The impact was like being struck by a cannonball. Agony. Rushing, tearing wind. Spinning, falling. A glimpse of the ground rushing up. The shimmering reflection of Periskios on the rippling water. Then darkness.
She was floating.
The thought came to her sluggishly, a vague whisper in the dark haze in her head. Floating. That wasn’t right. Hadn’t she been falling? She struggled to piece it back together. Flying, falling … a colossal black tail whipping toward her.
The dragon. Ash. Zwi.
Her eyes popped open. She was underwater. She’d landed in the lake. Where was Zwi? She couldn’t sense Zwi in the lake with her. How long had she been underwater? Terror rushed through her. Kicking her feet, she shot toward the surface. Her head burst out of the water. Silence. No more beating of massive wings in the sky.
A hundred yards away, the dragon stood on the rocky shore at the base of the carved summit, its wings half unfurled over its back. Blue fire raced over the ground all around it, licking at its haunches. Blue light glowed in lines down the dragon’s neck and a hint of flames boiled out of its open jaws. It had one leg stretched out, its head down near the ground, focused on something trapped beneath its foot.
Panic froze her lungs. She swam for the shore and pushed out of the water. Then she ran, ran harder than she’d ever run in her life. Her body ached and burned, her injuries untallied and ignored. As she charged toward the dragon, she summoned her magic again. A glowing orb lit in her hands.
She threw it at the dragon’s head. The spell burst across its scales and all the nearby blue fire dissolved in orange light. The beast’s head jerked up and snapped toward her. As the blue flames flickered violently in the aftermath of her attack, she glimpsed a wing sticking out from beneath the dragon’s talons—Ash’s wing. Oh god. It had caught him.
He couldn’t be dead. Please, let him not be dead.
“Let him go!” she screamed.
The dragon’s lips curled back to reveal its fangs. It snarled, the deafening sound ripping out of its throat.
“He’s a draconian!” Tears of terror and desperation escaped her control and streaked down her cheeks. “Why are you attacking him?”
The buzzing pressure in her head crashed down on her again. Her knees gave out. She fell to the rocky ground, clutching her head. The buzzing fluctuated erratically like someone spinning the dials on a radio—then the sound transformed.
You are dragon-kin.
The deep male voice growled through her head, inaudible to her ears but clear in her mind. She gasped, jerking straight. The pressure in her skull—the weight of the dragon’s mind?—was still unbearable. The beast must be telepathic like the ryujin.
“So is he,” she gasped. “Let him go!”
The blood runs strong in him. The rumbled words were empty of emotion except for an undertone of—of wrath?
“Then why are you hurting him?” She almost couldn’t get the words out as the pressure in her head darkened her vision.
He resists.
“Resists what?”
Begone, silver child. The dragon’s head swung back toward his front foot where he had Ash pinned.
“Let Ash go first!”
The dragon bared his teeth and the flames around him leaped higher. Begone.
The threat was clear. Trembling, she pushed herself to her feet and raised her hands, calling on her magic. She wouldn’t abandon Ash. She was no match for the dragon, but she wouldn’t walk away, even if it meant her death.
“I’m not leaving without Ash!” She flung her hands out, throwing another orb of colored flame.
The dragon’s jaws snapped open wide and an inferno of blue fire boiled out of its throat. The flames swallowed her paltry attack and blasted toward her. She cast a shield at the last second. The fire ripped through the flimsy barrier and exploded into her in a flash of agony. Then darkness overtook her once more.
Chapter Nine
Cold water lapped against her right side. Her left side burned unbearably as though her skin had been dipped in boiling oil. Pain dragged her back to consciousness and she groaned. Well, she wasn’t dead. She hurt way too much to be dead.
Dread swelled inside her, competing with the pain. With effort, she managed to open her eyes. All she could see were the dark shapes of the pebbles in front of her nose, her cheek resting painfully on the ground. Sluggishly, she pushed up on one elbow and stared dully at the dark, still surface of the lake stretching away from her. Her heart thumped in her chest and only the pain of her burns kept her inner torment at bay. Why hadn’t she died? She would have preferred to be dead.
