Page 35 of Blood of Dragons

“No.”

“Calista—”

“I said no.”

“And what will you do? Continue to plot against me?”

I refused to answer.

“I apologized to you. How many times do I need to apologize?—”

“So if Barron apologized to you, all would be well?” I snapped.

His stare immediately turned angry. “Not the same thing?—”

“You lost your father. And I lost mine.”

The warning was in his eyes, a wall of livid fire. “I lost a lot more than that.”

“My father was all the family I had—so I lost my entire world, just like you did.”

His stare hardened, the cords in his neck becoming more strained in his silent anger.

“Why is your pain more important than mine? Why am I the one who has to forgive and forget, while your crusade lives on?—”

He vanished.

I blinked, staring at the chair where he’d been just an instant before, and he was still absent. “What the…?”

I got to my feet and looked around, searching in the corners and the hallway, but I knew he was gone. I knew because the music of the forest returned, because the tense energy he brought had vanished, because the light from the fireflies was a little brighter.

I’d thought I understood the extent of his powers, but now I realized I didn’t understand them at all.

5

TALON

I left the castle and stepped onto the ramparts, seeing Khazmuda saddled and ready to take flight. I climbed up his flank by the ropes, and the second I was in the saddle, he jumped for the sky and his massive wings caught him.

We flew through the cold, the wind making my cape fly behind me and cooling the heat of anger that pulsed in my neck.

Khazmuda said nothing, knowing my anger was too extreme for conversation.

We landed in the clearing near the trees, the snow crunching underneath Khazmuda’s talons when he landed where grass should be.

I slid down his side and felt my boots drop a foot into the snow.

I’ll hunt. He took off again, the sky dark.

I gathered supplies and made a campfire, striking the match against the rock like I taught Calista and setting it ablaze. Then I sat on a boulder and stared at the fire, feeling my anger only get worse, not better.

Khazmuda returned nearly an hour later and dropped his kill in front of me.

“I’m not hungry.”

This is all mine?

“Enjoy.”