Fair point.
Wind bites at my face, and tears streak from my eyes, but I’m not going to waste precious arm movements on getting my goggles from my pack. We emerge from the cloud cover and level out just beneath it.
“The ascents are clear,” Tairn says. “We will not risk the high ground if there are no riders to defend.” With great beats of his wings, we jolt upward, back into the mist.
“Are there other dragons out here?” I reach for the buckle of Dain’s belt and carefully pull the leather aside to slip my arm free. I’m going to need it as soon as we’re done. “I don’t want to hit anyone by accident.” Even if hitting the wyvern would probably be an accident, given my aim.
“They’re all above, guarding the riders.”
“Good.” We fly straight through the thickest parts of the cloud, but there’s no trace of the wyvern.
Until they—as in two of them—fly by on either side of us, streaks of gray in the otherwise endless white.
“Shit.”
Tairn flies high, pushing up into blue sky.
Clouds stretch from the cliffs over the surrounding landscape. No wonder the riot didn’t see the wyvern. They have the perfect cover.
And Cianna isn’t powerful enough to dissipate all this.
Use it. That’s what Brennan suggested.
Wyvern aren’t just alive…they’re created. They carry a form of energy forced into them by dark wielders.
“I have an idea.”
“I approve.” Tairn sails into the cloud cover. “I’ve told Gaothal to instruct his rider to stop eliminating the clouds and instead push them away from the cliff.”
“Just from where the path is. Until then, keep the wyvern distracted.” I clutch the pommel of the saddle with my uninjured hand and shove my right hand into my flight jacket between the buttons to stabilize my shoulder as much as possible.
Then Tairn dives back into the mist.
“Only two that Aotrom can see,” Tairn announces, his wings beating the clouds into little swirl patterns behind us. “The cover has thinned enough to the north to make out their shapes.”
“A patrol?”
“Riderless,” he confirms.
“Thank you, Zihnal.” I lean forward as tears streak from the corners of my eyes. “I know, I know. Dragons pay no heed to our gods.”
Tairn snorts, following a pattern of swirls similar to his own. He’s tracking the wyvern.
“You’re faster than they are, right?” Fear licks down my spine.
“Don’t insult me when we’re headed into battle.”
“Right,” I mutter to myself.
“Feel like using the conduit?” Tairn asks as two tails appear ahead.
“Nope. Aiming is detrimental to the goal.”
“Understood.” His wings beat faster, propelling us to a speed that leaves my stomach behind and narrows my vision as he pulls up above the wyvern to catch their attention.
It works, and my stomach hollows as we switch from the predator to the prey.
“If there were only one, I’d rip his throat out and call it a day.”
“I know.” But there’s no guarantee that there are only two.
“Hold on, Silver One.”
I buckle down, making myself as small as possible and lying across the saddle to minimize air resistance as Tairn moves at a pace I’ve never experienced. It takes all my effort to breathe, to fight the night at the edge of my vision, to just stay conscious as he bolts out of the clouds, then plummets back into the cover a breath later.
“They followed.”
“Great.” My fucking teeth are rattling. “How is that cloud cover? Because I can’t wield if I’m passed out.”
“They are almost clear.”
I grit my teeth and ignore the throbbing ache of my shoulder. The clouds have to clear the path, or there’s every chance I’ll kill Ridoc and Brennan if they’re still on the trail.
“We’re rolling,” he warns me a second before he does so, executing a move that disorients me thoroughly, a move most riders can’t hold their seat for.
My stomach lurches into my lungs as he levels out, flying back the opposite way and dropping us directly under the wyvern. “I know we’re not supposed to question dragons—”
“Then don’t.”
A set of pointed gray claws falls rapidly toward us. “Tairn!”
He banks hard right, then climbs quickly. “The clouds have cleared the trail.”
My heart speeds to a gallop. “Make sure they’re following us.”
“Don’t turn around, or you might actually pass out,” he instructs, flying faster.
I slide my hand out of my jacket with a wince, then gasp with pain as I rotate my palms downward and open myself to Tairn’s power. It flows through me, filling my muscles, my veins, the very marrow of my bones until I am power and power is me. My skin starts to hum, then sizzle.
We break through the clouds, and I throw my arms wide, pushing past the pain and screaming with it all in the same breath, setting the molten energy within me free, and for the first time in my life, I force the power downward.
Energy erupts through me, searing my skin on the way out as lightning strikes within the cloud below us, webbing out like the many branches of an overgrown briar patch, twisting and turning, drawn to the energy harnessed within the wyvern.
Four distinct shapes light up beneath us, two directly under and two closer to the edge of the cliff, flashing brightly with the endless stream of power.
“Break free!” Tairn demands.
I force my palms shut and shove the Archives door in my mind closed, blocking the endless torrent of Tairn’s power before I end up in the same condition I’d been in at Basgiath under Carr and Varrish’s punishment.
The flashing stops.
“Go!” I shout down the bond, clutching my right arm with my left as Tairn banks deeply to the left and dives for the ground.
This time, the wind is a welcome reprieve from the heat of my skin and the burn within my lungs as we pass through the cloud and emerge on the other side.
Four wyvern carcasses litter the ground, one in the middle of the very field we’d stood in this morning. Tairn flies over each just long enough to be sure that they are, in fact, riderless, and we’re joined by four others in the riot on one last sweep of the area.
Then we climb again, soaring through the clouds and coming out at the edge of the cliff, where everyone has gathered. Some gryphons load into heavy wagons with stumbling steps while others appear to have lost consciousness on the ground, but the fliers are all standing, as are the squads of riders.
Tairn quickly locates ours, and riders scurry as he drops to an abrupt landing.
“You could have crushed someone,” I lecture.
“Could have, but alas, they moved.”
I spot Rhiannon and Sawyer with Ridoc braced between them, walking him toward Aotrom, and breathe a sigh of relief.
“What? You thought I’d let your friend die?” Brennan asks, folding his arms and tilting his head up at me from where he stands next to Bodhi and Dain to the right of Tairn’s foreleg.
“Never doubted you for a second.” I force a smile.
“Want to get your ass down here and let me mend that shoulder?” He wields the older brother disapproving stare like the professional he is.
“Not particularly.” I grimace and haul Dain’s belt back into position, refusing to take the chance that I won’t be able to mount again if a mending session knocks me out.
“So fucking stubborn,” Brennan mutters, shoving his hands through his hair. “How did you know you could kill them like that?”
“I didn’t.” I breathe through the wave of pain that threatens to pull me under as I let the weight of my shoulder fall into the makeshift sling. “Wyvern are created with dark wielder magic, and Felix said something to me about energy fields the other day. I took a chance that the lightning would be drawn to their magic, and Tairn agreed to try.”
Brennan’s jaw drops slightly and Dain bites back an uncharacteristic smile, reminding me of the years when he cared more about climbing trees than our curfew.
“Chance panned out,” Bodhi says, flat-out grinning.