I crack my neck from side to side. Scrub my face. Rip my hands through my hair.
White flag.
White flag.
White fucking flag.
Another pained yowl slits across my heart, tangling with a flash.
A vision strikes like a blow to the brain:
Pale, blistered skin. Shredded wings. Milky, unseeing eyes—
A deep groan bludgeons up my throat.
I’m in the jungle before I can even process the stabbing pierce of my thoughts. Leaping over the stone wall before I register the suffocating noose bound around my throat. Charging up the esplanade when I become vitally aware of the heaviness sitting upon my chest, crushing my ribs.
The city is sleeping, leading me to ponder the hour as I charge up a path winding between terracotta homes draped in bronze vines, their inky blooms bobbing in the wind, facing shafts of sun that paint my back.
Rygun shreds through the air above, carving large loops that keep churning back to the faraway ledge I saw the wounded Moonplume plummet toward.
I’ve never seen him act this way before …
The ground becomes more uneven beneath my boots as I weave to a higher altitude, pulling tight breaths of muggy, sweet-smelling air, making for the sheer cliff ahead.
A dead end.
I unlace my boots, tuck them behind a bush pressed close to one of the bouldered homes, then rest my hands on the stone, looking up the vertical expanse. Rygun makes another swooping pass of the isolated landing patch far above, almost like he’s guarding it.
Frowning, I wedge my fingers into the clefts, find a sturdy foothold, and pull myself up—ascending the cliff face in teeth-gritted increments. The wind tangles with my hair and toys with my trailing robe as I climb, moving with speed and agility.
With poise and purpose.
Another pained lament tapers into oblivion, tangling with another blinding flash:
Me—aboard the back of a vibrant feathered beast gliding through the sky, an oppressive heat pressing down on me as screams rip my throat raw.
A bloody, blistered Moonplume bobbing through the air behind me, tethered to my wake, rays of golden light glinting off her big, glistening eyes that weren’t fit to peer at the sun. That lost their sparkle, then faded into a dark gray.
Light gray.
Paler—
The vision slits my chest straight down the middle, takes my heart in its hand and crumbles it through a crushing fist.
I slip, hand whipping up, catching myself on a tree root protruding from the cliff.
Dangling, I fail to scrape the residue of the vision from my mind’s eye, that noose around my throat tightening.
Tightening.
All the light seems to wick from my surroundings, the vision’s suffocating tendrils lashing my mind like blazing ribbons of searing sunlight.
A massive roaring shadow swoops past me, gusting my face with a slap of air.
I pull a shuddered gasp, my stare finally spearing past my swinging feet, honing in on the bouldered city far below. I blink away the blur, my heart lurching as I properly gauge the potential drop just waiting to yank me into its slaughtering void.
Fuck.
Again, Rygun swoops past, the thorned tip of his vast wing slicing the air so close to me I’m certain it’s not an accident.
“Stop fussing!” I scream in his direction, head tipping as I take in my tentative grip on the crumbling root, my next words mumbled. “I’m fine …”
I reach forward with my flailing hand and wedge my fingers into the cliff, find a foothold, and transfer my weight back onto the stone, dumping the painful image on the shore of my icy lake where I can deal with it later.
When I’m not scaling a cliff.
I secure myself to the stone, then loosen my grip on the root and continue my ascent, threading my arm over the ledge when I reach the top. I slap my hand on the landing patch and pull myself up, stare stabbing left toward the hutch’s gloomy hollow. Heaving myself onto flat ground, I peer over my shoulder to see Rygun still circling through the sky behind me, watching on from a distance.
Still fussing from a distance.
Sighing, I creep toward the hutch, pausing by a black mesh mask big enough to fit a dragon—ripped through, as though a talon tore it free.
I crouch, running my fingers across the sheer fabric not dissimilar to the roll of material Kaan instructed me to veil my face with while on Rygun’s back.
A shiver crawls up my spine, something inside me shifting heavily. Paying attention.
I pause.
Turn.
My blood ices at the sight of the coiled Moonplume trembling in the lump of shadow over the other side of the landing patch, emitting a dull light.
A frosty wail of mourning threatens to carve up my throat from somewhere deep beneath my ribs as I scour the dragon’s leathery skin riddled with welts, shreds of sizzled flesh hanging off its haunches. The massive holes burnt through the elegant sweep of its shimmery wings.