Page 84 of The King’s Man (The Kingdom of the Krow #3)

I stumbled out of the forest cover into biting wind that cut like cold knives on my skin. That fierce wind whipped my hair so it stung my cheeks and plastered my skirt to my legs so it felt like walking through water.

Just feet from the edge, a great gust threatened to push me backwards. I leaned into it and kept going until my toes were mere inches from lip, where the sod swelled over the edge and left the grasses dangling over the deadly sea below.

Here, the booming of the waves against the base of the cliffs punctured even the howling wind. But what made me quaver was the sight of those massive, outward-curving cliff-faces, a testament to the battering they’d taken from the ocean for millennia, spanning out for miles to the north.

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

But all I could think about was him.

Ruin had told me about this place.

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

Newly Chosen Flamebornes —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, each man buckled to his dragon’s neck strap as they perched on the edge of the cliff, opened their wings, and tipped into the air.

Ruin said they dropped like stones, a long enough fall 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 bloodied his nose.

His dragon had warned him to lean to the side of his neck, but Ruin had been so nervous and distracted he hadn’t listened.

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

He had been lucky he was strapped on, because he was stunned by the blow and would have fallen onto the fang-rocks, or that churning sea below and died. He’d trembled as he spoke, apologizing for his fear.

The whole story had only made him bigger in my mind. More heroic. But now, standing here…

The world seemed to tilt 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.

Or woman.

Ruin, Ruin, Ruin…

Curse my mind that would not stop conjuring him!

True to his name, he had ruined me—torn my heart from my chest and my soul from my body. And then… then he left. Abandoned me to a world with no use for a ruined farmgirl—yet he wouldn’t leave my thoughts?

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

Curling my toes, I crept closer to that edge. The midday light narrowed, the edges of my vision going dark as the wind gusted again, trying to throw me back.

My heart began to gallop.

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 stomach curdling dive towards the earth before snapping their wings wide and gliding easily back towards the sea in a serpentine grace that belied the bulk and weight that pinned them to the earth when they weren’t flying.

This 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. I thanked God that this was the last image in my mind: His servants. His warriors. His wisdom incarnate.

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

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 began to crumble 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 small wings fluttered against 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!

Something in my chest leaped and my eyes flew open, but my vision was 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 toe 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 pinwheeled as I fought to regain my balance.

Tipping forward over that chasm of death, I suddenly knew.

I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die—GOD, PLEASE, I DON’T WANT TO DIE!

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 weight enough to step back, it died.

The earth under my feet crumbled, the grasses tearing as my weight broke through and with a shriek and a desperate grab for the land that left me with a handful of grass and nothing else, I plummeted.

Blood-curdling fear coursed through my veins. The air left my lungs.

No, Little Flame!

Feet peddling, hands clawing 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 shriek was the only sound I could make out over 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 bounced and continued to fall—then bounced again.

My body was flipped, sliding, grabbing, skin scraped raw but—

Hold on!

The rock 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 righted and I realized I was still alive, my eyes flew open. The entire world bounced once more, then pushed at my stomach, coming up to meet me so hard my jaw was shoved 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 and…

There was an almighty whoomph! 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.

Whoomph-whoomph-whoomph.

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 place where 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…

‘Breathe, Little Flame. That was close. Very, very close. But you will be well. I give you my word. You will be well. Now… breathe.’

I blinked again as that whoomph 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.

Whoomph. Whoomph. Whoomph.

‘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.’