feels… I close my eyes and bite down on my bottom lip.
I should be happy.
I am happy and relieved.
Why do I have this heavy feeling inside me?
Why?