“She’s fireproof,” Tairn reminds me, but the panic in his voice doesn’t do much to soothe the terror clamping down on my heart.
“Do not breathe!” Andarna demands, and I know it’s because I’ll singe my lungs if I do, if any of us do. I count my heartbeats. One. Two. Three.
The blast feels like it goes on forever, like it’s become my eternity, like my soul has done exactly what Sloane asked in the first part of the year and gone straight to the depths of hell without being commended to Malek. Eight. Nine.
On ten, it ends, and Andarna’s wings fall away. Air rushes in, and I wait until I feel its cool brush across my cheek before I drag in a breath, hearing the others do the same.
I open my eyes and see Cat lunge in the torchlight across the small space, using her gloved hands to put out the burning tips of the feathers along Kira’s far wing. It must have been exposed to the flames. Sloane races to help as Andarna gains her feet, and I narrowly avoid her tail as she faces down Solas.
“No! He’s nearly twice as big as you are!” I lift my hands and throw the floodgates open on Tairn’s power, letting it burn through me as Solas’s blast failed to do, until I’m pure fire. But I can’t wield in here, not when there’s every chance I could hit one of us.
Andarna’s roar fills the cave, and my heart stops when she goes for Solas’s throat. He bats her away like she’s nothing but a nuisance, and I muffle a cry as she slides into the wall, right over the charred remains of Visia’s bones.
“I’m fine.” Andarna shakes it off as Solas sizes me up.
“Three minutes,” Tairn tells me. “You will not die today!”
Three minutes. We can make it three minutes. But time isn’t our issue. Tairn can’t fit through the opening of the cave. He’ll have to find whatever entrance Solas used.
“How the fuck do you kill a dragon?”
“Let me go!” Cat shouts. “You’re…you’re draining my power!”
What the fuck? I chance a look backward, but all I see is Cat disengaging from Sloane’s panicked grip.
“Go for his other eye.”
“Get out of the way,” I order Andarna, and this time, she listens, scrambling back to my side as I grab two knives from their sheaths and flip them, pinching at the tips for a heartbeat before loosing them.
The first misses as he swivels, but the second finds the mark.
His bellow of pain is followed by rage, and he stumbles backward into the forked tunnel, leaving a small, precious opening between his head and the wall.
Cat and Sloane are closer. They can make it.
“Get her out!” I yell at Cat. “Now!”
“Violet!” Sloane shouts, but Kira’s beak closes softly around her pack, and she hoists her into the air as Cat scrambles to mount.
They rush by on the left, making it through just before Solas’s claws come out swinging, his talons raking furrows into the stone of the cave.
I hit the floor, pain flaring up my shoulders. There’s no pop as talons swipe over us, but something bites into my palm. Glass from the conduit.
I spread my bleeding fingers wide in the dim light of the dying torch, locating the remnants before it goes out. The top of the metal joint has broken, leaving four jagged prongs and one secured piece of alloy.
“I don’t have fire,” Andarna tells me, following my thoughts.
But I have power.
“It’s about to get really dark in here.” It’s our only shot, and I’m taking it. “You have to run as soon as there’s an opening.”
“I’m not leaving you,” she stubbornly argues.
“One minute!” Tairn announces.
How the hell am I going to get close enough to stab the remains of the conduit into him? There’s no time to tie it to a dagger, and the force of a throw isn’t enough to—
Solas roars in pain, his head swiveling back toward his shoulder, and through the opening, I see Cat poised in the dim light, nocking another arrow.
There’s no time to ruminate on her sticking around to save me. I’m already moving, grabbing hold of the dying torch in my empty hand, then running toward the soft spot under Solas’s foreleg, where his scales separate a few inches at a time to allow the movement of the joint.
He roars again, fire illuminating the cave in a short blast as he aims without sight, hitting the wall in front of him instead of Cat. I race into the deadly space underneath him and change my target when I realize he’ll crush me if he falls, charging toward his right shoulder.
I shove the prongs of the conduit into the soft joint between his scales as Andarna sinks her teeth between his neck and shoulder, distracting him, and then I wield. Energy sizzles up my arm and into my fingertips where they meet the metal.
Control. This is all about control.
With one hand raised, wielding the delicate strain of energy, I back away from Solas as quickly as I dare, feeding more and more power into the stream, and then I pour everything—
Solas roars, swinging his hind end around. A shape comes swinging for me, and I make out the thicker part of his tail in the dim light a second before it slams into my stomach, sending me flying and breaking the stream of lightning.
I’m airborne, nothing more than a projectile as I fly backward, hitting my ass, then my back, and lastly my head against the ground with a crack. But I hold my power tight instead of striking, letting it burn me from the inside out. Better me than accidentally hitting Andarna.
The only sound is a loud ringing in my ears, and sight only comes in quick, flashing blasts. Fire. It flares as I struggle to sit up through the fog of my own heartbeat, revealing Andarna latched onto Solas, hanging on even as he thrashes, slamming her smaller body against the cave wall.
“NO!” I think I yell, but the incessant peal of bells in my head blocks it out, and suddenly I’m moving, being dragged backward by a pair of arms. My head falls back, and I recognize those eyes.
Liam. I must be dead.
“She’s not clear!” someone shouts as the ringing fades slightly, and then another blast of fire shows two more arrows in the bloodied hole that used to be Solas’s shoulder.
Cat. She’s beside me, already drawing another arrow, and her lips move silently.
And the eyes above me aren’t Liam’s. They’re Sloane’s.
We’re plunged back into darkness momentarily, and the ringing fades enough to hear Cat’s voice clearly.
“Ninety. One hundred. One hundred and one.” Her voice shakes.
Light flares again as I’m dragged backward, and Cat fires, hitting Solas in the same wound. Andarna flies free, taking a chunk of Solas with her as I’m hauled from the returning darkness into the growing light from the mouth of the cave.
“Andarna!” I claw at Sloane’s grip, but the harder I fight, the weaker I feel, and the insufferable heat of my power lessens as Sloane starts to scream, letting me fall to the ground.
“Silver One!”
I feel the steady beats of air at my back and know Tairn is there, hovering, but I can’t rip my eyes away from the darkness of the cave as I stumble to my feet near the entrance.
A dragon screams, then falls horrifyingly silent.
She isn’t. She can’t be.
“She lives,” Tairn promises, but I don’t breathe until I reach mentally and find my bond with Andarna gleaming and strong.