It works, and my stomach hollows as we switch from the predator to the prey.
“If there were only one, I’d rip his throat out and call it a day.”
“I know.” But there’s no guarantee that there are only two.
“Hold on, Silver One.”
I buckle down, making myself as small as possible and lying across the saddle to minimize air resistance as Tairn moves at a pace I’ve never experienced. It takes all my effort to breathe, to fight the night at the edge of my vision, to just stay conscious as he bolts out of the clouds, then plummets back into the cover a breath later.
“They followed.”
“Great.” My fucking teeth are rattling. “How is that cloud cover? Because I can’t wield if I’m passed out.”
“They are almost clear.”
I grit my teeth and ignore the throbbing ache of my shoulder. The clouds have to clear the path, or there’s every chance I’ll kill Ridoc and Brennan if they’re still on the trail.
“We’re rolling,” he warns me a second before he does so, executing a move that disorients me thoroughly, a move most riders can’t hold their seat for.
My stomach lurches into my lungs as he levels out, flying back the opposite way and dropping us directly under the wyvern. “I know we’re not supposed to question dragons—”
“Then don’t.”
A set of pointed gray claws falls rapidly toward us. “Tairn!”
He banks hard right, then climbs quickly. “The clouds have cleared the trail.”
My heart speeds to a gallop. “Make sure they’re following us.”
“Don’t turn around, or you might actually pass out,” he instructs, flying faster.
I slide my hand out of my jacket with a wince, then gasp with pain as I rotate my palms downward and open myself to Tairn’s power. It flows through me, filling my muscles, my veins, the very marrow of my bones until I am power and power is me. My skin starts to hum, then sizzle.
We break through the clouds, and I throw my arms wide, pushing past the pain and screaming with it all in the same breath, setting the molten energy within me free, and for the first time in my life, I force the power downward.
Energy erupts through me, searing my skin on the way out as lightning strikes within the cloud below us, webbing out like the many branches of an overgrown briar patch, twisting and turning, drawn to the energy harnessed within the wyvern.
Four distinct shapes light up beneath us, two directly under and two closer to the edge of the cliff, flashing brightly with the endless stream of power.
“Break free!” Tairn demands.
I force my palms shut and shove the Archives door in my mind closed, blocking the endless torrent of Tairn’s power before I end up in the same condition I’d been in at Basgiath under Carr and Varrish’s punishment.
The flashing stops.
“Go!” I shout down the bond, clutching my right arm with my left as Tairn banks deeply to the left and dives for the ground.
This time, the wind is a welcome reprieve from the heat of my skin and the burn within my lungs as we pass through the cloud and emerge on the other side.
Four wyvern carcasses litter the ground, one in the middle of the very field we’d stood in this morning. Tairn flies over each just long enough to be sure that they are, in fact, riderless, and we’re joined by four others in the riot on one last sweep of the area.
Then we climb again, soaring through the clouds and coming out at the edge of the cliff, where everyone has gathered. Some gryphons load into heavy wagons with stumbling steps while others appear to have lost consciousness on the ground, but the fliers are all standing, as are the squads of riders.
Tairn quickly locates ours, and riders scurry as he drops to an abrupt landing.
“You could have crushed someone,” I lecture.
“Could have, but alas, they moved.”
I spot Rhiannon and Sawyer with Ridoc braced between them, walking him toward Aotrom, and breathe a sigh of relief.
“What? You thought I’d let your friend die?” Brennan asks, folding his arms and tilting his head up at me from where he stands next to Bodhi and Dain to the right of Tairn’s foreleg.
“Never doubted you for a second.” I force a smile.
“Want to get your ass down here and let me mend that shoulder?” He wields the older brother disapproving stare like the professional he is.
“Not particularly.” I grimace and haul Dain’s belt back into position, refusing to take the chance that I won’t be able to mount again if a mending session knocks me out.
“So fucking stubborn,” Brennan mutters, shoving his hands through his hair. “How did you know you could kill them like that?”
“I didn’t.” I breathe through the wave of pain that threatens to pull me under as I let the weight of my shoulder fall into the makeshift sling. “Wyvern are created with dark wielder magic, and Felix said something to me about energy fields the other day. I took a chance that the lightning would be drawn to their magic, and Tairn agreed to try.”
Brennan’s jaw drops slightly and Dain bites back an uncharacteristic smile, reminding me of the years when he cared more about climbing trees than our curfew.
“Chance panned out,” Bodhi says, flat-out grinning.
“It did.” I nod. “Aren’t you going to tell me how brilliant that idea was?”
Tairn scoffs. “I chose you last year for that brilliance, and now you’d like to be congratulated like it’s something new? How odd.”
“You’re impossible to impress.”
“I’m a dragon, a Black Morningstartail. The descendent of—”
“Yeah, yeah.” I cut him off before he makes me recite his entire lineage.
“Cath said there were four of them in there.” Dain deftly changes the subject. “At least they were riderless. Could you imagine if dark wielders knew we were joining forces with fliers and moving them into Tyrrendor? Where a dragon just hatched? They’d see us as a ripe little draining target.”
Bodhi’s face falls.
Oh shit. “That’s why you were worried.”
“There’s no telling who is within a four-hour flight.” Tairn bites out those last words.
“They already know.” My stomach twists. “That’s why they’re using riderless wyverns to patrol.”
Brennan stills completely, and the color drains from his face.
“What?” Dain glances between us.
“Venin share a collective conscious with the wyvern they create,” Brennan says quietly. “That’s what Tecarus’s book says.”
“The book you haven’t let me read in the four days you’ve had it?” I touch my fingertips to my head as the dizziness returns.
“It’s only been three days, and you apparently already know,” Brennan counters. “And some things are beyond your clearance, cadet, especially information we haven’t finished analyzing.”
“I know because I read the book my father gave me,” I argue, and I almost regret the emphasis when he flinches. He didn’t just separate himself from Mom when he changed his name—he distanced himself from Dad. “And Bodhi knows because it’s how I killed an entire horde of them at Resson.”