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“After everything, you’d choose them? You’d choose him?”

He didn’t need to ask whohimwas. The chief commander. Was he choosing him?

“No,” he said, shaking his head and stepping forward even as she tried to pull away. He grasped her hands in his own and forced her to look at him. “I’ll serve you better from here. I have the chief commander’s ear. I have his trust. I need to understand why they are so interested in the dragons—why that dragon was working with them. I can’t do that from afar.”

She snarled, her teeth bared even as he leaned closer.

“Don’t look at me like that, please.”

“How can I trust you won’t betray us? Me? What happens when the chief commander hands you everything you’ve ever wanted on a golden tray? Will you truly betray him?”

Fox pressed his forehead to hers, the cool sweat of their skin mingling. “I don’t want to betray anyone. I want the deaths to end. But you can trust that I won’t betray you. I can’t?—”

His voice broke and he almost sneered at himself.

She shook her head. “How do I?—”

Before she could finish, he pulled her closer and his lips surged forward to meet hers. The kiss was rough and hard and he bit at her lips even as they opened for him, her tongue meeting his in a duel. His hand wrapped around the small of her back, pulling her flush against him, every muscle rigid with need at the feel of her. His body throbbed with heat and something cracked open within him. He wound his fingers into her curls and groaned. Her answering whimper had his head going light. She clung to him, pressing into the skin along his neck, teasing the hairs that had fallen from his bun. Why had it taken him so long to kiss her? He regretted every moment before he’d spent not knowing the taste of her lips.

Too soon, with the blood singing through his veins, she pulled away.

“Fuck,” he said, pressing his forehead against hers. He almost grabbed her again, his body thrumming with want. Instead, he rested his large hand across her chest and pushed her away, even as his fingers twitched to tangle in her tunic. “Go.”

She blinked up at him, eyes wide, pupils blown. Fox looked over her shoulder and saw the rest of the rebels were already sitting along the dragon’s spine, clinging to her feathers for dear life. He ignored the look of utter horror on some of their faces, eyes finding Ian where he stood helping the last person onto the dragon. Twelve rebels were sitting along its spine, a single space left for Sofia.

She was the only one left.

It was Ian who moved first, grabbing her gently by the shoulders and leading her back to the dragon. She moved as if in a daze, but turned back before she stepped onto the crate.

She looked at him beseechingly. “Find my parents and protect them. If they’re still alive. The chief commander will go after them, even if they have nothing to do with me.”

Fox could only nod. “Of course.”

And then she turned, confidently pulling herself up onto the dragon’s back between Flor and a man he vaguely recognized as her friend Javi. He was glaring daggers at Fox as if he hoped he’d die where he was standing.

Only when the dragon’s wings lifted, its legs pushing up off the ground, did Sofia finally look back, eyes finding Fox’s. With a stifled movement, he lifted a hand in a pathetic attempt at a wave.

She only touched her hand to her lips before she disappeared into the sky.

CHAPTERFIFTY-ONE

SOFIA

Sofia had never felt anything like the exhilaration of flying through the sky. The city burned beneath them, but she couldn’t feel regret.

The scales were warm beneath her, the feathers along the dragon’s spine were soft beneath her fingers. She could just hear Flor letting out a small whoop as the dragon twisted into the air, sweeping toward the wall and the rainforest beyond.

The wall was easy to see in the gray dawn, alight with torches and gas lamps, and lined with more king’s men than Sofia had ever seen. The dragon curved upward, even as a volley of arrows arched into the sky toward them. Sofia cursed as two of the arrows embedded themselves in the dragon’s side.

The silver scales vibrated under them as the dragon let out a deafening shriek and dove. Sofia’s grip on its feathers was the only thing keeping her on its back as it swept low across the wall. It reached out with extended claws, crashing through a line of soldiers and sending them tumbling onto the hard ground below.

Sofia saw him amid the chaos—the chief commander—standing at the top of a tower. He bellowed orders, face red with rage. His eyes found hers, as if drawn there by the thread of fate and vengeance that connected them and his scowl deepened.

A shift pulled Sofia’s gaze away from the chief commander; the dragon was lifting into the sky once more, past the wall and into the forest beyond. Sofia looked back, but she could no longer see him, only a flicker and light between the trees that told her where the wall was.

* * *

The sun was just breakingover the horizon, the world shifting from blue to pink so quickly Sofia almost missed it. It was a new day, but it was much more than that. The world had changed. Suvi had seen a dragon for the first time in centuries. War was inevitable.