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We run over the rock, jumping over fissures, heading toward a group of dark gray boulders that jut out from the blackened landscape like a city. Lemi slips between them and we follow, the dirt here the same gray as the rock.

“I’m unfamiliar with this kind of rock,” I say. “Doesn’t seem volcanic.”

“Or perhaps it’s so old and so volcanic, it doesn’t resemble the rest of the island,” Andor points out as we run around another boulder. “Maybe this is the birthplace of the islands.”

Birthplace or not, there doesn’t seem to be much of a path here, and I hope Lemi is actually running up ahead and checking it out and not shifting us to a dead end.

The more we run, the narrower it gets, and the more the boulders start to melt into each other until finally we burst out of the chasm and into a large, circular area, the ground a mix of coarse gray sand and pebbles, towering rock walls all around us except for a slit in the side, which might be a cave.

It reminds me of an arena, and Lemi is standing in the middle of it, huffing his lips with his nose pointed at a giant nest of deathdrage eggs, the biggest ones to exist.

“Oh,” I say, coming to a halt. “This isn’t what I expected.”

The eggs are three to four feet tall, all of them in shades of green and blue.

And if mama comes back, we’re in a lot of trouble.

“What do you think?” I say to Andor, pulling an arrow from the quiver on my shoulder, the tips laced with the tranquilizer though I have no idea how many we need to take down a deathdrage.

“Push our luck and move on, hoping we come across a sycledrage nest? Or push our luck and try to take one of these? This isn’t even the dragon your father wanted. ”

“Does it matter?” Andor asks. “I think this will keep him happy for now. What if we raise it from birth? What if we could tame it?”

“I think you’re delusional if you think you can tame one of those,” I admit.

“Same goes for any dragon. They aren’t horses, they aren’t dogs.

They aren’t our friends. They are vicious, wild beasts that will probably kill you first chance they get.

Ever seen someone with a snake as a pet?

In the end they always get bitten. And these creatures happen to have a very large bite. ”

He sucks at his teeth, seeming to think it over. “I’m doing it.”

Then he starts running toward Lemi.

“Fuck,” I grumble, getting the arrow onto the notch and running after him, keeping my eye on the skies, even though there will be no missing a deathdrage’s arrival.

“You cover me,” he says, approaching the eggs. “I’ll get this sorted.”

He picks the smallest one, its scales tinged with metallic green, and pushes it back and forth.

“I think it’s fertilized.” He does the same to the others, which move much more easily than the first one.

“Yep. These aren’t fertilized. That one is.

If I’m quick enough I’ll try to extract suen from the others. ”

“Just hurry,” I tell him. “I don’t want mama coming back.”

He spreads out his satchel on the ground and rolls the egg on top of it before closing the bag back up. “Easy,” he says. “Might as well get some suen while we’re here.”

A little too easy , I think, as the hair on the back of my neck stands up, my stomach sour.

Suddenly Lemi barks and shifts, making Andor stop just before he’s plunged the extractor into the egg. Lemi then appears on top of the rock wall, staring into the distance and barking repeatedly.

“Andor, we have to go now,” I tell him. “I don’t want to wait to see what he’s barking at.”

“Just a minute,” he says, plunging it in.

“Andor!” I yell. “Just stop and—”

I’m cut off by a terrible screech that rattles my bones and a whumping sound that blows back my hair.

Lemi shifts just in time as a deathdrage flies over the wall, heading right to Andor. It’s so big it nearly blots out the sky.

“Andor, run!” I scream, aiming the bow at the dragon and letting the arrow fly.

It hits the neck but bounces right off, its hide too thick.

I pull out another and another as Andor abandons the eggs and starts running toward me, Lemi nowhere in sight.

This time the arrows hit the dragon but they don’t slow it down.

It’s coming right for us.

I don’t know what to do.

Andor is running and it’s catching up and in a few seconds it will be upon him. He’s not on the defensive, he’s trying to get away, and he’s as vulnerable as he’ll ever be.

So I start running toward him.

Toward the dragon as it swoops toward us, each powerful blast from the wings enough to almost knock me backward.

But I don’t stop.

I throw the bow to the ground and pull out my ash-glass swords, wondering if I could somehow run up on Andor, if I could use him as leverage and leap up onto the dragon’s head, stabbing my swords through its skull.

It has to work, I think. It has to.

But then Andor’s boot slips on the loose pebbles underfoot and he stumbles for a moment.

I’m screaming, praying for him not to fall.

He doesn’t.

He manages to right himself.

Staring at me with that cocky smile of his.

Right before the dragon lands behind him, making the earth shake.

Both of us fall to the ground, and I’m scrambling to my feet staring at Andor through the clearing dust, watching as he tries to get up.

Watching as the dragon lunges forward.

Andor is pushed forward as well, his face contorted in a scream.

Two large white teeth puncture his chest, the dragon having caught him with its lower jaw.

My scream rises as his fades, as he chokes on the red blood flowing from his mouth and down his chest.

I’m outside myself.

This can’t be happening.

This can’t be real.

After all we’ve gone through, this can’t be it.

I see the light fade in his golden eyes, his body slump in the dragon’s mouth.

I become something else entirely.