“Coletta’Ryu, Xin scum.” The woman Dawyn was fighting regained her footing and lunged.
Cvareh lost track of Dawyn and Cain, focusing on the fury of attacks at his front. The woman was good, better than she had any right to be. She fought as Cvareh would expect a Rider to, every attack precise and fearless. Her long claws gleamed in the moonlight as Cvareh laced his fingers with hers, gripping her hands in place.
“What do you want with the Flowers of Agendi?” he demanded.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” She kicked out her feet, tumbling backward and pulling Cvareh with her. Her claws dug into his skin as they rolled, swiping at his face and neck, seeking a blow that would incapacitate him long enough to go for his heart.
He twisted, scrambling, and a claw came out of seemingly nowhere, shooting straight through his jugular.
“I will kill you,” she snarled, leaning in toward his face.
Cvareh looked at the woman over him, gurgling blood onto the earth as her knees pinned him. He sunk under her weight as though the soft, upturned ground itself was going to engulf him whole. Cvareh saw one imperfection in the moonlight’s outline of her hair as she pulled back.
“I will watch you die, just like I watched your sister die.”
Petra.
Blood spewed from his neck as he mustered a roar that gave voice, at last, to the rage he felt boiling inside. He pushed into the ground until he found something firm enough to brace against and pressed upward. She may have the advantage, but she was off-balance with his sudden movement and he had height on her. His arm, barely long enough, whipped upward.
Her hand caught his wrist, knowing what he had been going for.
Cvareh fought against her. Magic pumped through his veins and fueled his muscles with an energy he shouldn’t possess. But she had leverage still, and used it to keep the poisoned hairpin at bay.
Just when he thought the bones in his wrist were about to snap from the woman’s grip, it slackened, and her head whipped skyward.
Everything on the island seemed to still as a glider landed, and a large, strawberry-colored Dragon stepped off.
“Yveun’Dono has requested your return,” the Rider announced. There was something undeniably familiar about her accent.
“Who are you?” The woman had yet to ease off Cvareh.
“Lesona’Kin.”
“I know of no such person.”
“Perhaps you are not worthy of such information.” The Rok Rider shrugged. “Leave, now.”
Finally, the woman eased away. Her claw extracted itself from Cvareh’s jugular, but it didn’t recess entirely. He felt his tendons beginning to knit . . . but did he dare attack in the presence of another Rider? Looking around, it seemed Cain and Dawyn had the same hesitation.
“I will not be leaving, imposter!” Cvareh’s attacker lunged.
The Rider moved with a rustle of clothes she didn’t appear to be wearing. Seemingly from nowhere, a gun unlike Cvareh had ever seen materialized. The strangeness of the thing, combined with its presence in a Dragon’s hand—and on Nova nonetheless—made Cvareh’s brain stutter to find context.
“Die.”
He knew the newcomer instantly, the moment he heard the whispered word.
The gun fired, but the discharge exploded by the grip rather than the barrel. What had been a Rok Rider moments before was now a Fenthri woman, clutching the side of her face, doubling over. But she used that motion to grab for the daggers at the small of her back.
Cvareh lunged to action. He sprinted for the Rok woman and the Fenthri—no, the Perfect Chimera—in her sights. She was several steps ahead of him, but his legs had never stepped so wide, his muscles never felt so strong, as they did in when he was working to get to her.
Whoever the Rok woman was, she was not a Rider, because she made a critical error. Cvareh sprung for her, tumbling head over heels. In the process, the hairpin she’d forgotten he still held found its way into her neck.
Cvareh quickly let go, watching as the woman’s yelp was cut short by her eyes rolling back in her head. She shuddered violently, collapsing open-mouthed and wide-eyed. Cvareh watched in horror as foam bubbled from between her lips.
He tore his eyes to the Fenthri in their midst. The earth seemed to quiet; he trusted the silence to mean that Cain and Dawyn had won their respective battles, and now stood in as much shock as Cvareh.
“Well, that rescue really blew up in my face.” Arianna rubbed her knitting skin, washed white in the pale moonlight.
Cvareh couldn’t stop his mirth and roared with laughter for the first time in what felt like forever.
Arianna
Her Dragon had finally snapped.
Arianna picked the remaining shrapnel out from her shoulder, flicking it to the ground. Cvareh was busy laughing like a fool and she waited until he stopped to take a breath.
“Are you quite done?” Arianna muttered. “The joke wasn’t that funny.”
“It was and you know it.” Cvareh steadily approached. She could smell him more keenly, see him more clearly, with every confident step. Arianna regarded him warily.
Half of her screamed for him, the other half against. Cvareh was exactly the same as he’d been, the same as he’d always be. He was a Dragon. A few months apart was a not-so-insignificant portion of her life as a Fenthri; for him, it was a blink.
“Cvareh, what’re you—”
He cut her short with arms around her, wrapping her up with bone-crushing force. Arianna felt every ripple of his muscles as he tensed against her. She breathed him in as his mouth covered hers. He tasted of daydreams and foolishness. He smelled of sweet nostalgia. The combination silenced the irritated voice trying to remind her that she should be cross with him.
He made her so soft.
“Enough,” she whispered across his mouth when he came up for air. Cvareh pulled his head back, noses still touching, questions in his eyes. “That’s enough, for now.”
“For now?”
“For now.”
At that, he finally pulled away, leaving a hulking vacuum of space where his Dragon form once was.
Arianna instantly recognized the two other Dragons in their midst. It had been some time since she’d last seen Dawyn, but she remembered the woman’s name keenly from her first affair on Nova. Cain—now there was a face she’d never forget.
“Been awhile.” Arianna was nonchalant, confronted with Cain’s anger and Dawyn’s outright confusion.
“Why are you here?” Cain growled in her direction, looking accusingly at Cvareh.
“He didn’t know I was coming either. Heard you might need some help with the flowers, and we can use them on Loom now.” Arianna looked to the Dragon corpses. One still frothed bubbles from lips frozen and parted with death. “Poison? Fighting fire with fire now?”
“No.” Cvareh turned away from her and looked to Dawyn. Arianna fought the urge to pull his face back to her. She wasn’t done having him look at her yet. “Dawyn knew they were Coletta’s, because…”