Chapter 16
Just before sunrise, Tenebris and Jace are waiting in the front courtyard.
While I begged my head to shut the fuck up, only a sleepless night of quiet fury found me.
There’s a heaviness as I descend the steps and follow the curve of the hall toward the back exit.
Maybe if I was brave enough or empathetic enough I’d have just admitted the truth, but I’m scared and selfish and this life of cruelty has most certainly fucked me up beyond repair.
I shift my pack strap to the other shoulder and exit the arboretum, leaving the rounded stone columns and carvings to slumber in the quiet dawn’s light.
Every thought quiets when my gaze locks on Tenebris’s glittering red eyes. Regardless of form, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to staring into those irises—like polished garnet and lifeblood.
“All packed?” Jace asks, securing the shoulder strap of his black leather breastplate.
His hair is slightly disheveled, either he too had a rough night’s sleep or he and Tenebris took one last sky patrol this morning.
I tell myself it’s the latter as I cinch my pack to Tenebris’s saddle.
A growl rumbles in the dragon’s jaws, sending my heart crashing up my throat.
“Is this right?” I gesture toward the pack.
Jace chuckles and pats Tenebris’s side. Fuck, even a single scale is larger than his palm. “Yes, Tenebris just isn’t thrilled about carrying the extra weight.”
The dragon huffs but shifts to lower the foot hold.
“You can communicate with him when he’s in dragon form?” My stomach lurching over the immense power beneath those four giant legs.
“Of course. All bonded riders can. Think of it like a link or an offering from the gods. When I accepted Tenebris into my mind, it allowed him access to all of my thoughts, emotions, even my intentions. I am an extension of him just as he is me,” Jace says, climbing up Tenebris’s hind leg.
He settles into the saddle and offers a hand.
My throat tightens at the thought of closing even the slightest of distance between us, but I take it and place my foot in the hold.
“Careful of his spines here.” Jace points to a ridgeline of bony black stones between Tenebris’s wings as he helps me into the saddle. “They’re a bit sensitive and the old grump’s rather ticklish.”
I tuck into the seat, my thighs clenching around the leather. If I weren’t strapped into a harness, tethering me to the biggest, most terrifying dragon on the fucking continent I might laugh. Jace describes Tenebris like he’s an old friend rather than a near-immortal leviathan.
“Now, flying lesson—when we take off, keep your arms close and your head low. Same during quick maneuvers. If we’re forced to gain altitude, only slow steady breaths. The air up there is thinner and it’s harder to breathe so you don’t want to expel too much energy or get your pulse up. Got it?”
“I—” The questions flee before I can ask them, and I’m left blinking like an idiot at the Midnight King.
“Great.” He smirks. “We’ll fly until we’re close to Storm’s border.
Then it’s on foot from there,” he explains, lacing his arms through mine.
My back straightens as I breathe in his all too consuming scent.
The last time we were this close he threatened to kill me, and even now my heart slams against my chest in an unrelenting rhythm.
“You ready?” he asks, his breath warm against my ear. I fight the gooseflesh rising on my skin and nod.
Tenebris stands and just the movement of his body has my stomach rolling.
“Oh, and Nova?” Jace whispers, his lips grazing the curve of my ear. “Don’t close your eyes.”
With that, Tenebris spreads his wings and we launch into the air, like an arrow loosed through the sky, but our trajectory is perpetually vertical. My thighs clench around the saddle as we rise, higher and higher, at speeds no human was ever made to withstand.
A scream builds in my throat, but I bite my cheek. I won’t humiliate myself in front of Jace fucking Ashborne. Not today. Not ever. Tenebris’s body ripples with the flow of air around us and the breeze on my face draws tears from my eyes.
“You alright?” Jace asks, his grip never faltering around me.
“Fine,” I manage, but I'm so far from it I might piss myself.
The fortress grows smaller as we continue our ascent, flying higher and faster and farther through the cloud cover. A cool mist cocoons us and the world goes blurry for a moment.
Then, a glorious sunrise swirling endlessly into the horizon. My breath catches as I take in the utter divinity of the skies, and for the briefest of moments I can taste the vast freedom up here. It’s sweet and spiced like the freshest summer fruit.
Tenebris levels out and we cruise for a while, following the sun as it traverses the sky above us.
“Gods,” I whisper, entirely enamored with this foreign world. Shadow, Smoke, even Sovereign, feels worlds away—like we’ve flown through the cosmos and found ourselves in an entirely different realm.
