“A little wren decided to pay us a visit.”
“This is no wren.”
I looked up at what had felled me. A pair of onyx dragons loomedover me, swapping smug looks before pinning me with their ruthless, prismatic black eyes.
“Is that …”
“A fire-breather,” the other finished, his big hand coming toward me.
My damnable hair. Gave me away every time—at least to those who knew what they were seeing. Of course, it was not theonlything. My skin flushed with heat, pulling and tingling, snapping and buzzing in a way that warned me that my dragon was coming.
A quick glance down at the back of my hand confirmed it. My skin flashed and blurred, shimmering faintly like amber trapped in sunlight even in the night. I saw it, and they saw it, too. They knew.
“Where did she come from?” the mountain demanded, looking disgruntled that I had crept up on him and been so close to getting the best of him.
“Doesn’t matter. She’s here and ours now.”
Ours.
As though I was only an object to be owned. The words spiked a fury in me. A surge of self-preservation. No. I would not be anyone’s property.
Right now, it was just the two of them. Any moment, the rest of their group would be alerted. I had to act.
I opened my mouth, ready to expel a torrent of fire, but they anticipated that. Acted fast. Faster than me. A hand landed on my ankle, dragging me and flipping me over.
My face was pushed down into the dirt so that I couldn’t release my fire anywhere—onanyone—that mattered, anywhere that might help me.
Snow filled my mouth. I writhed, choking, trying to buck free. A large boot pressed down on my back, digging into my spine with a grinding crack, pinning me in place. My still-healing rib cried out, throbbing in pain.
They laughed.
The mountain directed, “Go wake the others. Show them what we caught.”
At this command, the other onyx started off. I twisted my head to look up, to watch his gloating face as he backed away.
And then I couldn’t see anything.
The ground surged, lifting in a great rolling swell beneath us—as though an immense beast had come awake to shake the earth’s skin from its back and toss the dragon off it.
The earth sprayed everywhere in a great tidal wave, blinding me to everything around me. I blinked rapidly against the deluge, fighting to regain my vision. Through the clearing monsoon of dirt and snow, I watch as the ground grabbed hold of the onyx dragon who had been leaving.
Morethan that. The land opened, cracking wide, pulling him down, sucking him under, covering him quickly, smothering him so completely that he did not even have a chance to cry out before his mouth was filled with muddy snow.
The pressure in my back eased. Freed, I rolled over, scanning wildly, trying to compute what was happening. The dragon was no more. Gone. Buried deep beneath the ground. Now just the one remained, the original mountain, standing on earth that had fallen suddenly still, the snow and dirt settled into place, the ground beneath us no longer shifting and bending.
But how?
Then I spotted her.Kerstin.
A relieved breath rushed out of me. She’d come back. She had not abandoned me, after all.
She looked ready to topple over, wobbling where she stood, legs braced apart, hands held aloft in the air. With a staggering, clumsy step, her trembling arms dropped to her sides like too-heavy weights.
“Kerstin!” I gasped.
The onyx reacted, lunging toward her, clearly reaching the conclusion I had.
She was the one who had done this—who had pulled his comrade beneath the ground.
