Above it all, black clouds funneled into a vortex of fury, red lightning striking the earth in savage, relentless bursts.
This is what happens if I fail.
Streams of people were fleeing south. Farmers with carts piled high, their whole lives reduced to what they could carry. Families clutching children too young to understand why they were running. Merchants who’d abandoned everything for the slim hope of survival.
They were drenched and hollow-eyed, and when they saw the Sanguir warriors, they reached for us. Crying. Begging.
A mother hurried toward us with two small children—one on each hip. The smallest one lifted her head and looked at me with huge eyes. She couldn’t have been older than five.
That could have been Rheya and me once.
“Please,” she gasped. “We need help.”
Kairos’s jaw tightened. “Enid.”
A warrior dismounted, lifting an elderly male onto a cart. He wrapped his cloak over the shoulders of a shivering girl and pressed a waterskin into the mother’s hands.
Kairos pulled his mount beside the warrior. “Gather everybody and escort them to the keep.”
“Yes, sire.” He turned to go.
More villagers shuffled by, their faces gaunt. Someoneshouted that storms were ripping through Skaldir. Another begged for news of a son.
As we rode closer to the mountain range, the air changed. A sulfurous smell, thick and acrid, coating my tongue with a taste like burnt metal. Then the earth rumbled. Low at first, in my chest and spreading to my teeth. I clutched at Kairos’s arm, nails digging into his forearm.
“Something’s wrong,” I hissed.
The mairen shied from the path, tossing their heads. Even battle-trained Morvaen danced sideways, fighting Kairos’s grip on the reins, every muscle coiled to bolt.
The rumble became a roar, and the groundsplit.
A fissure tore through the road, a wound wrenched open by massive hands. Steam erupted from the gash, scalding, and heat blasted my cheeks. The mairen shrieked with a sound I’d never heard them make, and then a deep growl rose from the bowels of the world.
Aelithra.
Pain slammed into my skull like a hammer, white-hot and blinding. I doubled over, crying as it forced its way into my mind.
The voice was volcanic, immense, and I was falling. The ground hit my back, winding me.
I told you what needed to be done.
I gasped, pressing my palms against my temples.
I showed you the path, and you defied me.
Kairos’s wide-eyed face swam above me, shouting. Around us, steel sang free of scabbards.
You will be punished for such insolence.
Kairos’s grip tightened on my face. His voice broke through in shattered fragments, but the dragon drowned him out.
You will learn to obey.
“I’m not your servant,” I snarled. “I don’t answer to you!”
Silence.
No?
