It was with sickening satisfaction that Wren and Aurora flew up higher to watch the carnage of the ship being torn apart by six fearsome beasts, the Verlanti soldiers helpless to resist. But the satisfaction of watching quickly dissipated. With six dragons all together, they made far too easy a target for crossbow bolts, and it wasn’t long before a dozen were being fired through the air.
Wren scanned the smoke and fog to try and catch sight of Jed, but when she located the naval captain, her heart sank. He’d been shot through the heart with a well-aimed spear. And with no captain, Wren knew it was only a matter of time before the rest of the navy fell. This was a suicide mission.
Don’t think like that. As long as one Rider is fighting, there is hope.
Once again, she shored up her nerves before directing Aurora down, down, down, toward one of the largest Verlantian ships. But they did not pull out of the dive this time; instead, Aurora landed directly on the deck of the ship, the wooden boards groaning dangerously beneath her claws. Wren wasted no time yanking her bow from her back and loosing a slew of arrows, screaming alongside Aurora’s roars as together they felled one soldier after another after another.
“If I am going down,” she bellowed, hair flailing wildly around her face, “then I am taking you all with me!”
She meant every word of it.
8
Arrik
A flash of red in the stormy sky caught Arrik’s attention, but he knew better than to let it distract him. He focused back on the battle. It was a deep-blue massacre on the seas, where the only light to be seen was either a flash of white when a cannonball was loosed or the ugly orange of explosives going off.
“Commander, to your—”
Arrik did not need to hear the rest of his soldier’s warning. For before his comrade finished his sentence, he swung his heavy axe around and caught his would-be attacker square in the forehead. The Lorne soldier had no helmet upon his head; the poor sod never stood a chance.
He stared down at the slain solider and felt nothing. Logically, he should have felt something. Guilt, fear, satisfaction. Arrik turned away from the man and scanned the battle.
Verlanti had been planning their invasion for a long, long time. Having to stand and listen to the ‘negotiations’ his father and his council pretended to go along with during peace talks with Lorne had been, at the very least, tragic. The country had been doomed from the start: how had King Oswin ever imagined he could keep his tiny kingdom full of black diamonds and impossibly valuable dragons safe from Arrik’s covetous, war-happy father?
Part of him admired Oswin’s determination, but the other part said that the Lorne king had been a fool. No one won against Verlanti.
What your father wants, he gets.
Now the King of the Dragon Isles was no more, as was his queen, and soon the heir to the throne would be in the grasp of the elves.
All Arrik had to do was wipe their navy clean off the map first.
He squinted as he spied the flash of red in the sky once more. It was getting closer now, closer, closer, and then, in one fell swoop, it disappeared back into the smog and smoke and clouds.
“A Rider,” he murmured, before turning back to the far more pressing matter of securing their victory. One lone Rider could be dealt with later.
He braced himself against the railing of the Lorne ship he and his men had commandeered and wiped the rain from his eyes. Verlanti didn’t necessarily need any more ships, but it was senseless to destroy an otherwise high-quality vessel when its occupants could just be tossed into the sea.
The Dragon Isles people were like rats. They could survive almost anything.
His father’s motto was to take no prisoners.
Arrik had lived his life by those words. He’d made a career out of it.
Prisoners made things complicated. Prisoners made things messy. Unless someone was the literal heir to the throne, there was little point in taking them hostage. Verlanti had enough slaves to last eons.
“Commander!” another one of his men shouted. “Dragons!”
Arrik pushed his wet braid from his face and tilted his face toward the sky. “Why were they not shut down upon impact?” he demanded. The Riders were supposed to have already been dealt with. “What are the crossbows for, if not to shoot down dragons?” It pained him to take down the dragons, but he had to do what was necessary.
The soldier pointed at something in the sky.
Another flash of red.
“That Rider kept the crew of the ship distracted,” Shane called from the bow. “The dragon is too fast; every bolt thrown into the sky misses them.”
Impressive.
Maybe he needed to rethink the policy of taking prisoners. A skilled Rider and dragon would be an asset. Learning the dragon’s language, as well as controlling them, wouldn’t be easy without an ambassador of some sort.
“The Vengeance is burning!” one of his men shouted, his voice barely carrying over the chaos of sounds.
Arrik gritted his teeth and glared at one of his burning ships. The Vengeance contained double the number of soldiers as their other ships. He’d already taken far more losses than anticipated. Verlanti would win, yes, but the losses were heavier than his father would accept.
He would not go unscathed for this.
But there was nothing to be done about it now. He’d dispatch their dragons and the Riders as swiftly as possible, then obliterate the rest of the Lorne navy.
Though it had cost them one of his larger ships and a considerable number of men, the dragons all being in one location for their attack was now to Arrik’s advantage. He caught Shane’s eye and, via hand signals, passed a quick series of orders along.
His second nodded and sent along the message.
All crossbows were to be aimed at the ship of dragons.
Arrik held his hand high and then dropped it, and a dozen bolts were sent flying simultaneously, sharply whistling through the air.
There was a certain amount of sadness as he watched the dragons try—and fail—to escape the deadly metal bolts by flying upward, only to be pierced in the wing, the chest, or the leg before inevitably crashing down into the sea. They were majestic beasts without greed, deception, or ambition. They didn’t deserve their fate.
May the waters receive you.
A piercing shriek cut the air, and his attention was drawn back to that flash of red in the sky. It was almost as if the beast could vanish in thin air. The only way he could discern the dragon’s location was when he caught sight of its Rider’s blazing red hair.
“Shoot it down!” he bellowed.
He watched as the dragon and its rider came hurtling down at a frightening speed and, instead of diving back up, crashed onto the deck of the ship next to Arrik’s. The dragon was smaller than most of its kin, and now, observing it against the wooden planks of a ship, he realized that its scales were an impossibly beautiful, pearlescent white, that seemed to reflect almost any color of its environment.
A stunning creature.
His gaze moved to the Rider.
All sounds ceased.
It was a woman.
Emotion rushed to the surface for the first time.
Her wild mane of red hair whipped around her in a frenzy as she released arrow after arrow. Not a single one flew false. Something about this took Arrik firmly aback. Female warriors were uncommon in his land and looked down upon. He should have loathed the sight of her, but there was something frightening and exciting about the woman. She seemed to be as untamed as the beast she rode upon.
“Bring her down!” his second commanded.
Movement caught his eye, and he pulled out a short sword from his belt with his left hand when he spotted two Lorne soldiers climbing aboard. Arrik attacked, each movement made with brutal efficiency until he was the only one standing.
His gaze once again sought the fierce beauty.
It was a pity she was fighting on the wrong side.