The surrounding people whispered as they came out from their homes or straightened from the ground. Dorian couldn’t see anything above them. The night was as black as death. Even so, the people searched the darkness, and the air tensed.
Fear gripped the kingdom.
A chill ran down Dorian’s spine when he heard it.
Elongated wing flaps rippled in the soundlessness.
Much like paper thrashing in the wind, but larger. Grander. Belonging to beasts of the night. Beasts that had never been so far west from the caves and Forest of Darkness. Every hair on Dorian’s arms raised when Nyssa squeezed his hand.
The dragons circled over the kingdom in silence, and smoke from the forges swirled beneath their wings.
“They’re here,” Nyssa said softly, and Dorian knew she’d heard the Wyverdraki beasts, the wild Noctuan dragons, speaking. Her eagle’s cry cut the air as he passed overhead.
“How many?” Dorian asked.
Nyssa looked as though words had frozen in her throat. As though she were too petrified to speak. While her abilities were not as strong as Aydra’s, she could still hear every creature.
And it rooted her to the spot.
“Nys? How many?”
A great beast larger than he’d ever seen—a dragon whose insides radiated purple fire with shining black scales on its spine. He recognized it from the drawings, though he wasn’t sure he would ever see one in real life.
The Rhamocour.
The beast roared a violent curse that paralyzed the world. Dorian followed the purple light from the beast’s throat and found Draven’s figure illuminated in the tall window arch of the tower, the horn pressed to his lips. The Rhamocour grappled the building, stone crushing and falling beneath her talons, and she wrapped herself around its peak.
Purple fire splayed the air with Draven’s horn bellow.
And every dragon followed, letting loose their flames.
Dorian’s stomach flipped.
“We have to go.” He tugged on Nyssa’s hand. “We have to gonow!“
Homes were already crumbling around them.
Dragon fire spread across the sky. People screamed—running, shoving, and pulling each other in every direction. Before they could get ten feet from where they were, a Dreamer rushed to them, grabbed the front of Nyssa’s dress, and begged her for somewhere to go.
Nyssa couldn’t speak.
Dorian pulled his sister from the woman’s grasp, but the woman lunged after them and grabbed Nyssa’s arm. The woman’s desperate pleas echoed in Dorian’s ears. He quickly lost patience with her. Nyssa was his sister. He would be damned if a Dreamer would be the reason they didn’t get to the beach.
Dorian had to stifle his form down to keep from turning the woman to ash.
His knife met the woman’s chin, and she stilled under the threat of the cold blade.
“Let her go,” he demanded in a darkened voice unrecognizable to even himself.
Shaking, the woman released Nyssa. Her wild, terrified eyes stayed on him as she backed herself slowly for a few steps, and then she bolted away.
Dorian twirled the knife in his hand and pivoted on his heel. “Let’s go.”
Lex pushed in front while Corbin stayed to the back. They moved as a unit through the terror-stricken streets. Nyssa’s eagle flew ahead to guide the way, and Lex followed him.
Children’s wails sounded down side streets and from homes all around them. Nyssa almost stopped for one, but Dorian grabbed her before she could.
“But—”