Even amidst the roaring laminar air, my thoughts quiet, my muscles relax, and for the first time I truly feel peace. The world melts, leaving only the beat of my heart and the taste of freedom on my tongue.
“Hold on,” Jace commands. Tenebris banks left, his wings rippling with little eddies of air.
My stomach jostles, threatening to exit my body, and the moment of peace flits away.
We descend in free fall back through the clouds.
The world ignites again in a painting of lichen covered greens and crystalline blues.
Another scream claws up my throat, but it’s taken by the wind as we dive faster and faster until the ground approaches rapidly. Tenebris wouldn’t intentionally flatten us…right?
I force my head to turn toward Jace. He’s grinning wider than a mad man as the breeze rushes over his brow. The laugh that pours from his lips is deep and gritty, and entirely infectious.
This is insanity of the highest degree, but we giggle like children sharing a secret as Tenebris rolls and cuts through the air with every maneuver imaginable.
Jace’s hands find their way over mine on the pommel and no longer is his touch colder than ice.
It’s sun-warmed and gentle like a summer day.
I let his fingers interlock with mine, accepting the rush of sparks blazing from the connection.
I’m not focusing on the trees and rivers and the world that whirls by, just the overwhelming feel of his skin against mine.
When Tenebris finally slows and the horizon levels out, a feeling creeps in like mist on the shore—I like his hands on me. I want his hands on me. Fuck, I’m in deep shit.
Jace breaks the tether of our gazes to glance at the tree canopy below us. “We’re approaching the lurker den. See it just there?” I follow the point of his index finger down Tenebris’s left wing.
My throat dries. Just in the distance, there’s a break in the brush, like the earth has been poisoned with incurable blight. Even the air, a column of frozen, silent smog, feels like death.
It’s the pit at the clearing’s center that pricks me with terror, though. Its endless darkness holds me captive, and I can’t look away, no matter how much I will my eyes to retreat.
“Where are they?” I ask, still transfixed on the pit.
“I’m not sure…” Jace’s eyes narrow as he scans the scarred earth below. Everything quiets as we approach the den from the skies. Even Tenebris’s wing beats sound muffled and muted.
Then, I spot it, like a smudge of greyish flesh and decayed death.
“Jace…” I don’t dare look away as a creature of nightmares crawls from the pit. It creeps on four gangly limbs from the darkness, with arched back and inhuman contortions.
“I see it,” he says, his voice a low melody.
The lurker moves with the fluidity of water as it straightens to standing, and my blood runs cold. The curve of its body on all fours was its spine bending in the wrong direction. It rolls its abdomen, snapping and creaking into place from a crawling position with its back facing the ground.
The lurker’s featureless face locks on us and tracks our ascent.
“Jace…it’s looking at us.” Terror courses through me, paling my skin until I’m whiter than a wraith.
“No, that’s not possible from up here,” he replies, but his tone is nowhere near resolute. The lurker’s neck shudders as it follows our path forward.
“Shit,” Jace whispers, gripping the saddle around me. “It definitely sees us.”
I almost ask how that’s possible when the lurker is totally void of eyes—only a filmy layer of cracked leathery skin wraps each socket—but the words are ripped from me by an animalistic growl echoing around us.
My muscles tense. The sound pouring from the creature’s nonexistent mouth is one of pure horror.
Like a wounded, dying hound.
Before my next heartbeat, the pit wriggles with movement. Ten, maybe twenty more lurkers crawl from the darkness, screeching and groaning in response to the first.
And they just keep coming.
Where one creature ends, another begins. Snapping joints and gangly limbs flood from the pit until the entire clearing is stained with leathery grey skin and shapeless mouths.
“Holy fuck,” Jace mutters. “Tenebris…”
The dragon huffs and we climb higher, faster, further until the air thins and my eyes water. He banks left, then right in a series of maneuvers that has my neck aching from the whiplash. My nails cling to the saddle with a grip barely strong enough to keep my seat.
In unison, the lurkers howl a heart-stopping cacophony. Tenebris’s scaly spine jerks and shudders beneath us.
Then, the dragon goes rigid.
“Tenebris!” Jace cries but the Blightfang’s wings ripple and fold in on themselves.
The air column gives out like stone crumbling to dust.
“Fuck, Nova, hold on.”
The sky falls.
Morning light blurs and swirls, rushing like rapids, and we plummet toward the ground.