Page 137

I n a meadow beyond the Sacred Oak, Vahly drew a line in the ground and asked the earthblood to rise. Birds took flight from the saplings dotting the area, then golden liquid gurgled to the surface. Vahly quickly climbed atop Kyril and left the dragons to it.

As they flew over, Jades, Call Breakers, and Lapis gathered around the five new streams of earthblood, their conversation muted, serious, eyes wary. But the wariness had nothing to do with their ancient feuds, Vahly knew; it was for the upcoming battle with the sea.

She leaned close to Kyril, and his feathers tickled her face.

Who among those dragons would be lost today?

Aitor stretched out beside Nix, making it so that she could lie back on him, and she did.

She must have said something funny because Aitor laughed, bumping Nix’s head with his shaking stomach.

Nix spread her wings slightly, teasing Aitor and Euskal, who’d arrived with Eux and the rest. Baww dropped down beside them, causing Nix to grin and scoot over for the heavyset dragon.

Baww handed them each a container that was surely filled with the strongest dropcider possible.

Fifty-one Call Breakers had arrived with Eux, the seriously injured remaining with Helena the healer and Ruda, who Vahly had heard was quickly becoming a true force to be reckoned with.

Beside the Breakers, ninety-seven Jades knotted themselves into groups around the earthblood veins.

They weren’t much for conversation, keeping to themselves and remaining in dragon form nearly all the time.

Eux sat in the center of her dragons, eyes closed and mouth moving in perhaps a battle chant or something of the sort.

The Lapis created a loose line with Amona at the end, and Vahly was glad to see several powerful warriors healthy enough to be here in the ranks.

Thirty-eight Lapis had flown from the north to join the fight.

That made a total of one hundred eighty-six dragons.

Astraea’s army numbered in the upper hundreds, nearing one thousand minus the warriors Vahly and her fighters had taken out.

The odds were stacked against her and she knew it all too well.

It would take a miracle to achieve victory.

She swallowed a bitter taste on the back of her tongue and urged Kyril to land beside the Sacred Oak where Arc waited with Rigel, Haldus, and Ursae. Arc’s three subjects had their hands on his arms and back and were, she guessed, giving him healing energy for the battle.

She dismounted. “Can I get a dose of that too? My hand is still a little angry with me for grabbing a cursed weapon.”

Quietly thanking the Source for the magic that had raised animals from the healed earth so they could eat, she pulled from her bag a brace of rabbits she’d shot with far too many arrows this morning.

She set them out for Kyril’s meal. The gryphon went to work on the meat, yellow beak darting here and there.

He’d already eaten a deer Arc had gifted him earlier, but Kyril’s hunger knew no bounds.

Arc greeted her with a chaste kiss on the cheek, and his large hands briefly circled her waist, his touch sending shivers down her body. He motioned to his subjects, and they began healing her further. Warmth spread through her injured hand, and she flexed her fingers over Arc’s wide palm.

“So much better. Thank you.”

They set to sharpening blades, filling quivers, and tightening baldrics and belts.

Vahly tucked the obsidian knife she’d retrieved into a loop on her baldric, then slid a dagger Rigel had given her into her belt beside the sheathed oaken sword.

That done, she paused, hand on the warm leather of her belt and her heart racing.

She had no idea how this would go. Would she know what magic to use when? Would the power inside her lead the way?

Kyril nuzzled her, and she pressed herself against his massive form.

“What if I fail, Kyril?” she whispered into his fur and breathed in his comforting, animal musk.

He sent her an image of the sky, blue and open. It was his definition of hope. She could feel the meaning in the colors and lines of the image.

She smiled into his pelt. “I hope too, friend.” With a kiss, she went back to readying for the fight.

Steps away, Ursae blinked and looked behind Vahly. Nix, Aitor, Baww, and Euskal landed gracefully in their full dragon forms. Well, Baww was a touch less than graceful, but he had handled his switch from barkeep to warrior rather well considering his tavern-built body, as Nix always described it.

The various blues of the dragons’ wings showed every color of the sky from storm to sunset to noonday.

Arc climbed onto Nix’s back, silver-haired Rigel slung a leg over Aitor’s neck, and Ursae leapt onto Euskal’s slim body, using one of his spikes as a handle of sorts.

