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A buzzing throbbed inside my head, ringing in my ears along with the screech of air. Deep vibrations started in my chest. Pressure built there, clenching, coiling, hurting, and I dimly wondered if it was despair over my imminent death.

Tamsyn flashed through my mind. I would miss her. And then: I was leaving her, abandoning her to these beasts. How would she survive this?

My skin snapped and contracted, a chill consuming every fiber.

My body twisted and contorted, my back straining, muscles tugging. I didn’t understand the pain. I had not even hit land yet.

I wasn’t dead, but I felt as if I were being pulled apart.

I fought through the pain, writhing, slapping, and clawing against the agony.

Ice flared through me in a wave impossible to contain. I arched my throat, a bellow welling up from deep inside me—from some unknown, untapped part of me. Was this death, then?

My bones cracked and pulled.

I continued to scream, but the sound was thick and garbled in a mouth that didn’t even feel like mine anymore.

My eyes caught sight of my skin then. It wasn’t right. Wasn’t normal. It flashed and rippled with iridescent winks of silver, like a snow flurry.

The snow-covered ground was so close, so vibrant, so dazzlingly white. I had never seen anything so brilliant, so perfectly clear in my life.

I held my breath and braced for impact, wondering if I would even feel it or if death would take me quickly.

My body burst in a blinding flash of light. My clothes ripped free.

I wasn’t falling anymore.

I glanced down. The earth was still there below me. I never made impact. Never reached land. I was still in the air.

And I was flying.

35

Tamsyn

ASOB SCALDED THE BACK OF MY THROAT.

I watched, helpless, as I lost him. As Fell slipped from my back, his comforting and solid weight gone from me, falling in a wild flailing of arms and legs, vanishing into the air below, disappearing beneath cloud and mist, along with all my hopes.

I started after him, but the big onyx dragon got in my way, snorting and chuffing at me, delaying me.

Precious seconds lost.

I reacted. My lungs burning, fire building, intensifying and blasting through me, out of my mouth in a torrent, making contact. A direct hit, lighting up the dragon barring my way. He screamed, twisting away wildly, his enormous wings like great sails, violently flapping on the air as he retreated.

And then I was gone.

Diving for earth.

Cutting through wind and mist in my desperate panic, despair a cold thing sliding and sinking into the heat of me. To reach Fell.

But he was gone. So far below. Out of reach. Just a speck.

Almost to the ground.

I tried everything, flapped my wings harder, made my body more like an arrow... anything, everything to go faster. To move. To get to him. Get. To. Fell.

It didn’t matter. I couldn’t close the gap.