Chapter Twenty-Four
RONAN
The sky used to be the only place that made sense to me.
Up there, everything felt clean. Decisions were simple. You either held your altitude or you didn’t. You either adjusted to the wind or let it throw you around. There were no expectations, no arguments, no watching eyes waiting to see if I’d fail again.
As we left Hoveria and said goodbye to Georg, and Varun, and his lykoses, the air pressed heavily against our wings and scales.
Veskor flew behind me, ears flattened against his skull.
He didn’t trust us yet, but he had nowhere else to go.
I think deep down, he wanted to step foot on Lyoness, no matter what it cost him.
I clutched Perri to me tightly even as she pouted the entire time.
“I want to be carried by Veskor,” she whined.
I ignored her.
“I’m hungry.”
I focused on the horizon.
“RONAN.”
“Little one, we will stop this nightfall. Then we will eat and rest, I promise,” I reassured her.”
She grumbled in my arms, but went still.
Behind both of us, Nasi and Canavar flew steadily, their wings cutting clean arcs through the air despite the tension. Canavar hadn’t said much since we left, but he didn’t need to. His silence carried more threat than words ever could.
Veskor had insisted he was well enough to travel.
The second day of flying saw him struggling to keep up. The snow was mostly gone below us, but the cold lingered. The landscape was changing from dry dirt and rocks to forest again, but slowly.
“Do we need to carry you?” Nasi asked him over his shoulder, the question sounding somewhat threatening.
Veskor shook his head and tried to fly faster, but his muscles were quivering.
“Doesn’t matter. They’re going to kill me anyway,” he rasped, dipping in altitude.
I flew to his side and grabbed his left arm, supporting his weight while I held Perri in the other. “No one is killing you.”
He gave a breath that might have been a laugh if it hadn’t sounded so hollow.
I glanced back just long enough to catch Canavar’s face twitching with a smirk, but he shook it off as Nasi flew up on Veskor’s other side, grabbing him for me. Nasi supported his weight fully and he sagged, his scales too hot and pale for my liking.
“That was before,” I reassured. “You’re under my protection now. No one is killing you, I promise.”
Nasi let out a sharp breath. “You think we dragged you this far just to drop you halfway home?”
Georg’s warning echoed in my head, his expression grim when he’d pulled me aside before we left.
“The vampyres are fleeing north,” he’d said. “The lykoses are driving them. Tearing through anything they find.”
“And us?” I’d asked.
“Stay in the sky,” he replied without hesitation. “Do not engage. Not unless you have no choice.”
Small patches of vampyres were in these woods, starved and dying. The lykoses chased them further north to pin them against the mountains, away from the human kingdoms and witch enclaves.
At the time, it sounded simple.
Two days into the journey with a fading, sick draken between us, it didn’t seem quite as straightforward.
It was a good plan, minus us having to fly above them.
Did we land to rest for the evening and risk an attack? Maybe if we had one of us on guard, it would suffice to warn the others in time. Maybe I should ask the others what they thought? I couldn’t risk Perri. The air was the safest, though most tiring, option.
Having to make decisions was for the birds.
I blinked. This tightness in my chest, this constant calculation, this awareness that one wrong call could cost lives, this was what Benedict carried every day. With me, with Kieran, with all of us.
I’d spent so much time questioning his decisions, pushing against them, thinking I understood the weight of leadership.
I hadn’t.
Not until now. Now I understood why his trust was such a fragile, important thing.
“Ronan,” Nasi warned suddenly.
I looked up just as I heard it: a sharp whistle cutting through the air. We jerked harshly to the side, the arrow whistling right past us.
Canavar jerked violently, a roar tearing from his throat as his wing buckled. A slash appeared in the membrane of his wing, an arrow piercing it cleanly.
For a second, he tried to hold himself steady.
“Veskor, fly!” Nasi ordered him, and immediately dropped him to dive after Canavar.
The sky rushed past in a blur as we dove hard. The wind tore at my wings as I pushed faster, trying to get to him before he hit the ground. Perri screamed, crying out in fear.
A dark blur flashed past us, quicker than both of us. Veskor reached him first, the fastest of us all even in poor health. He wrapped himself around Canavar’s large torso and flared his wings as hard as he could, every muscle straining as he tried to slow the bigger draken’s descent.
“Argh!” he cried out.
Nasi reached him next, slamming into Canavar’s front and latching on, flaring his much bigger golden wings. He strained up, up, up, but even he couldn’t fully stop it. I took an arm and clutched Perri tightly and pumped for the sky.
We slowed dramatically, but still fell.