Haldus easily jumped into place on Baww’s back, then Kyril bent low to help Vahly up before running to jump into the air.

Kyril’s wings spread wide as he soared, leading the entire group of dragons and elves.

The land was Vahly’s own treasure hoard, the new flowers her rubies, the growing grass and trees her emeralds, and the healthy hills and mountains her gold coins.

But unlike a dragon’s hoard, this bounty was meant to be shared.

At the foamy coast, not far from the sea folk’s Blackwater well, the units broke apart to work their assigned attack strategies.

The Jades and Lapis headed southwest to hover over the distant sea, hopefully out of sight, while Vahly and her group flew toward Tidehame to root out the Sea Queen and her army in the very heart of their watery kingdom.

The ocean spread its wings below them, vast and dark. A silence fell over the group, and a buzzing tension snapped between them.

Arc set his gaze on Vahly, and he nodded. This was it, the place where it would all begin.

Vahly drew the sword of oak and swept it through the air. “Rise, earth, and bring Astraea’s castle to me.”

Magic surged inside her blood, singing and drumming in her ears.

The water exploded in white waves, and the bed of the sea mounded to expose the stone roofs of álikos, the long windows crowded with broken limbs of glittering green coral, elaborately carved doors swung wide, guards shrieking and swimming to escape the chaos.

Holding up her free hand, Vahly ordered the dragons to hold their fire. They had to do this in a way that had all the sea folk rushing southward, into the trap that the rest of the dragons were currently forming.

The sea spit the tower Vahly had been held prisoner in, its peaked top crumbling as it reached skyward, chunks of flat stone and rounded bricks tumbling back into the hungry waves.

Behind the raucous water around the rising land, a wave peeled away from the surface, crawling and growing and hissing with magic.

It’s Astraea! Nix slid into the air current beside Kyril, and Arc’s hands whipped up a sphere of blazing light.

Vahly’s hand remembered the burn of the cursed water, and her throat recalled the feel of coinfish. She swallowed hard and kicked Kyril’s sides. They rushed through the air toward the growing wave.

The Sea Queen’s face appeared like a ghost inside the wave beside three other sea folk, a black-haired male, a female with short hair, and a male whose face was as gray as a corpse’s. Below and around them, hundreds of faces showed just under the ocean’s border.

Widening her eyes and feigning fear, Vahly pressed a heel into Kyril’s right side.

He veered harshly and turned them around so they seemed to be fleeing.

Vahly flicked her sword at Aitor and Euskal, who blew dragonfire into the remains of the castle and its ruins even as Astraea commanded the ocean to reclaim it.

They had to sell this feint if this was going to work.

Once the two Call Breakers had flown over, Nix shot fire at Astraea, and Arc threw air magic to back her up.

The light made Astraea and her three wince and squint, and the fire had them scrambling to raise more water over the area.

The group dipped low, skimming the surface of the unmagicked sea. Nix sped up to trail Vahly.

Still watching over her shoulder, she saw Astraea gaining on them and aiming her spear. The Sea Queen wouldn’t miss.

“Low!” she shouted to Kyril.

He dropped so suddenly that Vahly’s stomach flew into her throat, and she grasped his ruff, nearly flying from her seat and losing the whole battle right at the start of it.

A spear cut the air above their heads, taking one of Kyril’s feathers in its vicious path before dropping to the glistening waves.

Baww and Haldus flew by, a bulky silhouette, and beyond them, Aitor and Rigel, and Euskal and Ursae soared high and fast.

Obsidian hair flying and phantom crown sparkling, Arc whistled as he and Nix flew past. He flashed her a wicked grin. The alchemist-turned-king was enjoying this. He’d gone mad.

She shook her head. “As fast as you can now, Kyril.”

Vahly leaned against him, holding on as best she could with legs and her one free hand.

She wouldn’t sheathe the sword. That darling was staying in her grip until someone pried it from her dead fingers.

Wind tore at the three braids she’d woven into her hair that morning, and salt crept into her mouth, sticking between her teeth.

Earth magic drummed through her bones and shushed in her veins as they flew hard toward a dark, jagged line in the bright sky.

Amona and the Lapis were ready.