Shadow of Flame

by Caitlyn McFarland

  She grunted when the harness around her waist, still connected to one intact strap, pulled her up short. Her legs kicked. A thousand feet below, the sea churned. Winded, deaf and unable to see past Rhys’s bulk, she caught hold of the strap and hauled herself up. Inside her, the fire had become a whirling, tight inferno. Kai’s lungs burned. Her shoulders felt like they were about to give out. She was shouting, desperate and terrified for something she had lost.

  No, wait. That was Rhys. He was crying out in words she didn’t understand.

  She let herself sink deeper, until the babble of inaudible syllables resolved into meaning. He was thinking in Welsh.

  “Sunder me, she’s gone. She’s gone!” Anguish blossomed inside him, a dark, endless gulf of terror and pain.

  “I’m here. Rhys, it’s all right. I’m fine.”

  Rhys’s wings faltered, and they dropped several feet. Relief. Then warmth, like stepping close to a fire after a freezing winter night.

  A slender white missile shot past, at least a foot long and an inch thick.

  “Get down!” Rhys shouted into her head, the spell of the moment broken.

  Kai hunkered close to his neck, and he shot flame at the Quetzal as they soared by. Still, she heard nothing but ringing. “Am I going to be deaf?”

  The Elemental appeared in front of them, its hide scorched black on one side. Rhys raked it with his talons. Through him, Kai caught a flash of pink shining flesh and red spurting blood. “No. You’re Wingless. It will take more than that.”

  The Bida bore down on Rhys from above and behind, but Rhys was occupied fighting off the Quetzal. There was no way he could dodge in time, and in his dragon body, he could only breathe fire, not conjure it like she could. That meant his range was limited. He couldn’t breathe fire at a dragon coming from behind.

  With a rush, Kai realized that her movement didn’t have to be limited. Her harness half-free of its anchor, she was dangling from one intact strap and the looser “in case of emergency” rope. Making a split-second decision, she burned through the strap. Now only secured to Rhys by the rope, which was hooked by a metal ring to a collar of leather around his neck, she got her feet under her and stood.

  Wind whipped her hair and clothes, and she wobbled. She sank deeper into Rhys’s mind. Deep enough to tap in to the instinct that allowed him to maneuver through the sky. Giving herself over to their connection, she turned on his back as easily as a dancer on a stage. Elation thrilled in her blood. Connected like this aimed her tingling, upraised palms at the Bida and let the fire go.

  A plume of flame shot from her hands, hitting the bronze dragon directly in the face. It opened its mouth. Through Rhys, Kai heard a dim echo of its agonized roar. The fire stuck to it, spreading to its wings. Its mouth still open, the Bida fell in a ball of flame down, down, down, until the fire winked out as it hit the ocean.

  Her breath hitched, and she blinked unbidden tears from her eyes. She’d just killed someone. Again.

  Kai didn’t have time to wrap her brain around what she’d done, however, because she and Rhys were still under attack. Kai braced one foot against a spike and bent her knees as Rhys shot upward to avoid the Elemental’s slashing claws. Rhys crested. Kai leaned back against the harness’s remaining strap, letting out a high whoop of sheer adrenaline as they dove toward the Quetzal.

  The Elemental slammed into Rhys’, its talons sinking deep into the flesh of one of his back legs. Kai cried out at Rhys’s pain, his roar vibrating through her feet and legs. The Quetzal, who had avoided Rhys’s dive, twisted and lifted a foreclaw, pointing its projectile bone spur directly at Rhys’s heart.

  “Roll!” Kai commanded.

  “No!”

  “ROLL!”

  He did. For an endless, weightless moment, Kai’s body strained against the harness, the world turning upside down. If the rope broke, she would go shooting away from him, too far and too fast for him to catch her.

  The rope held. Rhys righted himself. A thrill of adrenaline burst inside her. She was a dragon rider. And it was freaking awesome.

  “Sit. Down.” Rhys ground out inside her mind.

  “Hell no!” She stood, bracing one leg against a neck spike, the rhythm of his flight as ingrained in her as breathing. He dodged to one side, and she flung her weight, turning with him. Flame lit the night.

