“No!” The scream tears out of my throat as I twist to see Mara. “We have to—”
“We can’t.” His voice cuts through my panic. Flat. Final. But his arm tightens around me like he can hold me together through sheer force. “We can’t reach her.”
The helicopter tilts further. Metal shrieks as the frame tears itself apart, cockpit separating from cargo bay. Through thewidening gap, I catch a glimpse of Mara’s face—unconscious, pale—before the whole front section pitches forward.
She disappears into darkness.
“Mara!” I’m screaming her name even as Luke drags me toward the rear section, away from the collapsing edge. My hands claw at him, trying to break free, trying to get back to where she was. “No, we have to go back!”
“She’s gone.” His arm is an iron band across my ribs, holding me against his chest as he moves us both toward safety. “We have to get out. The structure’s failing. We have seconds.”
What’s left of the cabin comes apart around us. He releases me only long enough to wrench the emergency door open. The handle tears free under dragon strength that finally, finally responds the way it should. Cold air rushes in, carrying the smell of disturbed earth and something chemical.
Hydraulic fluid. Fuel.
“Move!” He launches me through the door with such force that for a moment, I’m airborne.
I stumble out onto solid ground—real ground, not the crumbling edge—and my legs give out. I hit the dirt hard, palms scraping against rock.
Behind me, Luke spins around and, for one insane second, I think he’s going to dive back in again. But there’s another groan of metal. He jumps clear just as the front half of the helicopter gives up its fight with gravity. The cockpit section slides forward one final time, then pitches over the edge.
The sound it makes hitting bottom comes four seconds later. Metal screaming against rock. The crunch of breaking glass. Then a boom that I feel through the ground beneath my hands.
Fuel igniting.
Fire blooms up from the chasm, orange and black and vicious.Wrong colors, I think distantly. Fire shouldn’t burn thoseshades of purple at the edges. The heat of it reaches us even fifty feet away, a wave that makes me flinch back.
Luke is already moving. His hand closes around my arm—not gentle, but not rough either—and he hauls me to my feet.
“We need distance. Now.”
“But Mara—” My voice breaks on her name.
“Forget about Mara.” He doesn’t soften it. Doesn’t try to cushion the blow. His eyes are still more gold than brown, dragon riding close to the surface. “If she survived the fall, she didn’t survive the fire. There’s nothing we can do for her. But if there’s fuel left in the rear section—”
He doesn’t finish the sentence. He doesn’t have to.
I let him pull me away from the wreckage, away from the heat, away from the hole in the ground that swallowed my new friend. We make it maybe thirty yards before my legs refuse to work anymore.
I sink to the ground. My hands shake. My whole body shakes.
Mara’s dead.
The words don’t feel real. They sit in my mind like foreign objects, wrong angles that won’t fit into any understanding of the world that makes sense.
Three hours ago, she was teasing me about Luke. Grinning at her phone. Talking about Instagram moments and damage control.
Now she’s gone.
Luke stands a few feet away, his back to me, watching the fire. Blood still runs down his neck from the head wound, but he hasn’t touched it. Hasn’t acknowledged it. He just stands there, rigid and controlled, like he’s carved from stone.
Except his hands. His hands are still scaled—slate gray catching the firelight—and they’re clenched into fists at his sides.
“You saved the wrong one.” The words come out flat. Broken. I don’t look at him when I say it. Can’t. “She has a family. Friends. People who need her. I’m just—”
“Don’t.” His voice cracks across the space between us. Not loud, but sharp enough to cut. “Don’t finish that sentence.”
I force myself to look at him. His profile is hard against the firelight, shoulders locked. The scales have faded from his hands, but I can still see the tension in them. The way they stay curled, like he’s fighting the urge to reach for something he can’t get to.
