23. Nosedive #2
"Are you crazy?!" she shouted, and gave her a shake for good measure.
Thea just cackled, grinning. "A girl can't show off a little?"
Aaryn's wide eyes flicked over her, but she found no injuries. Her heart was still in her throat and she released Thea with a shove—gently, of course, because she wouldn't risk knocking her off.
"What are you doing here?" Thea asked.
Aaryn turned in her seat and patted Starspark, who resumed his descent into the flames.
"Vaelen brought me," she said, and pulled on Starspark's reins. He knew the drill now, and fanned his wings as they got closer, putting out the nearest fires to make a safe path for those in need.
For a moment time seemed to pause as the wind whipped her cheeks and stung her skin. She was flying. On Starspark. She was helping.
Vaelen was easily located as she lifted her staff, a green glow at the tip, and Aaryn directed Starspark there.
"You're a natural," Thea remarked quietly.
Starspark seemed to agree, rumbling softly as he perched low to the ground to allow another group onto his back.
Then it was time to leave again, and Aaryn looked over her shoulder to check that everyone was in place.
Thea's arms were wrapped around a little one who was oddly silent. No tears, no screaming.
The image embedded itself into her memory.
On yet another descent, Starspark hit a wind current, and Thea wrapped an arm around Aaryn's waist to steady herself.
"Sorry," she said, and shifted as if to move, but Aaryn lowered a hand and pressed it into Thea's forearm.
"Don't fall off," she scolded, and Thea wrapped her other arm around Aaryn's waist too.
Aaryn wished she could revel in the touches, but her girlish glee was burned away by their return to the flames.
It was a long, devastating night. Her throat burned, her thighs ached. Her palm stung.
Until there was no one left. Just Vaelen, alone on the beach, expression carefully blank, surrounded by dying flames she kept at bay with the glow of her staff. The last of the dragons slipped into the clouds and smoke, unseen.
Starspark landed in the sand, and Vaelen made her way to them at last.
The fires raged and Vaelen's steps were tired, the butt of her staff digging into the ground to aid her and she—jerked, cried out. Vaelen lurched forward and through the smoke Aaryn recognized an arrow where it shouldn't be—in her shoulder.
Thea's scream was deafening, and Aaryn looked past her, already fumbling at the strap across her waist to free herself. Starspark shuffled, unsure at the emotions in the air, the intensity.
His movement offered her a view through the flames, and a familiar face stared back. Blonde hair, bow drawn, on a dragon she recognized not as his own, but belonging to Rose.
Prince Jarrick was on the back of Moss, and he was… Aaryn would ponder his expression for days to come. In that moment, all she could think was… crazed. Eyes wide and bruised from a clear lack of sleep, a hollow to his cheeks that she’d never seen before. Hands smudged with… soot?
"I found you!" His voice boomed amongst the embers, voice cracking with the intensity of his emotion. "I came for you!"
Aaryn threw herself off of Starspark's back, and Thea's hand desperately scrabbled at her shoulder. "Aaryn, no—"
But she slipped free. She ran at Vaelen—past her, and for a split second she watched a glee in the prince's expression brighten, his bow falling to the side, a hand stained with something dark held out to her.
He won't shoot me, she thought to herself, and slid to a stop just behind Vaelen, putting herself between the archdruid and the prince.
"Get up," Aaryn urged, and kept her gaze locked over her shoulder as she braced a hand on either side of Vaelen's waist, hoisting her to her feet. "Go, hurry."
She watched it dawn on the prince that she wasn't running to him, watched his lip curl as he lifted his bow again—and faltered.
He won't shoot… me.
"No. No!" he shouted, and urged his borrowed—or stolen—dragon to fly toward them. His usually perfectly placed hair flopped across his eyes, and he raked a hand through it, leaving a black smudge behind. "You're not taking her too!"
But Aaryn was on Starspark's back, pulling Vaelen into place behind her for Thea to cradle, holding her steady. The archdruid huffed before sliding her arms around Aaryn's waist.
“Aaryn!” his shout echoed across the waters nearby, and she was unable to look away from what the prince had become.
With his hands so stained—could it be soot?
—almost to the elbow, it took her too long to focus on what he was doing, and then a glowing red shape was scratched into the air from his motions, its lines shaky and searing.
An agonized groan tore from his lips as he performed the magic, and Aaryn urged Starspark to take off before he was finished casting it.
Vaelen grunted with the effort of lifting her staff—thumping it into the sand just before Starspark took flight.
The tip of it glowed and with a murmur, she pointed it in Jarrick’s direction.
From it burst a light so bright it left spots in her vision and his cry of frustration was lost to the air.
But the rune still glowed to life as he finished it a second too late.
An inferno erupted from the space they’d just occupied.
Aaryn was stunned at the destruction in it, the very magic Evergale was supposed to protect Rishika with wielded from the prince’s—no, the king’s—hands.
The clouds obscured them in moments, and Aaryn looked back, but there was no Jarrick on their tail. No Moss following them. But her heart still raced, and she searched the clouds anyway.
They left Skymore in embers and ashes.
"There won't even be anything left for Evergale to salvage," Aaryn murmured.
Vaelen’s voice was rough from the smoke and pinched from the pain as she said, “I don't think this was like Timberscale.”