There’s a shell in his hand.
I grab the end of the Speerspitze and swing it round, my arms straining against the weight. Krasimir stares down the barrel with a snarl. I look him in the eyes as Atlas loads the shell.
‘Who,’ Krasimir breathes, ‘are you?’
I feel Atlas climb up behind me and his hands come down over mine.
‘She’s the Swallow,’ he spits.
I shake my head as we guide the barrel together.
‘I’m just Viv,’ I say.
I fire.
THE BULLET HITS KRASIMIR IN THE face, blowing off his jaw. He drops dead with a quake that knocks us both off the Speerspitze. My ears ring. I sit up, spitting out sand, and the beach is momentarily swathed in silence.
A monstrous yapping fills the air.
I blink, my eyes straining in the smoke. My gaze meets Atlas’s as he shakes his head in disbelief.
No.
More Bolgoriths emerge from across the hills.
‘How?’ Atlas croaks.
I let out a desperate sob as I try to think. ‘A back-up battalion, made up of different family groups,’ I say slowly. ‘Krasimir must have known what the wyvern echolocation can do. Wyvernmire must have found out and told him. He planned his battalions so that the Bolgoriths in the second are unbonded to those in the first.’
I shiver.
‘The wyverns took out the first battalion, family group by family group, while the second waited, unaffected.’
Which means that we’re dead.
The wyverns are gone, the rebels defeated and Atlas and I are lying beneath a fresh horde of uninjured Bolgoriths. Time slows as Atlas crawls in my direction, the blue sea at his back and a red bank of blood-soaked sand between us. His arms wrap around me and he pulls me to my feet.
‘I love you,’ he says, his hot breath in my ear.
I blink, marvelling at the irrational confidence that made me believe I might ever get to say it more than once. ‘I love you.’
My vision blurs as I scan the beach. Marquis is firing the last remaining Speerspitze, taking aim at the new Bulgarians in the sky. He dives into the sand as a rush of fire engulfs it. Jasper and Sophie are dragging Ruth between them towards the caves, her long hair streaked with blood. Marquis, Serena and Freddie run after them. Everywhere smells of burning; burning gunpowder and burning flesh, and as a Bolgorith snarls Atlas screams at me to move. I stumble in the hot sand, my head spinning.
Britannia is going to be overrun by Bulgarian dragons. I’m never going to see my sister again.
‘I’ll go with you!’ I scream into the sky. ‘I’ll go with you to Bulgaria!’
Atlas lifts me bodily from the ground, enveloping me in the smell of sweat and dragonsmoke as he drags me across the sand. ‘Move!’
I try to breathe but the air is full of fumes, filling mylungs as I imagine Ursa growing up in the darkness with Dr Seymour, forgetting about me, about our parents.
‘Wait!’ I choke. ‘Listen.’
‘Viv, hurry!’ Marquis has turned around and is running towards us, tears rolling down his nose.
But I tear away from Atlas and turn my face to the clouds. I can hear something.
The steady beating of wings.
