Page 127 of House of Ashes
He stopped abruptly. Closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. “Sera. If Kalros is there, I cannot keep you on my back safely. Not without being able to speak mind to mind.”
“I can fight on the ground if you bring me.” I gripped my sword, the handle comfortingly solid in my hand. “Or I’ll saddle a wyvern and catch up. One way or another, Rhylan—I’m coming with you, and that’s final.”
He made a low growling sound under his breath, dragging his hands through his hair. “Sera, for the love of the gods…you drive me to madness.”
“We’re going together, then?” I put a hand on his arm, drawing it down from his face. Forcing him to look at me. “They’ll need support when the battle is over. They’ll need the extra set of hands. Don’t make me look like a coward, Rhylan.”
His lips were set in a thin white line. “I don’t give a damn if you look like a coward, so long as you’re alive at the end of it.”
“I’ll live through this. Just bring me in close and leave me on the ground.”
Rhylan exhaled, the flames in his eyes guttering. “Don’t forget the tap-code. You’ll have to keep a lookout behind us on the way. Watch my flanks; they’re my blind spots.”
I rose up on my tiptoes and tucked a kiss in the corner of his mouth.
In the eyrie, Viros practically threw the newly-restored saddle onto Rhylan, buckling it as I leapt onto his back. The lack of safety straps made my stomach churn—but it had been my idea to remove them, to turn the tables on Chantrelle and restore what semblance of legitimacy we had.
I was comfortable enough with him that I wouldn’t back out now. Not while our fledgling alliance with the Lunar Tides counted on our support in this very moment.
I wrapped the reins around my wrists for insurance, and patted him twice. Rhylan didn’t even wait until I’d pulled my hand back before launching himself through the dragon door.
The letter had directed us to the outskirts of Orisien’s territory, a stretch of smaller mountains and rough hills that bordered a corner of Jhazra’s domain.
Pushing himself to his limits, exhaling smoke with every breath, it took Rhylan two hours to push over the mountains, his wings beating like thunder.
I leaned low over the saddle, my head on a swivel. There was open sky behind us—but the flanks made me nervous. The craggy peaks of the southern Krysiens were as deadly as the northern ones, able to hide more than one furtive dragon lying in wait.
There was no sign of anyone. Nothing but clear blue sky, thin white wisps of cloud hanging overhead. Empty, deadly peaks below us.
That made me more nervous than the telltale signs of inhabitants.
As the mountains gave way to the rugged foothills of Orisien’s territory, we saw the first sign of others. I squinted over Rhylan’s spiraling horns, catching a glimpse of brilliant ice blue against black plumes of smoke rising from the earth.
“Dragons ahead!” I shouted, knowing that he’d already seen them, and that was the first mistake I made.
The hills below us shifted, stones rustling and shifting—a great set of umber wings, unfurling to reveal the dragon curled beneath and his bronze-scaled body. Burning yellow eyes tracked us across the sky.
He leapt from the hillside, beating his wings rapidly to catch us.
I gritted my teeth as Rhylan surged forward, unaware of the dragon behind us, and dug my left heel into his side.
He roared his acknowledgement, his body moving like an ocean wave as he dove and rose, generating more momentum—but the bronze dragon was thinner, lighter, and without a rider he needed to care for. He trailed us easily, an arrow arcing through the heavens just behind us.
I kept myself tucked low against Rhylan’s back, sending up a silent prayer to Larivor…and Rhylan pushed forward into Orisien’s territory, past a plume of thick, black smoke, and the ice blue dragon—Doric—came soaring by, his teeth and claws bloodied.
Elinor clung to his back, shouting something to me as Rhylan banked around the smoke, and I missed it.
The bronze dragon was there on our left, flapping hard to remain in midair—I nudged Rhylan with my left heel again, ensuring he knew the outsider was there.
But it still made no move to attack. It kept pace with us, just outside the dark columns of smoke, and Rhylan swerved to the left suddenly to put distance between us.
I held on tight, squeezing with my knees, trying to compensate for the sudden jarring force that threw me along with him. There was no sign of Kalros, even as I caught glimpses of other dragons in the fog of war—flashes of green, blue, and violet, and a silvery-scaled dragon that might’ve been a distant relative.
Wyvern-riders flitted among them, though the smaller reptiles fled from battle wherever possible.
Several dragons from Lunar Tides fought the invading force, snarling and growling, sending up spurts of icy, glittering flame.
But as Rhylan soared through a mercifully smoke-free patch of air, I glimpsed the center of Zerhaln below. Most of it was aflame, a swath of destruction already carved right through the center. A massive fountain had been boiled dry by dragonfire, the gardens around it still crackling as they burnt.