Page 17 of I Dream of Dragons

“Go get it!” Amaryll yells from right below me, and I barely suppress a fit of unhinged laughter.

First off, yelling and laughing is unwise—some sea monsters can and do leap out of the water to catch their prey, and despite what people think, they aren’t deaf.

And second…Holy wights, laughing feels sonormal. Takes me right back to where I started. Back to being human. And that’s not good.

My hands slide on the tower’s surface, but I dig my knees in and hold on, moving one leg up an inch, then the other.

My thigh muscles burn as they bear all the strain, my hands offering no help. The top seems too far away, and it occurs to me that even if I had my magic, it would have been wasted here.

Out in the air, as on land, my power fails me. It was made for the water, for the ocean. It calls to the water, to the waves, to emotions, weaving names with music, calling to the deeper parts of the soul. I’m not just a mermaid, that’s for sure.

My power wasn’t made to lure sailors to their death, but to control the fish swarms and guard the sea. It was made to name things and change them by that power.

It’s water, death and rebirth at the same time, depending on what drives you, on who calls your name on the shore, and what drives me is black sorrow, a grief I can’t fit inside of me, a rippling fury that’s eating me from the inside.

Darkness spills inside my mind, just like every time I think back on the past. Dark mist and patches of light illuminating a scene here, a scene there. Blood. Screams. Pain. Sorrow and death.

Clenching my jaw, I keep climbing the tower. Little by little, I conquer its height, move over its length like a spider. The air grows brighter, the wind stronger, shaking me like a leaf. I catch a glimpse of another woman climbing a tower nearby and a sense of strange triumph fills me.

You give us trials and we survive.

Yet I’m still not in the clear, and the top of the tower is too far off. Stopping, I take a breather, trying to ignore my burning thighs.

And even as I hang onto the sleek surface of the pole, I can’t help myself: I turn and look around at the arena.

Yeah, I’m looking for Jai. I admit it.

Where is he? There aren’t so many of us in this trial, and two have already been eaten, but it’s a big arena and all these bobbing towers are in the way, blocking my view.

“You okay up there?” Amaryll calls out from below.

“Fine!” I call back, frowning, still scanning the flooded arena. Where is he, where…?

A twang inside my chest, like a plucked string. Such a weird thing.

It is him. I know it.

He’s alive.

And then I see a black Raven drak swooping down, long claws dipping into the water. Lifting someone out.

It has to be Jai. He’s the dragon summoner. Nobody else can call a drak to do their bidding.

Frowning, I look away, glance up at the tower top—and jerk back when a huge reptilian maw greets me, the fetid breath hitting me in the face, a stench of rotting fish and guts.

“Drak!” I’m slipping down, quickly losing what little grip I had on the smooth surface. “Draks!”

“Whoa, girl.” Amaryll grabs me, stopping me from hurtling back into the water. “Are you okay?”

“No, I’m not. There’s a drak. At the top.” I point, and we both look up in time to see the green drak take off, beating enormous leathery wings.

“Shit,” she breathes. “You almost became drak breakfast.”

“Exactly. Not my favorite way to go out.”

“This didn’t work out.” She scratches her head, shaking out her long dark curls. “How are we going to get that flag?”

“I’ll have to climb back up.” The prospect makes my limbs heavy. “Do you have anything sharp, like a knife? I think the surface isn’t very hard. I could use it to haul myself up.”