I take a deep breath.
So she hasn’t given up, either.
‘Krasimir?’ Sophie says as we group together again. ‘He’s my mission. Cormac and I –’ she points to a man in a kilt who is charging down towards the beach – ‘have been tracking him with Daria’s help.’
Sophie has been working with Daria?
She smirks at my surprise. ‘They’re bonded, so Daria can sense where he is.’
‘Chumana said Daria hates her brothers,’ I say.
‘She does. But they raised her.’
I suddenly remember how Goranov echolocated my impending arrival to Daria on Bualintur, despite the miles between them. Krasimir must have been positioned somewhere between the two, bridging the distance.
‘So where is he?’ I say warily. ‘Krasimir?’
Sophie eyes the sky. ‘He’s in the forest behind Canna House, letting his advance forces do the hard work.’
A group of wyverns streaks towards the beach and hooves thunder nearby. Ruth and Jasper are tearing towards us on horseback, a dragon behind them.
‘That’s Sargo,’ I say, reaching instinctively for my poison pouch.
The dragon flies lower, closing in on Ruth, but she doesn’t look back. She rides the horse bareback, her long hair catching in the wind. There’s a whoosh as Sargo is blasted from the air, crashing into the hillside. My eyes search for the source of the force and I hear it before I see it.
A joyous whooping.
A line of Speerspitzes has been erected on Sanday, each manned by a young boy.
‘See?’ Ruth says breathlessly as she pulls her horse to a stop beside us. ‘We’re the bait that keeps you safe.’
I turn to the others. ‘That’s what we need to do with Krasimir.’
‘There’s Freddie,’ Serena says.
Below, Freddie and a group of Ruth’s girls are dragging more of the dragon-killing guns through the rockpools.
‘Do you think you could fire one of those things?’ Atlas asks Serena.
She snorts. ‘How many times did I beat you at target practice, King?’
‘You should go and help them,’ I say, nodding. I glance at Marquis and Gideon. ‘You too.’
‘What about you?’ Atlas says.
I don’t look at him. ‘I’ll go with Sophie to be Krasimir’s bait.’
‘Youcan’t be the bait.’
‘Why not?’
He stutters. ‘I don’t want you to—’
‘That’s none of your business any more,’ I snap.
I glance at him, an awful part of me hoping that my words will hurt him as much as his have hurt me, but he’s glaring at me with no trace of the tortured, apologetic Atlas I saw last night.
‘Forget it,’ he says. ‘You’re not going.’