  “Sit!” Rhys commanded.

  “No. This is my life. This is my call.”

  As one, she and Rhys banked hard to the side. When they came around, they were facing the Elemental and the Quetzal. Flying almost on top of each other, the two dragons came for Rhys in ringing, eerie silence.

  Without thinking, Kai pinched a wire of fire off the storm inside her and began to coil it. But instead of leaving it hollow, like she did the floating balls of light Rhys had taught her to make, she poured in the incinerating heat from the very heart of her fire. Cocking her arm back, she launched it at the Quetzal just as it raised both its foreclaws and shot two white missiles.

  Rhys let out a stream of flame, and the Elemental’s skin blackened and bubbled. Kai’s ball of pulsing blue light streaked over Rhys’s head and exploded against the Quetzal’s chest, fire flaring to envelope the front half its body.

  Blinding pain blossomed in Rhys’s mind as one of the poisoned bone missiles buried itself high in the left side of Rhys’s chest. He faltered, and he and Kai hung in the air for a moment. Then he fell. The Quetzal fell with them, its feathered wings leaving streaks of fire against the night.

  “Rhys!”

  With an effort that drew a moan of sympathy and then a cry of phantom pain from Kai’s lips, Rhys snapped open his wings. A hundred feet below, the Quetzal smashed into the sea.

  Kai looked up, frantically searching for the last dragon. But the Elemental had gone, either too wounded to continue, or it thought that Rhys was dead.

  Rhys’s consciousness flickered, and they lost altitude again.

  “Rhys! Stay with me. The island. Where’s the island?”

  An image flashed through his mind. He flapped unsteadily, losing more height.

  Swearing, Kai grasped one of the straps that ran from Rhys’s back down beneath his chest and used it and the leather collar to slide herself down until she was hanging at his collarbone. Below her, the end of the spike protruded from Rhys’s chest. Kai flipped upside down and stretched. Wrapping her fingers around the smooth bone, she yanked. The ocean drew nearer.

  If she hadn’t had the extra strength of being Wingless, she wouldn’t have been able to do it. Gritting her teeth, she braced her elbows against his scaled body and pulled out the shaft.

  His relief was immediate. Panting, Kai chanced a question. “How much farther?”

  “Not...far. Get on my back...or you’ll...be...crushed.”

  Kai pulled herself along the strap. Her head came over his back, and she saw the island, its sand glowing as bright as snow in the light of the moon.

  Rhys sank lower. They passed the outer sandbar. Kai unhooked her carabiner and leapt free just as he crashed into the shallow water of the lagoon.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Premonition

  Seren awoke in darkness, the weight of premonition heavy against her mind, a warning singing in her blood.

  Something was wrong.

  She rose, shuffling to her window to look at the sea, the nearest islands of the archipelago visible in the moonlit distance. And beyond them, something was unfolding that would bring part of her vision to pass. Night wakeups like this were frequent, but frustrating. She never knew what was happening. Or where. Or to whom, though she assumed it was usually Rhys or Owain or some other person to actually did things.

  Seren paused, holding her breath. Down in the audience chamber, someone was rattling the gate.

  Startled, Seren glan
ced through her open door and across the hall, to the room where Iolani slept. It was dark. The Protector didn’t stir.

  The rattle came again.

  “Io—” Her caretaker’s name died on her lips.

  Perhaps it was Angharad. Perhaps Seren would just see what the fuss was about by herself.

  She pulled a draping dress over her head, followed by her gloves and veil. Then she slipped down the hall, and through the audience chamber, approaching to the gate at the exterior door. A small, pale girl stood beyond, shaking the delicate metal with all her strength. “Protector! Protector Iolani!”

  She gasped when she saw Seren. “Golden Lady!” The girl bowed, pressing both hands to her forehead. It was Angharad, the juvenile Seren had set to tailing Deryn. “I have news! It’s Princess Aderyn.”

  Seren’s heart leapt into her throat. “What about her?” She undid the latch and slid the gate aside, stepping out into the calming simplicity of the white stone hallway.

  “Golden Lady, she’s gone.”

