“Remind me to thank her afterward.” He pulls me into another quick kiss, then turns away without another word, mounting Sgaeyl at a run.
I glance up at the sky and breathe deeply to carry the pressure my mother has just put on me. The storm will help me, but if the rain increases, it will cost us the help of the gryphons. They can’t fly in anything much heavier than a drizzle.
“They’ll guard the ground and ferry the wounded,” Tairn says as he lowers his shoulder. I walk up his foreleg, rain splattering against his scales. Settling into the saddle, I buckle the strap across my thighs and check to be sure the quiver Maren gave me is securely fastened to the left side of the saddle, within easy reach. I don’t want to risk my shoulder slipping out by strapping it to my back. Then I grab the conduit from my pocket and slip the new steel bracelet attached to the top of it over my wrist.
Only then, when I’m certain I’m as prepared as I can be, when power flows through my veins with a heat that doesn’t quite burn, do I look forward to the approaching enemy.
My heartbeat stutters.
Gods, they’re everywhere, their horde larger than any riot I’ve ever seen.
Flying at multiple altitudes—most equal with our position—the sea of gray wings, straining necks, and gaping jaws devours the sunrise.
We’ve grossly underestimated their numbers, and knowing there’s another wave following this? My throat tightens as I glance down the line of my squad. There’s no chance all of us are getting out of this alive…if any of us do.
But we just have to hold out long enough for Brennan to mend the wardstone. If we can raise the wards, even if Jesinia doesn’t find what we missed in Aretia, we can stun the wyvern long enough to kill them.
Within a few breaths, the wyvern are close enough that I can make out which of them bears a rider, and when I reach two dozen in the count, I stop for the sake of my own sanity. Terror slides up my spine, and I breathe deeply to force it back down. I’m no good to Tairn and Andarna—to anyone in my squad—if I give in to panic, and I’ll be even worse, a liability, if I don’t keep fully in control.
They’ll be within range in only minutes.
“Maybe we should have ridden out. Engaged them over the plains.” I can’t help but second-guess our plan as fear tightens my chest and speeds my heart rate.
“There are too many of them. They could have flanked and surrounded us easily. Here, we know every canyon, every peak, and they cannot circumvent us,” Tairn answers.
They’ll have to go through us.
“They’re spreading out,” Tairn says, his head swiveling. “Their formation indicates they’ll engage all our forces instead of targeting the Vale as we’d planned for.”
My stomach plummets. We’ve allocated ourselves poorly. “Then we’ll just have to be sure they never reach the Vale, won’t we?”
“You’ll only have a clear firing field for a matter of seconds,” Tairn reminds me.
“I know.” Once the dragons engage, I’m just as likely to strike one of our own as I am a wyvern. This first strike counts for everything. I lift my hands and open the Archives door to a steady but manageable flow of power, savoring the quick sizzle along my skin that comes with the rush of energy.
“Tell Aimsir I need Mom to move that cloud—”
“Yes,” Tairn says, following my stream of thoughts to its conclusion before I even voice them.
I let the conduit rest against my forearm and concentrate on the cloud above us, blinking the steady fall of rain from my eyes.
The dragons beside us begin to shift their weight, their shoulders rolling in preparation to launch, but Tairn remains as still as the mountain we stand on. I spare a single glance over my shoulder for Andarna, but— “Where are you?” The battle hasn’t even started yet and she’s already left her position.
“Hiding like I promised.” She peeks out from a cluster of boulders.
“Get ready,” Tairn orders as the clouds roll overhead at a supernatural speed, rushing toward the enemy.
I focus on the horde. Without an outlet, power builds within me, so hot I start to think I might breathe fire, and I let it gather, let it burn, let it threaten to consume me.
“Violet…” Xaden says.
“Not yet,” I answer. They’ll be on us in seconds, but it has to be the right second. Sweat beads on my forehead.
“Violet!”
My mother’s storm overtakes the wyvern at the highest altitude, and I release the torrent of scalding power, aiming it skyward.
Lightning cracks, jolting upward from the very ground of the ridge beneath ours in a blast of light so powerful it stings my eyes as it strikes into the cloud.
I drop my arms as the bodies fall. “Maybe this will be easier than—” Never mind. The wyvern’s tactics adjust within seconds, just like the riders who control them, and they fly under the cloud cover, swerving to dodge plummeting carcasses of their horde.
“Holy shit!” Ridoc shouts as wyvern crash into the four roads that lead to Basgiath, their bodies leaving deep furrows in the ground.
That won’t work again, so I slide the orb into my palm and summon power once more, drawing a faster, more concentrated stream as I target the nearest rider-bearing wyvern.
Fire whips through me as I wield, missing that wyvern but hitting another. Shit.
“Focus on the next strike, not the last,” Tairn says.
“Hold!” Xaden shouts, keeping the field clear long enough for me to fire off another strike.
I lift my hands again, giving Tairn’s power dominion over my bones and muscles, then draw another strike to wield. Energy tears through me, and instead of flaring my palms, I concentrate on the intent of my fingers just like Felix taught me, drawing them downward with the strike, directing it to the target as though I am the composer and the lightning is my orchestra.
It strikes true, the wyvern and rider falling in separate, lifeless descents. A handful of other wyvern fall from the sky with the death of that dark wielder, but there’s no time for relief or joy at the accomplishment when there are countless more.
And they’re here.
My mother’s squad launches to attack the first wave that intrudes upon their assigned sector. Aimsir rips the throat from one wyvern before I lose sight of my mother and Mira as the horde passes through their sector and into the next.
“Focus on your sector,” Tairn orders, and I rip my gaze from the area I’d last seen my family.
Second by second, each of the squads around and below us launch to defend their sectors, and when the first menacing gray snout crosses our line—the end of Basgiath’s structures and the beginning of the mountain—I brace.
Tairn rears back, then hurtles forward, beating his wings as he runs for the edge of the ridgeline, then flying off it. I yank my goggles over my eyes at the first sting of wind, then quickly shove them back up when rain makes the glass impossible to see through.
“That one’s ours,” Tarin tells me, flying directly for the fastest of the horde to enter our airspace.
Quinn and Imogen bank left, heading toward other targets, and I see the rest of the squad in my peripherals, but I keep my focus on the wyvern Tairn has claimed as we fly toward a head-on collision.
I grasp the conduit with one hand and lift my other as the space between us narrows to heartbeats. There’s no need to reach for power; it’s already there, both racing through my veins and charging the sky overhead.
Energy sizzles at the ends of my fingertips, and just as I aim to wield, the riderless wyvern drops his jaw and breathes out a stream of green fire. My heart lurches into my throat as the flames barrel toward us, and Tairn rolls left, narrowly missing the blaze.
I throw my weight right to keep level as we pass the wyvern, keeping my focus on the creature, and then strike, drawing lightning from the cloud above. It hits the wyvern just above the tail—I didn’t calculate my strike closely enough to account for speed, but the charge is more than enough to drop it.