Silence.
Sarak staggers, scales receding. I catch him as he sways, both of us collapsing in the snow. The stone lies between us, cracked in half, crimson veins dark.
“Is it…?” I whisper.
“Dead?” He nudges it with a boot. No pulse. “For now.”
Villagers creep closer, awed. Hanna presses a fresh basket into my hands. “For the road,” she says shyly.
Sarak hauls me to my feet. “We leave.Now. Before Revaster sends something worse.”
I nod, the adrenaline pumping around my veins. “Frostfang Pass?”
“Frostfang Pass.” He cups my face, kisses me hard and filthy in front of the entire village. “And Gamble?”
“Yeah?”
“Next time you call me Daddy in public, I’m bending you over the nearest table.”
Heat floods me. “Looking forward to it.”
Sarak grins, all teeth and promise. “Don’t be so sure. That earlier spanking was merely a taster of what you will come to expect.”
We stride out of the village hand in hand, the broken fire stone tucked safely in Sarak’s pouch, the taste of honey and dragon fire on my tongue.
Behind us, the villagers cheer. Ahead, the pass looms, icy, treacherous, full of mercenaries.
I squeeze his fingers. “Think we’ll make it by nightfall?”
“With your illusions and my wings?” He smirks. “We’ll make it by lunch.”
I laugh, wild and free, and for the first time in years, hope feels like more than a stolen stone.
Suddenly, hope feels like home.
Chapter 4
Sarak
The Frostfang Pass bites like a living thing.
Wind howls through the jagged teeth of the mountains, hurling ice that feels sharp enough to flay skin. Gamble’s cloak snaps behind him like a battle standard, silver-green hair whipping across his cheeks. He is laughing as he runs two steps ahead of me, boots skimming the snow crust without breaking through.
“Keep up, old man!” he calls over his shoulder, voice bright with mischief.
I snort, smoke curling from my nostrils. “Old man? I’ll show you old when I bend you over the next snowdrift, elf.”
The threat only makes him laugh harder.
I growl but cannot resist the temptation of a smile too. The elf is full of sass, and it suits him. The only problem is that the boy knows it too. He’s trouble.
The broken halves of the fire stone ride in a lead-lined pouch against my chest, wrapped in dragon-scale leather. They are quiet for now, but every hour the cracks knit a little more.
Revaster’s magic is patient as it is dangerous.
It will wait until we are tired, cold, and far from help.
Gamble knows it too, but he refuses to let the weight crush him. That is the thing about my little elf, he dances on the edge of disaster the way other people breathe.
