By contrast, Alfie’s bleating was nothing but distress.
Tessa lifted her head and saw the purple drake regaining altitude, wings pumping strong and sure, tail whipping. Its horns were at least three feet long, thick around at the base as a man’s waist, its frill broad as two wagons lined up side by side when it flared open. It could swallow a man whole, Tessa thought, looking at its jaws, its knives for teeth, and for a moment, cold fear gripped her so fiercely she thought she might faint.
No, no, no, a voice chanted in the back of her head, loud and primal and heightened by Alfie’s shared fear. She could not do this. The possibilities of pain, of death, were too great to comprehend. Better to close her eyes, and fall away somewhere; go to the Between, or lose consciousness altogether, than sit here and await the monster’s snapping jaws.
But like in the hallways of Aeres, when the Sels had stormed the gates and boiled into the palace, doom had arrived, and it would claim her if she gave in to the fear.
The purple drake’s rider hauled on the reins, and so Tessa did the same. She lay her heels against Alfie’s sides and thoughtgo, run, get away.
Alfie didn’t need to be told twice. She flattened out, head thrust forward, and beat furiously with her wings.
“Whoa!” Rune exclaimed, as the force of her acceleration threw him back.
“Lean forward!” Tessa called, ducking low over the saddle, and soon felt Rune’s chest against the small of her back as he followed her example.
A streak of white from the corner of her eye was Percy, taking another run at the enemy.
Tell him no, Tessa pushed through the bond to Alfie.Tell him to come with us.
Alfie’s worry and fear was enough to drown Tessa, but the female trumpeted to her mate, and Tessa could feel her tugging at the bond, urging him away to safety.
Valgrind and Náli roared up on their other side, Valgrind flying in so close the next flap of Alfie’s wing nearly unseated him.
Náli, pale as bleached bone save two bright spots of color high on his cheeks, lay nearly flat on Valgrind’s withers. “Can we outrun it?” he shouted over.
“I think so!” Or, rather, Alfie thought so. Even with the extra wingspan, and the added force of each flap that provided, the purple drake lacked the cold-drakes’ swiftness. Alfie thought they could pull away from it, and Tessa thought, given what they’d just witnessed, that it was worth a try.
Tessa twisted a glance back over her shoulder. Through the whipping ribbons of her hair, past Rune’s fur-covered shoulder, she caught a glimpse of Percy, arched like a rampant lion in the sky, wings beating, fangs bared as he squared off from the enemy drake. He meant to fight, and he would lose.
Tessa threw every ounce of her consciousness into her bond with Alfie; the drake’s fear, and desperation, and love for her family flooded Tessa; her vision warped blue at the edges,and the skin of her back tingled and pulled as though she flapped wings of her own.
Percy!she called, she reached, and it was Alfie’s call, Alfie’s reach. A full-throated trumpet, and a mental plea.Percy, fly away! Come with us!
Percy wasn’t her own bonded drake, but she felt the moment her mind touched his. It was a blast of winter wind, swirling with frost and snowflakes, shocking, exhilarating.Empowering.
Percy!
Percy came.
He diverted mid-dive, a quick, tight turn, and whipped the other drake in the face with the spiked end of his tail.
Muffled as it was by growing distance and wind, Tessa could still discern the purple drake’s roar of pain and rage. But Percy lowered his head, and tucked his legs in tight, and streaked toward them, quickly leaving the enemy behind.
Grinning, Tessa faced forward again, and hunkered as low as she could over Alfie’s withers, Rune hugging close to her back.
Alfie slowed, but only until Percy had caught up to them. She cocked her head and bleated at him: half-greeting, half-reprimand. He called back to her, and then all three drakes bent their heads against the wind and focused all their energy on flying as fast as they could.
When she chanced another look back, the purple drake was nowhere in sight. Had they left him behind that quickly? Or had his rider steered him back down through the clouds, out of the peaks? She didn’t know or care. When she searched through the bond, Alfie could offer no sense of it: no scent, or hum of energy, no animal awareness. They were alone in the sky again.
That was when Tessa started to shake.
Throughout the encounter, she’d reacted the way she needed to, her hands steady on the reins, instinct overriding fear.
But now that the immediate danger was past, belated fear gripped her tight, and turned her muscles to jelly.
She slumped forward and pressed her forehead to Alfie’s neck a moment, to the right of the spines along its peak.
Rune stroked her back between her trembling shoulder blades, wordless comfort. He knew, she thought, what her body was doing, the way adrenaline left weakness and terror in its wake.
