Page 29 of Flameborne: Chosen

I needed to tell Benji to close the door, but I was nailed to the floor.

My body trembled and my mind brimmed with flashbacks of falling from the cliffs, flashbacks of Ruin, all of it swirling under Akhane’s kind, but tight voice rising higher and higher.

‘Don’t worry, Bren. He’ll be done soon. He only wishes to help.’

I was still draped in the Commander’s jacket, which covered me better than any dress now that I’d done up the buttons. It hung off me like a sack, and the sleeves were far too long. But I was unwilling to roll them in case it creased the leather and made him angry when I gave it back.

I was tense, a little nervous, and made more anxious by Benji’s babble. But I wasn’t afraid of him.

But while he chattered and set up the little cot near the manger, another head had appeared around the edge of the door frame, peering inside. And this one didn’t move on. An older boy. Also a stablehand if the brown shirts and trousers almost identical to Benji’s were anything to go by. This one was much bigger. Already taller and stronger than me, though younger.

I’d gone very still where I stood next to the hay and Akhane turned her head to look, flattening her ears at the boy, but shaking her great head like a tense dog.

‘Ignore them, Bren. They’re only curious.’But she was tense too, weaving slightly on her feet.

Then another boy joined the second. They murmured to each other, their eyes bright and flickering between Akhane and me.

Then four more. Then a man in Furyknight flying leathers stopped to chastise the boys and get them moving, but when he saw me inside, he frowned. He asked what I was doing there, but the boys answered before I could. And his eyes returned to me. And his expression wasdisturbed?

He called to another man.

Soon the doorway was full of men and boys, all talking louder and louder as more voices rose to echo among the rafters. Some were angry, some thrilled, others clearly just happy to have a reason to stop working.

By this time, Akhane paced, her ears flitting back and forth—sometimes pinned, sometimes alert. Her tail lashed like a cat’s. She was very careful not to swing it near me—the plates at the end of her tail could slice through human skin, though Ruin had told me they were mainly used for air direction during flight.

I knew these men were important and strong. I knew these boys were just curious. But I couldn’t seem to calm enough to stop the blood pounding in my ears. And Akhane panted with stress. Benji finally realized we were uncomfortable and yelled at them to leave, but of course, none of them listened.

Then there was shouting in the hallway—men arguing?

I half-crouched, looking around wildly for an exit, but there was none. My head spun and I wavered on my feet.

‘Breathe, Bren!’

The shouts outside grew louder. More voices joining the fray. The line of men at the stable door wavered and nudged forward, some of them stepping into the stable itself.

We would be overrun.

I stumbled backwards, my shoulders coming up against the external wall of the stable and knocking my breath out in a whoosh. I looked up at those high windows with an ache—if only I could climb a flat wall. Or Akhane could fly out of it—but they were far too narrow. She wouldn’t even fit her head through the gap, and I’d have to slip through on my belly—

Suddenly,aroar jolted me to my bones—the sound so deep that it shook the rafters and sent dust drifting to the floor, and so loud that I clapped my hands over my ears.

But everything else stopped.

The men stopped shouting. The boys stopped shrieking. The crowd stopped surging.

For a moment, everything was silent. Then bodies shifted, pouringawayfrom the door, space opening between them as they moved aside, eyes wide, heads low in submission.

And then that huge, black dragon with amber eyes appeared, so large I couldn’t see more than his shoulder when his neck extended all the way through the aisle and into the doorway.

Akhane made a strange, high call and fluttered her wings and the dragon snorted.

I cringed, certain he was angry—but his head whipped around and there was a murmur of scared gasps and voices as the men and boys fled.

Akhane moved then, putting herself between me and the black dragon, and I knew this wasn’t going to work. They would throw me away, just like Ruin had.

I wasn’t enough for this. They were right.

Too scared. Too weak. Too—