She glances back, then throws her body flat between Tairn’s shoulders, and I reach forward, grasping her ankle and pulling the lever without hesitation. “One!”
The arrow hits true, striking the venin in the sternum as Tairn banks hard right.
The dark wielder falls, but the sound of an explosion comes from behind us as I grip Rhi’s ankle, ignoring the screaming protest of my shoulder as the wrap fights to keep the joint in place.
Rhi holds fast to Tairn’s spikes, and he levels to horizontal quickly, pumping his wings to climb as she works backward toward me, then turns, wrapping her arms around me in a tight hug.
I hold on to her, still clutching the crossbow, and breathe deeply as Feirge mirrors Tairn’s wingbeats just beneath us, keeping pace. She’s all right. They’re both all right.
This isn’t Resson, and I didn’t just lose my best friend.
“You reckless, irresponsible—” I yell.
“You’re welcome!” she shouts, rain streaming down her face when she pulls away and hands back my blade. “Fix your saddle. I’ll retrieve the dagger from the ground.” She stands, then gives me a flash of a smile before jumping from Tairn’s shoulder.
I track her fall, breathing a sigh of relief when she lands effortlessly on Feirge.
“My saddle is stuck!” I tell Tairn as we climb back to the battle.
“Good. Maybe you’ll stay in it.”
Sunlight glints off Quinn’s labrys as she swings the double-sided battle-ax from Cruth’s back into the shoulder joint of a wyvern trying its best to sink its teeth into Glane.
“Melgren is ten minutes out, but only two of his aides could keep up, and there’s a general consensus that most of the dark wielders are holding back for a second wave.” Tairn passes Cruth, and I look up into a sea of gray and barely suppress the urge to vomit. There have to be at least six riderless wyvern up there. How long can we keep this up? Pivoting in my saddle, I note Xaden beneath us on Sgaeyl, dragging wyvern by the throat into the side of the mountain one by one at speed as they dive toward them.
“Sgaeyl’s outnumbered!”
“If she wants help, she’ll ask for—”
A pain-filled roar joins the cacophony above, and my chest tightens. “Andarna?” I reach out, my gaze sweeping the blurred mountainside as we fly upward.
“I’m quite annoyingly safe and hidden,” she responds.
“Aotrom!” Tairn bellows, and my stomach sinks.
Ridoc.
Tairn sweeps right, avoiding the plummeting body of a wyvern, but there’s another above us with its teeth locked onto Aotrom’s hindquarters, and three more closing in for the kill.
Sawyer and Sliseag fly from the opposite side of our sector, tracking to intercept at the same time, but everyone else is beneath us. I sheathe my dagger at my hip, then load the crossbow and strap that at my thigh as we surge upward.
Tairn’s roar shakes his entire body as we approach, and I hold on to the pommel, bracing for the jarring collision, but he flies past as Sawyer and Sliseag reach the fray, then swings his massive tail into the trio of approaching wyvern.
I pivot as much as the saddle will let me at the crunching sound of bone shattering. A wyvern falls from the fight, half its head bashed in. One down. Three to go.
Tairn pulls the steepest turn I’ve ever experienced on his back, and my vision dims at the edge as he brings us nearly vertical before tipping his wing left and falling into a dive. I blink furiously into the wind and rain as we fly to Aotrom and Ridoc’s aid.
Ridoc’s doing all he can from Aotrom’s back to dislodge the wyvern, stabbing his sword into its snout, but the dammed thing won’t let go.
Sliseag gets there first, slashing out at the wyvern with his swordtail and cutting into a foreleg. When it doesn’t let go, he pivots to close his jaw over its neck, but unlike Tairn, he isn’t strong enough to snap a neck with a bite and loses precious seconds, leaving himself exposed to the remaining pair of wyvern.
We’re not going to make it in time.
The pair changes course, veering from Aotrom at the last second and aiming for Sliseag.
We’re almost there, but everything happens so fucking fast that it’s as if the rest of the world slows down.
In one heartbeat, the closest wyvern opens its jaws.
In the second, it blasts green fire across Sliseag and Sawyer dives backward out of the seat, narrowly avoiding being burned to death and rolling down Sliseag’s spine with a smoking boot.
In the third, it completes its assault, snapping at Sliseag’s exposed side. Sawyer kicks at the gaping jaws to save his dragon from the bite, but in the next, he takes it himself, his leg disappearing between the wyvern’s massive teeth.
“Sawyer!” Ridoc yells.
Sawyer’s scream rips into my soul, and I nearly echo it when the wyvern’s jaw locks with an audible click as Tairn slows his descent directly overhead, only a dozen feet above Aotrom as the remaining wyvern ducks under the fight.
Tairn’s weight shifts, and I know he’s chosen an angle of attack and is about to dive, but in this position, there’s only time to save Sawyer or Sliseag, not both. Sawyer bellows in pain as the wyvern half drags him off Sliseag, wrenching away its ugly gray head before snapping again.
My stomach twists and my breath threatens to seize.
Fuck, there’s nothing left below Sawyer’s knee.
He’s losing blood and his grip.
No. I’m not going to stand by and watch another one of my friends die. I refuse.
Grasping the dagger in my left hand and the crossbow in my right, I slice through the leather strap of my belt as Tairn dips his right wing, giving me the perfect angle for one. Single. Second. “Forgive me.”
“Don’t you dare—”
“Kill the other one quickly for both our sakes!” I’m already moving, sheathing my dagger and lunging from the saddle, gaining one, two, three running steps before I leap.
Andarna. Xaden. My sister. Brennan. They all flash through my mind as my arms swing through the fall, finding only air, but it’s my mother’s face I see in my mind when I land on Aotrom’s back, the soles of my boots finding purchase at the edge of one of his spine scales.
“Silver One!”
“How’s that for a running landing?” Holy shit, I made it.
Ridoc must think the same, because he stares at me in pure shock for a good second before he yanks his sword free of the wyvern’s nose, then moves to plunge it again as I start running toward him. “I can’t get the fucking thing off him!”
My heart pounds as hard as my feet as Tairn completes the dive to my right, a patch of black filling my peripheral vision. Ignoring the self-preservation instinct that tells me this is a bad idea, I race to Ridoc and shove the crossbow into his hands. “Fire it once I’m on Sliseag and get back in your seat!”
“Once you’re what?”
I don’t pause to answer the question, too busy running onto the nose of the godsdamned wyvern that’s currently having part of its throat ripped out by Sliseag.
I run up the slope between the shrieking wyvern’s eyes as it sinks its teeth deeper into Aotrom, then onto the flat of its head between its horns as Sliseag tears his jaw away.
“I’m going to throttle you myself once”—Tairn growls, and I hear the distinct sound of bone crunching in the distance—“I get you on the ground!”