Total pages in book: 247
Estimated words: 235897 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1179(@200wpm)___ 944(@250wpm)___ 786(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 235897 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1179(@200wpm)___ 944(@250wpm)___ 786(@300wpm)
“There!” Mira shouts, pointing as the clock tower comes into view at the end of the street and wings beat overhead. “No!” she yells. “Tairn first!”
I shake my head and run faster. “Go! If Teine is here, then go!”
“I’m not leaving—” she starts to argue.
“Go so we can!” Henson yells.
Xaden throws his arm out, catching me in a skid as Mira races into the courtyard to meet Teine’s arrival. Their run-on mounting is flawless, timed to the peak of perfection, and Mira is already climbing the clubtail’s foreleg as Teine flies over the village.
Henson nods as if talking to her dragon, then looks back at Aura. “You’re next. One minute out.”
The flames start catching the houses behind us.
“This is my fault.” Aura clenches her fist to my right and looks to the courtyard with wide, frightened eyes. “Grady is…gone. They’ll know we’re here. There’s no hiding a fire like this.”
“All that matters is that we get out,” I tell her. “Don’t think about anything else.”
“Overhead!” Xaden shouts as wings block the moon.
“We’re not the only wings in the sky,” Tairn warns, and ice prickles the back of my neck.
“Go!” Henson orders Aura, pointing toward the courtyard. “Dagolh is on the approach.”
“Wait!” I shout, but she’s already sprinting toward the clock tower. “Tairn says we aren’t alone.”
“She’ll make it,” Henson says in a voice that doesn’t quite convince me.
Scorching heat flares at my back, but I keep my eyes forward as Aura races into the open.
A claw reaches for her, and I hold my breath for them to make contact. The claw curls in the same way Tairn’s does right before he scoops me up—
The talon emerges somewhere near the middle of her spine.
Blood gushes from the wound, but Aura’s scream is silenced as the wyvern drags her lifeless body into the sky. Not too far overhead, a dragon bellows.
Xaden’s arm tightens around me, supporting my weight when my knees try to buckle.
“Tairn…”
“Sixty seconds,” he says, urgency lacing his tone.
“Damn, they got here fast,” Henson mutters, rocking back on her heels. “All right, Riorson, you’re up—”
They got here fast? That’s all she has to say?
“We do not answer to you,” he says without taking his eyes off the courtyard.
The moon catches on a flash of navy-blue wings, but instead of landing, Sgaeyl streaks overhead, flying fast and hard for the wyvern that’s just picking up altitude.
“What in Dunne’s name…”
“And she damn well doesn’t take your orders,” Xaden says to Henson.
Sgaeyl lunges, then seems to rake her claws into the wyvern and climb its back. Her head darts left, then right, and the creature’s wings snap free.
“Remind me to never piss her off,” I mutter as the wyvern falls, crashing somewhere at the edge of the village.
A corner of Xaden’s mouth rises.
“Approaching,” Tairn announces.
“Take us both.” I grab Xaden’s hand. “Run with me.”
Xaden’s brow furrows for a heartbeat, and then he nods.
“I am not a horse,” Tairn fires back as Xaden and I run for the courtyard, the heat at our back flaring to unbearable temperatures.
“They patrol in pairs,” I shout down the pathway that connects all four of us. “Take. Us. Both!” My boots pound against the stone, and ahead, I see Sgaeyl banking back in a steep turn.
We hit the open air, and I block out the very real possibility that the wyvern’s partner will see us first, sprinting harder for the widest place where Tairn can grab us.
“I’m here,” he says down our shared pathway.
“Trust me,” Xaden demands, and I can’t tell which one of us he’s talking to, but I instantly nod. He pivots with alarming speed, putting himself in front of me, then hauls me up against his chest, bringing our heads level. “Hold on.”
I throw my arms around his neck, the conduit bouncing against his back as he pitches his arms outward, and bands of midnight-black shadow wrap around us both, binding me to him.
Familiar wingbeats sound over the flames in the scant heartbeats before we’re plucked off the ground, Tairn’s claws hooking over Xaden’s shoulders and yanking us into the night.
Wind tears at my eyes as we fly toward Sgaeyl, but another pair of wings approaches from the right on an intercept path. Two legs, not four.
“On your right,” I warn Tairn, then turn to Xaden. “You’d better be damn good with these shadows.”
“I have you,” Xaden promises, and the bands tighten.
Power floods my body as I throw open the Archives door, and heat stings my skin. Gods, if I channel too much while attached to him…
“He’s been a great deal closer when you’ve wielded,” Tairn reminds me, and—
Nope, not thinking about how he knows that.
I fumble for a second to clasp the conduit and hold it away from Xaden’s skin, then let the energy surge to a breaking point and focus entirely on my right hand.