CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE #2
As Thorrin’s dragon’s wings stirred dust into the wind, Vesper braced a hand over his eyes to avoid the burn. He rounded Kaida and placed his palm on her shadowy back. Even as the darkness rippled around his hand, and his mount responded, solid, breathing, and alive, he drew a hesitant breath.
“Together?” he whispered, his voice quivering. Fucking humiliating.
The stunted “yes” into his mind was all the prompt he needed.
With far more precision than he would mount Balthasar with, he climbed onto her back.
His boots skidded on her scales as he scrambled and Kaida growled a million complaints.
He barely had time to settle before she stretched her great obsidian wings.
Shadowy wisps trailed behind her like a fine mist.
Vesper yanked up his skull mask and sent a silent prayer to the gods not to fall from her back and break his bloody face, or neck, although his neck would be better. That way he wouldn’t have to face the ridicule afterwards.
“Slow,” he whispered to Kaida. “Don’t embarrass me. We need to make this look good. Like we know what we’re doing. Got it?”
She growled low in her throat in a response he had no clue how to interpret, especially as she stared hungrily up at the ceiling. And when Thorrin’s mount rose and disappeared through the hole, Kaida didn’t hesitate.
She launched herself into the air, leaving Vesper’s stomach behind. Bile rose in his throat, and he squeezed his eyes shut as the wind assaulted them.
He had never clutched anything like he did Kaida’s neck, as she practically turned vertical and shot through the ceiling. His dragon roared in manic delight. Fucking wonderful. Vesper only managed to whimper into her hide as the ground shrank beneath them and the sky grew closer.
The chilled air thick with the beginnings of spring whipped his face as a foreign terror laced with adrenaline flooded his veins. He feared fucking this up, but also he was in the air, on his fucking Shadowheart’s back, something he never thought he could do.
He slivered an eyelid, and gods, the view—between the expanse of sea shimmering like a night sky and the sun setting in a watercolour painting of reds and oranges and yellows. The word gorgeous didn’t do it justice.
He wanted to draw it. Wanted to capture it. And that was a desire he'd assumed long dead.
Not even the decaying land below him could curb his high. His hold on Kaida released ever so slightly, and he sought balance. Once he found his equilibrium, he gripped her with his thighs, and outstretched his arms, revelling in the wind through his hair and the freedom of the sunset air.
Kaida closed her eyes, as if she had waited her entire life for this moment after a century in the prison of Vesper’s body. The fading sunlight swept over them in great bows, as if the sky itself bent to their will. Like they held the world in their palms.
Ahead, Vesper caught Thorrin and Kyrith as they descended on a patch of land infested by bloodlace. His mount unleashed a gust of fire. That heinous red shit withered, not as quickly as Kaida’s fire had doused it, but it still shrank.
Fuck it. What better way to convince them he could do this than to go for it? So Vesper leaned into Kaida, and urged her, “Show them how it’s done.”
She actually obeyed, though her descent mimicked that of a bone ash addict diving into their stash. Vesper clutched onto her neck for dear life.
Kaida roared and let loose a billow of shadowfire dark enough to eclipse the day. It consumed the bloodlace and Vesper could practically hear its shrieks as it shrivelled to nothing and died. He bit back his yell of victory.
Close to the cliffside, Thorrin hovered in the air. “No need to show off,” he yelled across the short expanse.
Kaida tittered a reptilian laugh while Vesper waved him off, though adrenaline still coursed his veins.
“Come on, Thorrin. Let’s race,” Kyrith prodded. “See what pretty boy can do.” She winked at Vesper and nodded to the ocean. “Go on then, we’ll even give you a headstart.”
He hadn’t prepared for this. That swoop and burn of the bloodlace was fine, but a race? Kaida seemed in tune with him for the moment but that thread often slipped. That thing that connected them. Their vision.
Either way, Vesper wasn’t a coward. He was a wolf.
And he wouldn't back down.
So, as Kaida’s great wings flapped, they raced ahead, and Vesper shot Kyrith a very impolite gesture as he passed her and headed for the sea.
Unsurprisingly, Thorrin caught up. Vesper surged to meet him but Thorrin’s much larger dragon, though it didn’t cut through the wind as easily, gained more distance with each flap of its wings.
Thorrin and Kyrith guided them out over the ocean and the crashing tides below.
That’s when it truly sank in exactly how bloody high they were.
An easy fall to a very quick, very bone crushing death.
Kaida threw her head back and roared, swept away in the flight and wind in her wings. And she began to teeter from side to side.
“Slow down,” Vesper barked. His grip tightened, but it wasn’t enough. Not with the ground so fucking far below.
His Shadowheart only picked up speed and spun as if she sought the space between the sky and the mortal heavens.
But as Kaida pushed and flapped her wings like a feral bat, Vesper’s hold faltered and his arms clung to the protruding scales on her neck. His boots skidded as he scrambled, the vertical ascent sending him sliding back from his seat between her shoulder blades.
“Kaida!” he protested. A warning. A plea for her to slow down.
But it was too late.
His shoulder hyper-extended from his old injury and his arms gave out.
He tumbled from Kaida’s back.
A scream tore from his throat and his stomach lurched, left completely behind. He froze, fear seizing his limbs. The ground grew closer, rose to meet him, and he caught Kaida’s wide red eyes as he flailed through the open air.
Vesper reached toward her as she dove. Her wings tucked tight, but the distance grew too far. He stretched, as if he could summon her to his hand, like she was truly an extension of him, and he saw through her eyes.
Saw him fall. Felt her terror. Held her remorse.
But her regret wouldn’t do him much good if he was a splattered mess of flesh on the ground below.
Fuck. Fuck. Fucking fucks on a fuck.
Seconds, minutes, hours, his fall stretched endlessly.