Her throat closed as dread took over. Tears stung her eyes and spilled over, burning like acid on her cheeks. Gasping and swallowing a sob, she pushed herself into a sitting position. It was still dark and clouds had rolled in, obscuring most of Periskios’s reflected light. Since the long twilight of dawn had yet to arrive, she hadn’t been unconscious for an excessively long time, but exactly how many hours, she couldn’t guess.
Terror twisted in her gut and she forced herself to look at the rocky shore of the lake.
The dragon was gone, the valley empty. The shore was devoid of life. Where the dragon had stood, all that remained was the dark, unmoving shadow of a fallen body. Grief ripped through her, more terrible than any burn.
She climbed painfully to her feet. No longer able to control herself, she sobbed, agony and anguish overwhelming her. Blinded by tears, she staggered toward the unmoving shape. When she reached him, she dropped to her knees, unable to stand under the weight of her grief.
Ash was lying face down where the dragon had left him, wings splayed awkwardly. One wing’s frame was twisted against the ground, broken in two places. Barely able to breathe through her tears, she reached out and closed her trembling hand around his lifeless fingers.
Her heart stuttered in her chest.
His skin wasn’t cold in death. It was warm—no, hot. Feverishly hot.
“Ash!” she gasped. Alive? He was alive?
She rose onto her knees and leaned over him, holding back her sobs. Without the sound of her weeping, his faint, shallow breathing became audible. Her hands fluttered over him and desperation squeezed her lungs. He was alive but hurt. How hurt? She needed to turn him over and check him. Her eyes flashed to his wing. The bones were clearly broken but the leathery membrane wasn’t torn, thank goodness; an injury to the membrane put the draconian at risk of never flying again, but bones could be healed.
Forgetting her own pain, she swiftly checked his back, arms, legs, and other wing for damage. She couldn’t see any other wounds but he could still have internal injuries. Shaking from stress, she gently folded his uninjured wing against his back and rolled him over that side, supporting his injured wing as best she could. She’d never been more grateful for her daemon strength; as a human, she would have had trouble moving his dead weight at all.
Once she had him on his back, she checked his torso for injuries, finding nothing obvious. His head seemed fine—no swelling, bruising, or cuts. But he didn’t open his eyes or respond to her voice. When she pried open his eyelids, his pupils were rolled back in his head. His breath came fast and shallow, and his skin was hot like he had a bad fever. Was he sick? Had the dragon poisoned him? Or was it a reaction to internal injuries?
Panic spun in her head. He was hurt, maybe dying. They were alone. The dragon could return at any minute to finish them off. All their supplies—and weapons—were in a draconian dwelling three quarters of the way up the mountain.
She struggled to her feet and finally looked down at herself. Her pants were charred and half burned away, but her dragon-scale halter top had protected her torso. Bright red burns dotted with blisters covered her arms; she must have thrown them up over her face, which wasn’t blistering—yet, anyway. Maybe her attempt to shield had blunted the worst of it or her skin as a half-ryujin daemon was somewhat fire-resistant, because she was pretty sure that blast of fire from the dragon shou
ld have melted her to the bone. Her limbs and spine ached from her multiple falls but she didn’t have any broken bones.
Pushing aside the pain, she turned in a slow circle, trying to remember where she’d landed in the lake after the dragon’s tail had hit her. She broke into an awkward, limping jog down the shore. Zwi had to be somewhere nearby.
It took her nearly twenty minutes of searching before she found Zwi among a pile of boulders near the shore. She’d transformed back into her dragonet form, her tiny body almost impossible to spot among the rocks.
Piper knelt beside the dragonet, her heart in her throat, choking her. Zwi’s golden eyes cracked open and she let out a tiny mewl.
“Hey, Zwi,” Piper whispered, her voice cracking. “How’re you doing, girl?”
Zwi mewled again, the sound almost inaudible. Tears trickled down Piper’s cheeks as she gently stroked the dragonet’s head.