  Fear circled icy fingers around Seren’s heart. “Gone where?”

  Angharad shook her head, but began to walk. “I don’t know. Some of the other juveniles and I were watching her rooms, as you asked. We saw her take off. She headed north.”

  North. There were many things in the north, but only one that might make Deryn slip away in the middle of the night. “When?”

  “Just now, Lady. Perhaps fifteen minutes ago. I haven’t heard the sentries, so she must have made it past them.”

  Seren picked up her skirts. “We must run, Angharad. I’m not as familiar with Eryri as I should be. Will you take me to the nearest exit?”

  Angharad nodded. They sprinted down spiraling stairs, across vast rooms, and through wide corridors. Angharad, though a child, had no trouble keeping up with Seren, likely thanks to the requisite training every young dragon—except the Seeress—had to go through.

  They ran out into onto the main path that spiraled down the interior of Eryri, abandoned at this time of night, and down a side tunnel, onto a public ledge.

  Seren turned to Angharad, winded and panting. Rhys and Ashem were gone, so her message would have to go to someone else Rhys trusted. “I need you to find Subcommander Ffion.” Seren moved toward the edge of the wide ledge. Deryn was getting farther every moment. “Tell her what’s happened. She can send someone to bring Rhys back from the Sacred Isle. I will go after my sister. I’ll stop her before she gets too far.”

  Seren called the change, shifting from human woman to golden dragon.

  “But Lady,” Angharad called up to her, “how do you know you’ll be able to find the princess?”

  Seren lowered her head until she was looking at the slight girl eye to eye. “Listen to me, Angharad. There is a chance I might be wrong, so you must not breathe a word of this to anyone but the king. I believe Princess Aderyn has gone to meet Mair. Tell him that, but tell no one else. If the Council knew...”

  Seren’s tail lashed. If the Council knew Deryn had gone to visit Mair so close on the heels of the debacle with Kai, it would be disastrous.

  Saying goodbye to Angharad, Seren leapt from the ledge and into the sky, pushing herself faster than she normally would. Deryn had twenty or thirty minutes’ head start, but there were a limited number of islands dragons used as waystations between Eryri and where Mair made her home, far to the north. She flew on through the night, skimming each waystation as she passed, searching for signs of life.

  Finally, an hour after dawn, exhausted, infuriated and barely able to stay in the sky, she found Deryn on a sandy spit of land hardly larger than a sandbar. A stand of trees large enough to hide a few dragons stood at its center, and the beach held the remnants of claw marks and curved swaths of sand formed by a dragon’s tail.

  Seren flew over once. Beneath the trees, she caught the glitter of azure.

  “Aderyn ferch Mair o’r Draig!” Seren landed on the beach. There was little undergrowth. From this angle, Deryn’s bulk was clearly visible.

  Deryn lifted her head, her huge jaws cracking open in a yawn, revealing a long, red tongue and sharp, white teeth. She blinked. “Seren?”

  “What are you doing out here? Not keeping a very good watch, for one thing. What if I had been one of Owain’s patrols?”

  Deryn stretched and rose, slinking out onto the beach. She ignored the second question. “How did you find me?”

  Seren’s lip curled. “You aren’t exactly subtle. Allying with Mair is all you’ve talked about for weeks. It wasn’t hard to reason out where you were going. And you left claw marks everywhere.”

  “Yes, but how do you know where I’m going? Mother only told me where she lives last night.”

  “Cadoc.” Seren folded her wings to hide the lie.

  Deryn lashed her tail. “You’ve known where she is and you didn’t say anything?”

  Seren flicked her wings, brushing away the question. “Why would I?”

  “Because she’s our mother!”

  “She’s Warbringer! She’s the reason our father is dead. The reason Owain has repeatedly tried to kill Rhys and you.”

  Curls of steam escaped Deryn’s lips, twisting upward. “Go home, Seren. You don’t belong outside of Eryri.”

  Seren’s tail lashed. She’d probably spent more time outside of Eryri than Rhys and Deryn combined. She might not be a warrior, but she wasn’t helpless. “I’m not going until you agree to come with me.”

