That only enraged him further.
Clyde came at me again where I huddled on the ground. He pulled back his boot to deliver several kicks. Others joined in, enjoying themselves. The toes of heavy boots rained down on me. The blows came in quick succession, a violent barrage. I curled into a ball to shelter myself, crying out as one kick caught my not-fullyhealed rib.
Wrapping my arms around my head, I felt the familiar heat within me snap, catching flame along every nerve and fiber, building into an inferno.
From between my arms, I caught a glimpse of Kerstin as she struggled against her captors, trying to reach me. Her gaze locked on me, her bronze eyes glowing like coins in the sunlight. She dipped her head in a quick nod of encouragement. She was ready. She’d been preparing for this very thing since she could walk. The gleam in her eyes told me she might even be looking forward to it.
My core seethed, boiling over.
I gave her a nod back, my message clear.Go ahead. Show them what you are.
I opened my mouth with a scream that thundered over the air, straining my voice, cracking my shifting vocal cords as fire built and gathered in my throat, ready to rush free.
Ready to burn it all down.
25
TAMSYN
THE WORLD EXPLODED ALL AROUND ME, BUT NOT BECAUSEof anything I did.
There was no fire. I never even had a chance to release it. Crackling flames never made it past my lips.
The world was pandemonium.
I was free of the furious onslaught of boots. Trembling, I lowered my arms, blinking through an opaque cloud of snow and dirt and bits of rock raining down. It smelled and tasted of loam and minerals.
Lifting my head up higher from the cradle of my arms, I spotted Kerstin and scrambled over to where she hugged the ground.
The soldiers’ screams congested the air, thick as the swirling, choking wind.
A great whooshing sound filled my ears, shaking me where I crouched low … louder even than the warriors’ screams. I lifted myself a little higher, tentative, searching, trying to piece together what was happening, trying to identify the danger—the danger I must now fight.
The wind blew violently and there was a roar that flung back my fur mantle and cloak from my body, whipping my hair back from the roots, clawing at my eyes until they streamed salty tears from the corners.
Several loud cracks rang out.
Blood steeped the air, the coppery scent filling my nose, coating my tongue.
Weapons clanged. Pebbles and rocks stormed around us, one striking me in the cheek, and I dropped flat over Kerstin, feeling the wet slide of my blood on my face.
Gasping, I rolled onto my back, watching the debris-ridden air churn above me. A body was hurled, followed by another and another. They arced across my line of vision like arrows, leaving a trail of blood, a spray of red rain against the deepening fog.
And there … just beyond … up, up in the sky …
Great silvery wings flapped above me in deep strokes, swimming through air that was more than snow and dirt now. It was mist. Dragon mist. Thick, billowing-like-smoke mist.
A shader’s fog.
The air sawed from my lips, my body overheating as I stared straight up, snow melting into a puddle around me.
My heart lodged in my throat as I followed the slope of those wings to the body of the dragon—to the familiar andnotfamiliar eyes the color of ice, pale frost with a ring of darker blue.
Familiarbecause I knew him.
In life. In memory. In dreams.
My body reacted, responding, lifting up, pulled by an invisible string, spine arching as though compelled to reach, touch, merge.