Zwi’s wings weren’t just broken. They were mangled, the bones broken and the leather membrane torn. Unable to keep her hands steady, she lightly touched Zwi’s body, checking for more broken bones. Zwi whimpered with each touch and Piper almost broke down. She couldn’t tell how badly the dragonet was hurt. Not knowing what else to do, she pulled off her halter top and laid it on the ground, then helped Zwi crawl on top of it. Zwi cried when Piper lifted the sling off the ground, even though she tried her best to cradle the injured dragonet in the material without jostling her.
Heedless of the cold air on her bare skin, her torso clad only in a chest wrap, she hurried back to Ash and laid Zwi down beside him. The dragonet nudged his hand with her nose and whined plaintively, but he didn’t stir.
Piper stood beside them, slow shakes running through her body. She couldn’t heal them; she had no idea how. She couldn’t travel with them, nor could she leave them alone. She couldn’t reach their supplies. She had no way to contact the others or send a distress signal.
Lyre and Raum didn’t expect Ash and Piper back until after the next eclipse—still a long ways away. When they didn’t show up, Raum would come find them. He knew the general area that she and Ash had been heading for. It might take him a little while to find the correct valley, but eventually, he would come. All she had to do was keep Ash and Zwi alive until then.
Their lives were in her hands, and she’d never felt more helpless.
* * *
Piper sat beside Ash, holding his hand in hers and trying hard to keep her composure. She had to stay strong.
Hours had passed since she’d regained consciousness but she didn’t know how many. It was still dark, the long Underworld night dragging on and on. With clouds obscuring Periskios, she couldn’t even guess how much night was left by the waning shape of the planet. Exhaustion dragged at her but she couldn’t sleep. She wouldn’t sleep until help arrived. Her head throbbed, but it was nothing compared to the agony in every inch of her burned skin. A little while ago, she’d shifted back to her human form to conserve her magic, and the increase in pain levels had left her on the verge of tears since. Sometimes it was all she could do to just keep breathing.
The pain had been a lot easier to endure when she was busy. She’d first located a safe place—well, the safest place given their circumstances—to wait. It was a cave, for lack of a better term, in the base of the mountain beneath the dwelling they’d slept in. The draconians had made use of this space too: the interior had been carved into simple stalls, suggesting it had been a stable or shelter for some kind of domesticated animal.
Moving Ash had been a challenge. Knowing how fragile draconian wings were and how difficult they were to heal, she hadn’t wanted to drag him a hundred yards with broken wing bones. She’d cursed her shortsightedness at leaving their gear—and weapons—in a spot totally inaccessible without working wings. After some thought, she’d waded into the lake and dove down to the long strands of seaweed waving sedately at the bottom. She’d been blind under the water, Periskios’s light only weakly penetrating the clouds and completely unable to pierce the depths of the lake, but her dairokkan senses had guided her. She’d ripped several plants out of the muddy bottom and brought them back to Ash. Stripping off the leaves had left her with tough, rope-like stems that she used to carefully tie his broken wing to his side to stabilize it.
Once she had tucked him and Zwi safely into one of the stone stalls in the ancient stable, she’d returned to the beach to collect some twigs that had washed ashore and a few smaller seaweed plants. Applying the splints to Zwi’s wings had been horrific for both of them. The dragonet’s cries of pain had ripped Piper apart, but she couldn’t leave the poor girl’s wings the way they were. Now that they were bound to sticks with some wide seaweed leaves holding them to her body, Zwi seemed a little more comfortable.
Piper had returned to the lake a few more times, searching for anything useful. In the end, she’d collected several armloads of driftwood and caught a fish—a small one, thank goodness—and returned to their shelter. Behind one of the stall’s half-walls where the light would be partially blocked from the cave entrance, she’d built a tiny fire and cooked the fish over it whole; she wouldn’t have known how to fillet it even if she’d had a knife.
While the fish cooked, she’d gone outside and ripped up most of the low vines growing along the ground on the nearest hill. She’d stuffed some under Ash as best she could and had laid the rest down on the rock floor as insulation for her and Zwi—then reclaimed her top from the dragonet, needing the warmth. It was all she could do. No blankets, no extra clothing, and the light of the fire was too much of a risk to keep it burning indefinitely.
