“That’s a bit dramatic,” I said.
Sai’s shoulders shrugged, his lips tilting in amusement. “That’s Makenna.”
“They are not here,” Tano bellowed, white-faced, practically pleading with the dragon towering above him. “They escaped. We do not have them anymore.”
Just then, thank the stars, Captain Declan Jones’s head popped up from his hiding spot behind a boulder. I pointed him out to Sai, and we slid through the remaining trees until only a few tall pines separated us from the action. Sinking to my knees, I grabbed a small rock from the ground and threw it at the captain. The first rock fell well in front of him, unnoticed. The second rock, however, hit him squarely between the eyes.
He jerked back.
I winced.
Sai snorted. “Nice shot.”
The captain rubbed at his forehead then looked at hisfingers. When he turned in the direction of my poorly aimed rock, I waved, and relief washed over him.
Sai and I started his way, but the captain raised his hand, his palm facing us in a clearstay putgesture.
“Stay here?” Sai asked while I scanned the grounds for Freddie, not finding him—because of course the captain wouldn’t bring our Languages and Customs expert on a dangerous recovery mission. Especially since his only useful purpose would be holding me in his arms once it was all over. And even though that seemed indispensably valuable to me, I could see how the captain might disagree.
“It’s probably a good idea,” I said.
“But I don’t want to stay here. I want this to be over. I”—despite his bravery, his steadfast calm in the face of utter bedlam, Sai’s little chin wobbled—“want to go home.”
“Oh, darling.” I pulled him in close, tucking his head under my chin, rocking him from side to side. “Me too. I want to go home too. I—ungh.”
“Sunny!” he cried, his eyes ballooning as I clawed at the icy fingers twisting viciously in my hair, hauling me to my feet. Yanked back, I screamed, “Help!” and pushed Sai as hard as I could toward the captain, who burst out from behind his boulder to grab him.
“I don’t care about the whelp,” Marisia hissed into my ear, wrapping her arm around my neck, holding me in a death grip so tight I could barely breathe. “I’ve never cared. But you tried to turn the head of my mate.”
“Oh…give me…a break,” I rasped, digging my nails into her arm while she frog-marched me into the clearing.
Cinching her arm around my throat until spots danced in my vision as an otherworldly pressure built from the base of my skull to throb behind my temples, she snarled, “The only thing I will give you is death.”
Something sharp wedged itself into my heart then. Something vital roaring to life inside me. I didn’t want to die. But more than that, deeper than that, I wanted to live. For the first time since the accident, and maybe because I was facing my mortality head on, or maybe because someone kept showing me all the ways that life could be beautiful again, I wanted to live. I wanted to live and grow and love and get a second chance at all of it. I was going to get that chance. I was going tolive.
Wheeling me around so we faced the riot in the sky, Marisia roared, “I do not fear your tricks! Come out, offworlders. Show yourselves, or I will kill her.”
“Marisia,no,” Tano bellowed from the cave, cowering in fear. “You must not anger these spirits of fire.”
“Ha,” she cried, spinning me around, her grip loosening just enough for me to suck in a ragged breath. “No, Tano. You must not angerme.”
The distraction was apparently all Morgath needed. Because from the corner of my eye, I watched him step out from behind a tree. With a voice as dark as night, an expression so menacing shivers raced up my spine, and a sonic cannon pointed direction at us, he said, “Put Sunny down.”
“No…not that,” I croaked, trying to shake my head, because while I was relieved to see the nonlethal weapon, I knew—either from Marisia’s chokehold or the sensory bombardment of the sonic cannon—that I was about to be knocked unconscious. And I hated being unconscious. “I can fix this,” I promised. And when I raised my foot, smashed it down on Marisia’s instep, and threw my head back into her face, I thought it might have been enough to convince him to lower the cannon.
It wasn’t.
The last thing I remembered before the sonicboomrobbed me of my hearing, my eyesight, and then my consciousness, was pain searing across the back of my head, the satisfying crack of what I hoped was a broken Kravaxian nose, and Morgath’s apologetic wince when he pulled the trigger.
35
“Wake up.”Sai’s voice was the softest echo, like a whisper in a dream. “Wake up.” A whisper growing louder. “Sunny. Wake up!”
“Yep. I’m up,” I groaned, forcing my eyes open. “I’m good.” I sat up, doubled over, and promptly vomited in the dirt.
“Gross,” Sai cried. “You puked.”
Wiping the back of my hand over my mouth, I muttered, “Where the hells is Morgath?”
