Ignacia’s dragons are fleeing as fast as they arrived.
Krasimir drops the queen’s head into the water with a splash.
Where is Chumana?
Two Speerspitze shells almost find their target, but Krasimir deflects the first with his tail and the second ricochets off his scales. He hangs over the battle, a stark, gigantic shadow, and leers as his troops maul a rebel dragon, its lifeless body crushing several humans when it falls. I see Serena crawl out from behind it, dragging herself across the sand, a mere hair’s breadth from death.
I can’t breathe.
Marquis is loading a Speerspitze while Freddie fires. Atlas is still motionless, staring at the sky, his face red in the heat of the dragonfire. I follow his gaze. The clouds part suddenly, fat raindrops falling, and with them comes Chumana.
She’s in freefall, as straight as a pin, her wings tucked against her body as she picks up speed. Krasimir doesn’t have time to look up. Her wings erupt at the last minute and she seizes him by the neck, shaking him like a terrier shakes a rat. Three Bolgoriths attack her from the side and she’s forced to let go. They grapple in the air.
I see a snare of wings stretched and entangled at unnatural angles.
Then comes the crack of bone.
‘Chumana!’ I scream.
My heart hammers in my chest as I stare, trying to see through the flashes of taut tendons and floating feathers.
They’re going to rip her apart.
A screech.
The wyverns mob the Bolgoriths, diving like gulls. Blood streaks the sky as they bite into flesh and muscle and Aodahn’s tail twitches like a whip, blinding its victim. Chumana is free and she pivots to face Krasimir again as he veers across the sky, this time with less ferocity.
I taste iron and realise my face is splattered with blood. Krasimir’s neck is pulsing, the laceration left by Chumana’s teeth a mess of white sinew and bone. He drops, then rises, then sinks towards the waves.
‘Traitress,’ he roars as Chumana glides towards him. ‘Youdesert your own motherland.’
Bulgarians breathe a flurry of flames that don’t reach Chumana. Soresten and Addax are flying above, their own dragonfire redirecting the inferno.
‘Such a mother deserves desertion,’ Chumana snarls.
Krasimir lets out an enraged bellow as he drops even lower, his talons skimming the waves. His neck convulses, like a muscle spasming of its own accord, and he lets out an anguished scream as he forces his head round to face Chumana. She closes in on him, her jaws open, her tongue curled as if to administer a kiss of death.
Acoup de grace.
A final blow.
‘Brasstongue!’
A black dragon is hurtling towards me. I jump out of the way of Goranov’s flame. The heat skims my face as it scorches the grass where I was standing.
‘Up, up, you’re nose-diving!’ I hear Ralph scream.
Goranov swoops upwards and as he flies along the curve of the cliff I see Ralph still sitting astride his back, his feet dug between the black scales and a Speerspitze across his lap. Panic flares in my chest as I look out across the bare hilltop. No matter which direction I choose, I have too far to run. Another stream of fire will reach me before I find cover. I force my legs to move, crashing blindly down the hillside as Goranov rises from below, his body parallel with mine. I see Ralph’s face, small and pale in the wind as he clings to his master’s back. My feet leave the ground as I stumble several feet down the hill and land so hard thebreath leaves my body. Someone pulls me to my feet.
‘Dr Hollingsworth?’ I say. ‘I thought you went with Sophie?’
We both look up as Krasimir flies across the sea, still alive. Then Goranov veers, circling me.
Hollingsworth’s hand tightens around my arm as she flings back her head. ‘Take her!’ she bellows into the sky. ‘Take her now!’
What?
Time slows as Goranov’s jaws open. Orange flickers between his teeth. I feel the skin on my face peel.
