Page 36

Daeja stills for a few moments. Her eyes focused on the lake ahead. She dips her head and charges for the water. Flapping as she goes.

“Daeja!” I bolt after her.

As her feet graze the sandy shore, she lifts into the air, flapping against the wind and soaring over the water.

The icy cold water sloshes against my shins as I race after her, my voice tight as I whisper, “I don’t know if you know how to swim…”

She dips and swerves, and she struggles to maintain a leveled glide. Her dark shadow grows smaller and smaller as she approaches the opposite side of the lake and toward the black silhouette of trees outlined against the night sky.

Turn, turn, turn!

My feet catch fire, and I run for the other side of the lake. I don’t know if she knows how to stop or turn. My panic rises as I realize I don’t see her anymore. My lungs scream with each stride, my heart hammering in my ears. By the time Ifinally reach the other side, my cold, wet legs threaten to buckle underneath me.

Daeja’s dark shadow is slumped against a tree. I run faster. Closing the distance between us, I fall to my knees beside her.

“Are you okay?” I pant as I try to assess her.

She stands, wriggling and shaking her body, as if she were drenched with embarrassment. I pull her into me, my arms trembling around the warmth of her scales.

“You...did...it!” I say between breaths, pride welling in me as I scratch her cheek. She melts into my touch, as she always does.

Her relaxed expression melts away, her gaze locking in on a spot in the woods.

Something flickers in my periphery. I turn toward it, pressing a hand to her side as I follow her stare. In the darkness, the distant trees pulse a soft glow. Not with the warmth of a fire of orange and red and light. But a cool, icy blue flame floats up from the ground and fades into the shadows like fog.

What is…that?

Daeja bristles, the spikes on her neck and head fanning out. My fear melts to curiosity—it doesn’t dance like fire. It lacks the crackles and spits a flame would produce. Completely entranced by the beauty of its color, I move toward it. Daeja follows me and touches her muzzle to my leg. I pause mid-step and meet her round eyes. In the stillness of the moment, a distant hum buzzes beneath my feet.

As Daeja and I draw closer to the light, the hair on my neck stands. I’m oddly aware of how the blood in my veins sing, and the sweat rivers down my back. Close enough now to notice the lack of warmth a normal fire would create from this distance. Mesmerized, I watch how the flames flare and dance.

Is this the same blue flame Willard had mentioned all those months ago? That could have been the cure to my mother’s insanity?

If it is the rumored flame, I’m not sure what it could offer me now.

But it still calls to me the same, beckoning me forward with invisible fingers as if I were in a trance.

Daeja and I are a few steps from the edge of its blue fire as my hair lifts and floats up toward the sky. The air tightens around us with a hidden electricity. A jagged glowing crack in the earth sways and whips sporadically, the blue and white flame ebbing and flowing from it. Daeja stiffens beside me as we stand there, staring for a few moments.

She walks to the edge of the cracked earth to sniff it before I can stop her. The wicked flames flare in the same moment, brushing her nose, and she staggers back wildly.

“Daeja!” I hiss in surprise and reach for her.

Daeja’s pupils blow wide, the blue reflection of the fire bursting in her irises. Her mouth parts as she crumples to the ground.

I dart forward with a cry, folding to my knees to pick her up. As I brace my hands under her cold body, something shifts. A distant thunder rumbles beneath me, and Daeja rises. I fall back onto the heels of my hands as she grows and grows. Her dark shadow casts over me, drowning me in darkness. Where she had been the size of a kitten before, she now towers above me as high as any steed would.

Like a dark horse with wings.

My mouth drops open. “By the gods...”

But there’s no mistaking her round white eyes, nearly opalescent in the soft blue light around us. The wideness of her stare matches my own.

“Why do you look so much smaller?”a voice as slippery as oil and raspy fills my ears.

I scan the forest for anyone else around us, my hand fumbling for a blade I didn’t sheathe before we slipped out of the outpost.

“No one else is here,”the voice echoes again. Except I realize it’s not in my ears. It’s in mymind.