Page 4 of Flameborne: Chosen (Emberquell Academy #1)

For the first time, I allowed myself to stop. To think.

Ruin had told me about this place.

It was from this point of land that the Furyknights took their first flights.

Newly Chosen Flameborne —the title given to the men who’d been selected by a dragon, but hadn’t yet passed the trials—climbed the same, steep trail I had taken to meet their dragons right at this spot.

The strong coastal winds combined with the two hundred foot drop allowed the dragons to ease into their rider’s first flight without the powerful run and launch needed for them to get airborne when a Flameborne hadn’t yet developed the strength and skill to remain seated.

Ruin had told me how chilling that first take off had been, buckled to his dragon’s neck strap as Carnage perched on the edge of the cliff, opened his wings, and tipped into the air.

Ruin said they dropped like stones, falling long enough that his heart left his chest and his mind screamed death was upon him—until the dragon’s wings caught the airflows and snapped taut.

He said that first moment his dragon caught the updraft was so jarring, he’d snapped forward at the waist. His dragon had warned him to lean to the side, but Ruin had been so nervous and distracted he’d forgotten.

When their trajectory shifted, his face slammed straight into the broad plane of his dragon’s scaled neck and bloodied his nose.

He’d been lucky he was strapped on because he was stunned by the blow and would have fallen onto the fang-rocks, or dropped like a stone into that churning sea below and died. He’d trembled as he told me the story, apologizing for his fear.

And I held him. Comforted him.

The whole story had only made him bigger in my mind. More heroic. But now, standing here… The world tilted every time I looked over the edge. Even when I looked aside and followed the line of the cliffs all the way along, out to the spit of land that encroached on the sea like a thrust sword.

Death. The Dragonmaw Cliffs were death to those not strapped to a dragon.

“Any man would perish in a plunge from that height, Bren,” Ruin told me grimly. “At that speed, the water is no more forgiving than rock. And the dragons won’t save a rider who’s stupid enough to get himself killed that way. He’d never survive the rest of training.”

Any man would perish in that fall.

Ruin, Ruin, Ruin…

Curse my mind that would not stop conjuring him!

The plunge from this cliff wasn’t the only thing I couldn’t survive.

Curling my toes inside my dirty shoes, I crept closer to that edge. The mid-morning light narrowed, the edges of my vision going dark as the wind gusted again, trying to push me back.

My heart galloped.

A far-off dragon’s scream rode the wind. I instinctively looked up.

In the distance, several dragons wheeled, riding the currents of air up into the clouds, only to tuck their wings, roll slowly, then drop in a blood-curdling dive towards the earth before snapping their wings wide and gliding easily back towards the sea with a serpentine grace that belied the bulk and weight that pinned them to the earth when they weren’t flying.

The bunch were too far away to make out their colors, or whether riders clung to their backs. But for a long breath I let myself watch, thanking God that this was the last image in my mind: His servants. His warriors. His wisdom incarnate.

Dragonfuries.

More screams pierced the wind, probably the dragons calling for their brothers who’d begun the journey, like Ruin and Carnage—

A sob broke in my throat. I tore my eyes from the beautiful, far away dragons and made myself look down .

No.

I grimaced. My heart raced to beat out of my ribs, but I pushed myself forward, inch by bare inch until the earth crumbled under my toes and I could see the froth of the waves slamming against the Dragon Fang rocks beneath me.

The earth listed to the right again, and my heart soared in my chest. But I froze. And then I looked down at myself.

Dirty. Broken. Ruined. Worthless.

And cowardly, even now.

My heart beat so fast in my chest it seemed moths fluttered inside my ribs.

I closed my eyes, squeezing them tightly against the wind, and the tears, and the sight.

Perhaps if I didn’t look?

I lifted one foot, reminding myself that it would be quick. Mere seconds. A far more humane end than walking the streets until I was infected, or murdered, or—

No!

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 carried sideways.

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 almighty whomph! 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, not rock.

‘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 that whomph sounded 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 and screamed. The high, piercing call sang of victory. Of triumph. Of joy.

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.

And Chosen me.

I sucked in a life-giving breath then the word rushed out like it had been punched from my lungs.

“Why?!”

She turned her head again, and that eye—sharp with intelligence, soft with compassion—fixed on me once more.

‘Because you’re worth it, Little Flame.’