Augustus aimed his sword. “There.”
Selene followed his line of sight, her shirt soaked with blood and sweat. “What is he doing?”
Thorne’s attention slid past them, and a smirk appeared.
Augustus’s blood went cold.
He turned?—
Two pirates dragged Mettius between them. His father’s head lolled, body limp.
“Dad!”
Augustus broke into a run. They were ten—fifteen feet away… He could reach them. How had they gotten past Little Gus’s guard? Every fiber pulled him toward his father, but his focus split to someone nearly as important.
“Where’s Little Gus?”
Augustus scanned the wreckage. The sky. The shadows. That dragon would never leave him. Not willingly.
Selene ran at his side, turning in circles, scouring their surroundings. “I don’t kn— There!”
She pointed.
A flash of brown-and-blue iridescence peeked from the broken boards.
Too small.
Too still.
Selene didn’t feel her feet hit the sand. The world tunneled to a single point: a small, fragile wing, jutting from the wreckage like a broken flag.
She dropped beside the dronsian, fingers fumbling as she rolled his tinybody toward her. Heat still radiated from his scales. His chest rose, slow and steady. But his belly was streaked in blood, the gash deep enough to glisten.
Worse somehow was the silence. His mind, usually a soft hum, had gone still. Like he’d drifted too far to reach.
“Wake up,” she whispered, palming his head. A hot tear dropped from her eye onto his limp neck, and her voice cracked when she spoke. “Augustus, he’s hurt.”
Augustus shouted her name from several steps away.
A warning.
A crunch sounded from beside her. Wood shifted.
Selene turned?—
A black shape peeled away from the wreckage. Slow. Deliberate.
Wrong.
What she thought was shattered timber rose as bone and claw and wings. A nightmare made flesh.
The Vorash rose out of the ruin and gloom, taller than she remembered. One feathered wing dragged, but the other flexed with a sickeningpop. Eyes like pits of night locked on her.
Selene clutched Little Gus tighter and clambered to her feet. Augustus caught her by the shoulders.
She couldn’t look away.
The Vorash stepped closer. Clawed feet steamed with every stalking step across the sand. Its ragged, torn wings unfurled. It was pure hate, alive and breathing.
