I nearly roll my ankle on a spike halfway down the wyvern’s gyrating neck and catch myself as Sliseag swings his head back to the wyvern attacking his rider, but Sawyer’s grip along his spine scales is too tenuous for Sliseag to maneuver quickly. The dragon can’t defend his rider without losing him.
He lets loose a skull-shaking roar as the wyvern takes another snap at Sawyer, swinging his tail with no effect.
“Hurry, Vi!” Ridoc yells.
“Sliseag!” I shout, breaking the cardinal rule of all riders. “Let me help him!”
The red swivels its head toward me, pinning me with furious golden eyes, and I nod, praying to Dunne he understands, that he holds still, and then leap from the wyvern’s neck, my feet kicking for distance.
I land just above Sliseag’s eyes and wrap my left arm around one of his horns, using it to both stop my momentum and hold my balance as his head swings toward the wyvern attacking Sawyer, snapping at the wyvern and coming up short.
“Now, Ridoc!” Using Sliseag’s horn for leverage, I hurtle down his neck as an explosion sounds behind me, heat flaring along my back.
Sawyer scoots himself across Sliseag’s spine, and I run faster, passing the seat. If he falls to that side, there’s nothing Tairn can do. We’re too close to the ridgeline below.
“Where are you?” I ask Tairn as Sawyer’s eyes meet mine in a double take.
I ignore the snaps and snarls above me and keep moving.
“Where I’m supposed to be, unlike you!” he bites out just as his gargantuan frame turns in the sky ahead of me, dropping the lifeless body of the fourth wyvern from his jaws.
“Good. Now do me a favor.” I charge past Sliseag’s wings and alongside the enormous, gnashing teeth of the wyvern poised to devour Sawyer.
“Which would be?” Tairn asks, already flying toward us.
“Violet?” Sawyer’s eyes widen with shock as blood pumps out of his leg in sickening rhythmic spurts. He needs a healer now.
I hit my knees, sliding the last few feet and slamming into Sawyer, knocking him farther down Sliseag’s spine toward the dragon’s hindquarters. Wrapping my arms around Sawyer, I clasp my hands behind his back. “Hold on!” I shout as we slide over countless red scales, seconds away from the edge.
Sliseag banks away from the ridgeline, giving us a few hundred much-needed feet of altitude for the inevitable fall, and tips us over.
“Silver One!”
Sawyer’s arms close around me as we tumble off Sliseag’s back and fall into the open air.
“Catch me.” Wind tears at my hair, my face, my leathers, but I hold on to Sawyer as we drop in total free fall. I can save him. He doesn’t have to die today.
He won’t.
One. Two. Three. Four. I count my heartbeats as we clear the ridgeline.
“What are you doing?” Xaden roars, and there’s a faint, familiar brush of velvet at the base of my neck, as if Xaden’s power has been extended to its limits. Our fall slows, but not by much as a dark wing blocks out the sky.
“What the hell does it look like I’m—” The breath is knocked from my lungs as an iron vise closes around us, halting our fall with a whipping change of momentum. Tairn.
“What part of ‘stay in your saddle’ did you not understand?” Tairn bellows, holding us in the precarious grip of his claw and banking left, toward Basgiath.
“You couldn’t be in two places at once,” I argue, fighting to draw breath as Sawyer goes limp above me, his chin falling against my shoulder. “You had to kill the fourth wyvern, and Sliseag wouldn’t defend himself if it meant losing Sawyer, so I took Sawyer.”
“And you just hoped I’d catch you?” He flares his wings, slowing our speed to a glide.
“As if you wouldn’t.” Air flows into my lungs in a trickle, then a stream.
He scoffs. Then changes the subject with, “Your brother has mended the stone into one piece but does not feel…hopeful.”
My heart rises just to fall. Well, that’s…great.
“Why? Can it not be imbued?”
“Marbh is not keen on details.” Tairn lands on three claws in the small field between the back of the school and the cliff, gently opening the one that holds us.
What the fuck does that mean? Icy slush greets me as rain continues to fall, and I push Sawyer to his back and roll to my knees, putting my fingers to the pulse of his pale, freckled neck.
“Somebody help us!” I scream, my voice echoing off the stone walls of the administration building. The sluggish beat of his pulse jolts my own. He’s losing too much blood too quickly, and there’s no help in sight, though it’s obvious we’re not the first wounded to have landed here.
“I will call for aid,” Tairn replies.
You can’t have him, I tell Malek, shifting to kneel in the scarlet snow. You took Liam. You may not have Sawyer.
“Sawyer?” I wrench the buckle on the belted sheath around my left thigh, and mercifully, it gives. Knives and all, I wrap it over the wrecked leather beneath Sawyer’s knee, inches above raggedly torn flesh, thread the leather through the buckle, and pull as hard as I can, crying out when pain sings through my left shoulder. “You have to wake up! Open your eyes!”
The bitter taste of fear floods my mouth as I force the metal prong through a smooth section of leather by sheer will. “Please?” I beg him, my voice breaking as my fingers search for his pulse at his wrist, then his neck, leaving crimson fingerprints on his bloodless skin. “Please, Sawyer, please. We said we’d all live until graduation, remember?”
“Aid comes,” Tairn announces.
“I remember,” Sawyer whispers, his eyes fluttering open.
“Oh, thank the gods!” I smile down at him, my lower lip trembling uncontrollably. “Hold on—”
“Violet!” Maren calls from across the field, and I look up to see her on Daja’s back, the gryphon sprinting forward through the rain, covering the distance quickly with Cat and Bragen on foot a bit behind.
Tairn’s head snaps upward toward the battlefield. “Sgaeyl—”
“Go!” If she’s in danger, so is Xaden, and given the giant tendrils of shadow emanating from within a wall of gray on the edge of our sector…
Tairn crouches, then springs upward, launching with heavy beats of his wings against the morning sky as Daja reaches us, dragging a litter behind her.
“What happened?” Maren slides from Daja’s back, her tan leathers streaked with blood.
“Wyvern took his leg.” I glance between them as Bragen and Cat arrive. “Are you all right?”
“It’s not ours,” Bragen says, crouching on the other side of Sawyer. “You’re going to be all right,” he assures him. “Just need to get you to the healers.” He slides his arms under Sawyer, then lifts and carries him to Daja.
The healers. Because mending isn’t an option, not without his leg.
“We’ve been ferrying the wounded,” Maren says over her shoulder, rushing back to Daja as Cat helps Bragen lower Sawyer to the litter.
“Thank you.” I sit back on my heels and look to the sky, letting the strength of my bond with Xaden assure me that he’s well instead of possibly distracting him by asking.