Page 44 of I Dream of Dragons

But before I can move a muscle, Jai shakes his head and starts climbing. He swings himself into the saddle with a speed I could never hope to match. He grabs the reins and his gaze finds me.

Is it Jai or Phaethon behind those dark mirrors?

“Still want us to search for the human survivors?” he asks.

Blood is steadily dripping from his wounded leg, sliding down the yellow drak’s side, and I make a decision.

“No. We’re going to the palace.”

“As you say,” he grunts, the words echoing both in my ears and in my mind. His Goldfinch drak rises on all four legs and shakes himself.

I have yet to meet a female drak or darakin, the thought sort of random and panicky, because it’s time. Time for me to fly on a drak.

Alone.

Panic is turning my stomach, souring my mouth. My arms are trembling. My whole body is shaking.

You’d think that after falling to the bowels of the underworld and returning I’d know no fear, but it seems that while I occupy this human body, I get all the human weaknesses I thought I’d left behind.

All the emotions, the ups and downs, the thrills, the joyful rides and the panicky depths of despair.

And let’s not forget lust.

When I surfaced and climbed onto that sinking boat in the swamps with my mission in mind, I couldn’t wait to return to the cold depths and the oblivion they offer—but those thoughts feel distant now. Those goals feel misaligned. I don’t know what I need anymore.

The yellow drak with Jai on its back is already unfolding those membranous wings that are tipped with crimson and taking a few thundering steps forward.

Toward the edge of the cliff, the end of the platform.

I hold my breath as Jai turns his head and gazes at me a moment before his drak launches off the edge and into the air.

Holy shit!

No time to react or get my breathing under control before my drak follows in the steps of the dragon summoner, each step jolting me. I hang onto the reins for dear life as my drak opens those pale leathery wings and takes a running leap off the platform.

Vertigo hits me as we plummet down, toward the frothing sea—then arch and fly upward.

Up into the sky.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

RAE

We are flung up into the blue sky, and I cling to my drak, bent low over his scaly neck, my teeth chattering. Oh Gods, we are high, so high…

Too high.

Bile is rising in my throat, and I have to keep choking it back down.

Heights.Ugh.Fucking heights.

And not only that, but we’re moving through the air. Flying. Dipping and rising with each flap of those leathery wings. Riding warm air currents, only to abandon them and sweep back down.

I don’t tell Keres anything and he doesn’t volunteer anything, either.

“Talk to him,”Jai had said, but all my focus is on staying in the saddle and I can’t think of a single thing to say.

Maybe a dragon speaker can confidently bark out orders—“Bank right! Dive ten feet, then swerve! Ride that air current and then drop three feet!”—but I’m only hopingmydrak will followhisdrak to the palace.