Page 10 of Flameborne: Chosen

My chest leaped and my eyes flew open, but my vision blurred with tears. I tried to inhale as I dashed them away with my knuckles, but my lungs wouldn’t inflate. Another gust of wind whistled against the cliffs, rushing up, up, up that sheer plate of rock to catch my dangling toes and shift my center of gravity at the same time the horizon tilted and I pitched forward as if I’d been pushed. Quickly catching my weight on the edge of the cliff, my body bowed and my arms swung wide as I fought to regain my balance.

Tipping forward over that chasm of death, something shifted in me.

Another gust of wind pummeled me from top to toe, beating me back just as I overbalanced. For a split second, relief rushed through me.

But then, before I could shift my feet to step back, the wind died at the same moment the damp earth under my feet crumbled. Grasses tore as my weight broke through and with a shriek and a desperate grab for safety that left me with handfuls of nothing but grass and dirt, I plummeted.

No, Little Flame!

Terror coursed through me. The air left my lungs.

Feet peddling, hands clawed desperately into nothing but air, my body turned and flipped, the cliff-face yawning away from the overhang as the black, boiling sea punctured by deadly fangs of rock rushed up, death opening its arms to meet me.

An echoing scream was the only sound louder than the thudding in my ears.

A second before my demise, I squeezed my eyes tightly shut so I might not see it happen—screaming when the first impact scraped my back and I waited to be suffocated by the churning waters. Instead, I bounced and continued to fall—then bounced again.

My body was flipped, sliding, grabbing, skin scraped raw but—

Hold on!

The rock I’d hit tipped and pushed into me until it seemed I was being carriedsideways.

Hold on, Little Flame. You must take a grip!

As the rock under me tilted again, I realized I was still alive and my eyes flew open. The entire world bounced once, then pushed at my stomach, coming up to meet me so hard my jaw snapped closed and my teeth clacked.

But I was alive.

Sucking air between my teeth, I threw my arms out to grip the only thing I could see—a pale, curved spike of rock that jutted straight up.

There was an almightywhomph!and my heart lurched, my body slid, but my grip on that spike held and I threw my other arm out to grab for purchase on the surface.

Whomph-whomph-whomph.

I blinked as the world righted and lifted my head to an impossible sight.

In the distance, the sun blazed, hurting my eyes from its position halfway up the sky and directly ahead. Beneath it, the ocean fell into the horizon, flat and horizontal, exactly as it should be. My hand, white-knuckled on that spike of rock that… That was not rock.

Warm, smooth, pale,notrock.

‘Breathe, Little Flame. That was close. Very, very close. But you’ll be well. You have my word: You will be well. Now… breathe.’

I blinked again as thatwhomphsounded to left and right and a long, scaled neck rose ahead of me. A horned head at the end of that neck turned to present a wide, amber eye that fixed on me.

Whomph. Whomph. Whomph.

‘Can you hear me, Little Flame?’

Her voice was as ancient as the ocean, and as new as life in spring.

“I-I can hear y-you.”

Her nostrils pinched, then she opened her mouth, swinging her head forward again and tipping her chin up to the sky as she opened her throat andscreamed.The high, piercing call sang of victory. Of triumph. Ofjoy.

I gritted my teeth and held onto that spike—no, spine. It was one of the dragonfury’s back spines.

I was alive. She had saved my life.