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“I will not spill blood in our den.” She had to convince him. He had to let her go.

He nodded again. “Very well. Then I will accompany—”

“No. I will do it alone. I will see to this... business myself.”

Eyfura held her tongue, but the way she looked at Yrsa made her wonder if she believed her. Perhaps it was female intuition. Eyfura was a mother. She knew what it was like to spawn a hatchling, to bring life into the world and love that life, nurturing it as carefully as one did a garden, feeding and tending and watching with anxious eyes, always searching the horizon, wary of the storms. For there were storms aplenty in this life, ready to break loose and take all you love. Eyfura knew that firsthand. She’d lost her son in the Hormung.

With her babe bundled close, Yrsa swept from the den. Asger didn’t stop her. He trusted her. Through generations, they had never been anything but honest with each other.

Until now.

She avoided the gazes of her brethren as she passed through caves, angling her basket away from their view, slipping into tunnels that dripped with water, winding her way up to the surface, and bursting from the mountain like a geyser erupting from the earth.

She lifted up, leaving behind the Crags like they were a great slumbering giant in the night. She took to the dark sky with her daughter in her arms, turning south.

She flew through the night. When morning dawned, she went higher into the clouds for cover, the thick vapor matching the silvery gray of her skin. She clasped the basket to her chest, using her body heat to keep the baby warm and dry as she navigated through the dense air.

By the time night rolled around again, she was close. What would take a horse and rider weeks, she could accomplish in two days, flying fast and hard in a direct line, like a dart through air.

She knew where she was going. The safest place for a human, where no one would ever see her child as a monster. A place where her daughter could be accepted and loved. The enemy’s lair.

The hour was late. The palace asleep. Her wings worked effortlessly, thoughtlessly, holding her aloft. Hovering over the City, she peeled the basket away from her chest to look down at her daughter for the last time, memorizing her face: the sweet curve of her cheek, the big eyes, the barely there thatch of red hair.Be well, little one.

Yrsa landed within the palace grounds and set her precious cargo down on the cobblestones. A quick glance around confirmed that no one was about. The baby shook her fists wrathfully in the air as though to announce herself to the world. Yrsa knew she needed to go, but she could not stop herself from standing over the child,herchild, gazing down at her with a heart that felt like bursting.

The baby opened her little mouth full of pink gums and let loose a howl.

Silent and swift as a phantom, Yrsa launched herself up into the sky, losing herself in the dark.

22

Tamsyn

IWAS CHAOS. A MONSTER. THE KIND THAT HAUNTED CHILDHOODdreams. The kind recounted to small children to terrify them into obedience. Char and ash filled my mouth. I could taste only that as I careened through the damp sky, writhing, twisting on the rushing wind, trying to rid myself of this body, cast it from me like a fisherman’s net.

It didn’t work. Nothing worked. It stuck.

My body was not my own. The great slapping beat of wings on the air matched the hammering of my heart.Wings.I possessed wings. Or they possessed me. Those appendages worked with no thought or deliberation, but through instinct. Why? Why I should have this instinct and never know of it... never suspect...?

There was a deafening roar beneath the howling air. The sound came from me. The noise climbed up my simmering throat. Blasted from my fanged mouth. My ceaseless scream.

I was the monster.

And this was no dream.

I DIDN’T KNOWhow long I flew.Flew.I was flying.I am a dragon.That legendary pestilence that had plagued civilization since the earliest record of time. Until humankind rose up in a great swell, a tsunami determined to engulf them all, no longer willing to be the victim of winged demons.

Now you’re one of them. A winged demon.

For nearly five hundred years the Threshing had raged, burned over the land like a bushfire, destroying all in its path. Armies fought, soldiers fell, villages were razed to rubble... so that dragons would no longer exist.

For a hundred years the skies had been free of them. There had been no sightings save the singular time Balor the Butcher found the outlier who had taken Fell. The Crags had been plundered. Pillagers mined the tunnels and caves, searching for the dragons’ treasure troves. Never had a dragon been spotted in all that time. Not a glimpse. Not a roar. Not a whisper.

Humankind had succeeded. This was believed. Accepted as truth. Dragons were gone. Reduced to a chapter in history. Ultimately, they would become a page... and then a footnote. Someday not even that. That was the fate of all magical things that ceased to exist. They faded from fact to rumor to myth.

So why was I here? Like this? How?

How how how how how how how how?