Page 97 of Entwined

“We can strap them onto the spear whether she’s alive or not,” the man says. “More than one way to skin a cat.”

What a lovely turn of phrase.

I risk a glance around, noting that nearly all the soldiers and scientists in the entire dome have gathered around to watch me. Murmurs are rising from all sides, some of them shocked that there’s no magnetic field involved. Some are arguing over why I can use the blades when no one else can. Others are talking about the nature of dragon blood.

Most of the soldiers just want to watch a dragon die.

My mother has come closer, and I notice she’s standing right by the main control panel. I’ll kill the power. You leave—save them. Do whatever it takes.

I thought maybe she was here to protect me, to be on my side. But she’s not. Again, she’s here to send me on the path she thinks only I can take. I’m tasked once again to be the monster that protects her other children. Her non-damaged ones.

It hurts a little. I’m not going to lie.

But I’m not in a position to quibble over any offer of help, no matter where it comes from. Normally, I’d worry about what helping me might mean for her, but I refuse to do that. I freed her, and now we’re right back here, with her sending me to do what she can’t.

I need to get back to the blessed.

Gaia nods.

If I free you, you’ll take me?

People who haven’t spent the time I have around the dragons might not see it, but she smiles. It’s enough for me. “Die!” I shout as I spring toward the dragon, but at the last minute, I avert my blade, just missing her side.

Mom unholsters her gun and fires it into the open panel. Sparks fly.

And then the room goes dark.

I’m sure my eyes are as bad at adjusting as everyone else’s, but the dragons don’t suffer from that. Gaia’s giant maw opens, and then closes around my middle, and suddenly, I’m being carried in a dragon’s mouth as she bounds over the wires containing her and barrels into a mass of milling humans.

Someone fires, but the gruff man starts shouting. “No! Not until we can see—no friendly fire.”

Let’s go, Gaia says. Elizabeth Chadwick has freed us.

The other dragons bound out as well, all but the one who’s missing whole chunks of her scales. She remains utterly still.

Gaia stops by her just as someone flings open the tent flaps.

“We’ve lost power,” the gruff man—a white-haired general—shouts. “Call everyone—tell them to blow them up as they leave. Containing them before was too costly.”

Phileas leaps toward the flap, tearing the opening twice as high, and then barges through. The sound of bullets flying is nearly deafening from the area outside the tent.

We can’t leave her, Gaia says. Not like this.

“What do you want me to do?” I ask. “I don’t know how to wake her up.”

Kill her, Gaia says. It’s what she’d want.

But I can’t bring myself to do it. “She might get out—she might yet be freed.”

Gaia roars, and then she barrels through the hole, followed quickly by the other water dragon, and the other two earth dragons. Phileas has already made a hole—or I’m assuming that’s what created the giant wormhole in front of us—and Gaia dives for it.

I’m not sure how this would go if I were riding on her back, but being crushed between her teeth as we slither across the wet, cold, and in some places, frozen portions of earth over the distance we travel is remarkably uncomfortable. I don’t dare ask them to stop, but the second time her teeth pierce my skin, shooting horrible pain up my left side, I cry out.

You’re injured?

Her voice in my head is much stronger now—clearer. Your teeth aren’t dull.

Stop ahead.