  Deryn’s wings unfurled, raising slightly. “That isn’t going to happen.”

  Seren stepped back, her own wings rising despite herself. There was no way Seren would be able to physically detain Deryn, a trained soldier. Nor to keep up if Deryn took it in her head to race away.

  A rushing filled the air. Seren looked up, her heart slamming into her ribs when she saw a dozen dragons from different clans descending on the sandbar. Seren tensed to fly, but they were surrounded.

  The dragons landed. A Naga female, brilliantly orange with shades of pink and yellow, came to rest nearest to them and lowered her head, touching her nose with one foreclaw, as it was too short to reach her forehead. “Princess Aderyn. And Golden Lady Seren. Seeress, we were not expecting you. We are honored.”

  Seren, mute with surprise, nodded in return. She didn’t know this dragon. Nor any of them. None of them were from Eryri. She recited the formal greeting without thinking. “The light illuminates you, sister Naga. I’m afraid I don’t know your name.”

  “I am Rajani.” She turned to Deryn. “Highness, are you ready? I know you’ve been flying all night, but Lady Mair was insistent that we come as fast as possible.”

  “I’m ready.” Deryn came out from beneath the trees onto the crowded beach. “Goodbye, Seren. Go home.”

  Rajani nodded to Seren once again. “Lady Seeress, many among the rogues will be pleased to hear that we saw you. Perhaps you could come, too? For a brief visit.”

  Taken aback, Seren shook her head. “I’m needed in Eryri.”

  Rajani lowered her muzzle sadly. “The Seeress has a duty to all her people, even the rogues. The people of Eryri see you every day. Either we must travel there, where the people are hostile to our choice not to involve ourselves in the war, or we don’t see you at all.”

  Seren wavered. Truly, she did have a duty to all dragons. Perhaps she had been neglecting her duties by staying in Eryri. She hesitated, wishing she could ask Iolani’s advice.

  Deryn growled. “Decide, Seren. We’re leaving.”

  Seren ran sand through her claws. “I...I don’t know. What about Rhys?”

  Rajani plucked a charm from the chain that draped across her forehead and showed it to Seren. “Lady, the Queen Dowager has given me a record. It explains where your sister has gone. As this island is a waystation, we were going to leave it here to be d
iscovered by the king.”

  “Why didn’t you just leave him a note at home?” Seren demanded of Deryn.

  Deryn glared. “For this exact reason. I wanted to get a head start. Rhys would lock me in the cells before he let me visit Mother. Come or don’t Seren. Rhys will blow like a volcano, but he’ll get over it.”

  Slowly, Seren nodded. “I’ll come.”

  Rajani’s mouth opened in a dragon smile. “Wonderful. I’ll make sure to leave the message where they can find it.”

  In her blood, the premonition sang.

  Chapter Thirty

  Set Me on Fire

  Dimly, Rhys felt his pain diminish as Kai, so tiny compared to his dragon body, pulled the bone spike from his stomach. Sharp, bright pain brought him back to himself. Salt water in the wounds from the Quetzal’s spikes and the gash from the Elemental on his back leg.

  As if from a distance, Rhys felt a pain that wasn’t his. Kai was clinging to his side with one hand. “What happened?”

  She shook her head, her white mask pushed back, black hair plastered to her face. “I jumped free when you fell and smashed myself against a rock. I think I dislocated my shoulder. My ears are working, though. So that’s something.”

  “Hang on to me.” Rhys dragged himself across the shallow water toward the beach until Kai could touch. The island was small and rocky, with high, sheltering cliffs that extended into the lagoon. He half-dragged himself out of the water and called the change.

  Human once more, he staggered up the beach and collapsed. Hot blood trickled down his leg. The puncture wound to his chest was the worst—there was a lot of internal bleeding. He didn’t have much control over how he healed, but he could focus the energy somewhat. Not that it would matter—the gashes on his leg cut almost to the bone. Ancients, if he didn’t stop it, he was going to bleed out.

  Kai sat down hard next to him. Her clothing was shredded, her hair wild, her knees drawn up to her chest. “Will the one that survived come back?”