She could feel Graydon’s lungs working like bellows and the tension in his muscles as the gale threatened to send him crashing into the trees. On the high ground of the path, they were exposed to the worst of the wind that howled with an eerie sound like a thousand banshees. He crouched lower over the two women, his huge claws digging into the rocky ground for purchase.
Eyes streaming with tears, her terrified gaze went back to Dragos. This gods-damned gale threatened to flatten Graydon while he was on the ground. She couldn’t imagine how Dragos had managed to stay in the air.
Even as she wondered, the funnel cloud took hold of the dragon and spun him in a circle.
A gleaming sliver of silver fell from his back. The dragon lunged to grab at it and missed. The bright silver streaked toward the earth like the fall of a god’s tear.
Calondir.
She saw the very moment Dragos lost control. It looked as if an invisible hand lifted him up and flipped him over so that he turned completely upside down. He twisted in midair, like a gigantic cat trying to land on its feet.
One of his massive, powerful wings snapped like a twig. Suddenly he plunged downward in an escalating spiral.
Then the sound of the dragon’s body as it struck the valley floor rolled through the air like thunder.
SEVENTEEN
No, nothing did shine forever.
Everything, even the universe itself, would end eventually.
The wind died down as suddenly as it had sprung up. It was no longer needed.
Dragos sprawled on the valley floor. Calondir lay nearby. The Elf Lord’s head angled toward him, one arm flung out. The fingers of his hand curled over his palm as if he cupped something immeasurably precious. His face appeared young and peaceful, wiped clean of grief and stress. He looked like he had fallen asleep.
Dragos tried to move, and jagged pain tore through him. He felt as if someone had embedded shards of glass throughout his body. Mentally he assessed the damage. Broken neck and back, shattered ribs, and one broken wing.
It would take a lot more than a fall like that to kill him.
It would probably take all of the enthralled Elves who gathered around to gaze at him with empty eyes. He flexed the talons of one paw, but he lacked the ability to lift his front leg. His ribs had punctured one of his lungs, and he couldn’t draw in a deep enough breath to spit fire. He needed time to recover, time to whisper a beguilement to combat Gaeleval’s control over the Elves that drew close. Time that he didn’t have.
Beluviel walked into his line of sight. She was filthy and wore a torn, silken nightgown, and she carried a sword encrusted with dried blood. Barefoot, she left tracks of bright red in the snow, and long, tangled dark hair fell about her blank face like a shroud.
She knelt on one knee beside his head. “You should have listened to me when I warned you, Beast,” she said. “I really am the Bringer of the End of Days.” She stroked his snout gently, then braced one hand on him while she raised the sword over her head, angling the sharp tip toward one of his eyes.
A mountain fell out of the sky, and agony exploded as pieces of it landed on him. A second later, his mind processed what he had actually seen and spat out the information.
Graydon had plummeted with killing speed, shapeshifting into his human form even as he slammed into Beluviel and knocked her away from Dragos’s head. The tip of her sword sliced the corner of Dragos’s eyelid as it flew out of her hand. Pia and Eva, who had been riding on the gryphon’s back, tumbled onto Dragos in an uncontrolled tangle of arms and legs.
A steaming trickle of blood from the cut slid down the side of his face. More agony, as Eva unceremoniously rolled off of him and leaped to the ground, drawing both swords that had been strapped to her back. She lunged to engage the Elves that crowded close, her dark features lit with ferocity.
Pia scrambled over the mound of his shoulder and slithered on her stomach headfirst to land in an awkward heap on the ground just under his chin. She wore her armor, he noticed with satisfaction, and she carried her crossbow slung over one shoulder along with a belt of bolts.
Dragging herself to her knees, she screamed at him, “Where are you hurt?”
He coughed, and that was agonizing too. He told her telepathically, Neck, back, ribs, wing.
“Goddammit,” she said. “The only other two times I did this there was an actual wound.”
What did she mean, the other two times? She had healed him once when they had run from the Goblin army. Who else had she healed?
I am actually wounded, he told her, bemused.
“That’s not what I meant,” she snarled. “I meant the wounds were on the surface and visible.”
She looked and sounded demented. She yanked a crossbow bolt out of the belt and raked the tip of it down one of her forearms, from elbow to wrist. Blood and Power poured from the deep cut. Then she turned and jammed her entire arm into his mouth.
He gagged as her elbow hit the back of his tongue. I am overwhelmed by your bedside manner.