So here she sat, shivering with pain and cold beside the coals of the fire. Zwi slept fitfully beside Ash. Piper had fed her small bits of cooked fish before eating the rest herself. She had no idea how to make Ash eat; he couldn’t chew while unconscious. She didn’t even have their water flasks to try and get him to drink.
Her hand clenched around his. His skin was still feverishly hot and his breathing rapid. He could survive a fever that would kill a human but she was still scared. She’d checked him again for injuries but couldn’t find any. She didn’t know what was wrong with him. She didn’t know why he wouldn’t wake up.
If only he could tell her what was wrong—and what had happened. She’d gone over all of it in her mind, over and over. The dragon in the shadows of the statue—had he been waiting for them, or had their unexpected appearance in an abandoned city aroused his curiosity? He had used magic to force her and Ash into their daemon forms. At first, she’d been just as confused about that as everything else before reasoning that the dragon had done it to make communication with them—or rather, with Ash—easier. The buzzing pressure of his telepathy had changed once she was in daemon form, and it must have for Ash too.
What had the dragon said to him to make Ash respond with a desperate cry of “no”? Why had the dragon attacked him, pinning him to the ground? He resists. What had Ash been resisting? Being killed?
Shona’s tale of the dragon king kept weaseling back into her thoughts. It was just a story, an origin tale. She refused to believe the dragon who had chased them, who had bellowed in pain when her magic sliced its wing, was an all-powerful otherworldly being. But what if there was some truth buried in the myth? Coby had mentioned a version of the tale where the great dragon hunted draconians to steal their magic. Was that why Ash wouldn’t wake? Was that why the dragon had left him alive, because it got what it had wanted from him?
She stared hollowly at Ash, trying to calm her simmering panic. He would be okay. Once Raum arrived, he would know what to do.
Leaning back against the wall of the stall, she pulled her eyes away from Ash and resumed her watch on the opening of the stable. The dim light through the clouds had brightened, telling her that the night was half over—Periskios was brightest at midnight when its full face reflected the light of the unseen suns. Though it was a little brighter, a thick fog had rolled in off the lake over the last couple hours, obscur
ing everything three feet beyond the opening of the cave. Nervousness churned in her aching belly.
Time stretched out indefinitely as she waited, her eyes on the mist-enshrouded entrance and her ears tuned to the sound of Ash’s breathing. She counted each breath, analyzing it for any changes in rhythm. Back at the camp, Raum and Lyre wouldn’t have a clue yet that something had gone wrong. Once they realized Ash and Piper were running late, how long would they wait before starting a search? She didn’t think he would come right away; Raum had too much confidence in Ash’s ability to handle pretty much any situation. He would probably wait too long, thinking Ash had merely run behind schedule.
As the minutes dragged on, her tired thoughts wandered. What was her father doing right now? Had he recovered from his poisoning? Was he sorry for how he had acted while under its influence? And Uncle Calder—was he worried about her? He’d encouraged her to go to her mother and then on to the Gaian headquarters, and she hadn’t come back. He probably feared she was dead. She wished she could get a message to him.
Then again, if she were to magically gain the ability to send a message, she would send one to Raum to come rescue them.
Thoughts spun in her head, mixing with fear and dread. What if Ash died? It would be her fault; she’d brought him here. If he died, then she didn’t want to be found. She didn’t want to go on. It was stupid and melodramatic to wish death on herself just because the man she loved had died, but the thought of going on without him, with his demise on her shoulders and conscience, was too much to bear. Her heart twisted in torment as she remembered her blissful contentment on the balcony, standing with his arms around her, just before the dragon had revealed its presence.
Zwi made a tiny sound, a soft but harsh chirp, snapping Piper out of her thoughts. The dragonet was staring toward the entrance of the cave, even though from her spot beside Ash, she couldn’t see it. Piper’s eyes snapped back to the fog-shrouded entrance. She’d been gazing at the shadowy white wall but her thoughts had been miles away.
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