Canavar was too heavy.
At the last moment, I let go of him and tucked my body around Perri. We tumbled into the plains, onto hard ground that was void of any soft snow to land on in a tangle of limbs and wings. Pain shot through my legs, but I ignored it, immediately shifting my focus.
“Are you all right?” I asked Perri, uncurling around her. Her eyes were big and round with unshed tears, her lower lip trembling dangerously, but she nodded.
I let out a breath.
Canavar was already trying to stand, but the arrow had torn deep, and blood soaked the ground beneath him. He skittered on his legs, his body in shock as he tried to get his feet under him.
“Move,” he snarled, forcing himself up.
“You can’t fly like that,” Nasi snapped, bracing him.
“I don’t need to—”
“Shut it and stay still,” I ordered it.
Veskor’s ears pricked and he tensed, body lowering to the ground on all fours.
We went still, feeling it immediately—the silence. We weren’t in the forest yet, but on rocky plains. Yet still, there should have been birds chirping, animals in the distance … something.
“Ronan?” Perri whispered, clutching onto me. My wings tucked around my body protectively, instinctively shielding her.
It was still. Too still.
Nasi swore as shapes emerged from the edges of the rocks, pale and hungry. Vampyres.
Of course they were here. Of course Georg had been right.
I shifted my stance, pulling Veskor closer, my grip tightening on Perri as well.
“We stay together,” I said, forcing my voice steady.
Veskor moved before I could stop him.
Before we could form any kind of strategy Veskor screamed and charged straight at the vampyres, something sharp and wild burning in his eyes.
I blinked, thrown for half a second as Perri cried for him. Canavar’s lips even parted, shocked at the display. Nasi swore and hurried after him. I had studied fighters, watched them, broken their actions down into patterns and strategies.
Veskor didn’t do anything I’d seen before.
There was no hesitation or calculation, no plan of any kind as he launched himself forward like a storm breaking loose.
He moved faster than I expected, slipping between the vampyres as they lunged for him.
One went for his throat, and he twisted under it, slamming his shoulder into its ribs hard enough to knock it sideways before driving his claws into its neck.
Another came at him from behind, and he ducked low, pivoting in a way that let him use its momentum against it. It hit the rocks with a sickening crack.
He didn’t stop or slow, refusing to give any of them space to recover. There were nine of them in total, already they were down to six by the time Nasi joined the fray.
I relaxed with Perri and Canavar as it became apparent that while dangerous, the vampyres weren’t a real threat—not hungry and desperate the way they were.
Nasi stayed calm and picked off those too afraid to go for Veskor.
He fought like someone who had already accepted death and decided to take everything with him first.
Canavar tried to stand again and I kicked his knee out.
“I’m not leaving him!” Canavar snapped, going down hard and snarling at me.
“Sit down before you fall down; they have it well in hand,” I argued.
He hissed and I grabbed the tip of his uninjured wing in one hand, twisting.
“FUCKING OW!” he roared.
“Naughty!” Perri scolded him.
It didn’t matter; the fight was over anyway. The last vampyre fell, the ground littered with bodies in front of us.
“Good show,” Nasi said approvingly to Veskore, not even out of breath. He wiped a bit of blood from underneath his claws, looking pleased.
Veskor blinked, swaying dangerously. His chest heaved and he was covered in blood.
“Nasi!” I called out.
For a moment, our eyes met. There was nothing in Veskor’s expression. No anger. No fear. No expectation.
Just exhaustion.
Then his knees gave out.
“VESKOR!” Perri wailed.
Nasi caught him before he hit the ground.
Everything went quiet except for the sound of our breathing and the distant crash of waves. Nasi looked at Veskor in his arms. Perri squirmed wanting to get to Veskor, but I tightened my hold.
“Scrappy thing,” Nasi said.
“Saved our asses,” Canavar admitted begrudgingly.
“I know,” I answered.
Nasi adjusted his hold on Veskor, lifting him more securely this time. Not like cargo, or a prisoner, or some problem to solve, but like one of ours.
“Let’s take a break and get something to eat,” I said. “After we patch up that wing, and make sure Veskor won’t bleed out.”
Perri perked up and stopped wiggling.
Thankfully, there was a stream nearby, allowing us to fill up our waterskins and clean Canavar and Veskor. Fresh mud was used to pack wounds, though I lost most of the bottom of my breeches to make bandages.
“You look silly.” Perri giggled, pointing at the torn bits of fabric dangling from just below my knees.
“I will bear it the best I can,” I said seriously. “How about you help me find some sticks for a fire?”