“Isola, isn’t that where your—” Saipha starts.
“Mum,” I finish, eyes so wide that they’re stinging from thehaze of dragon smoke that’s pluming throughout the city.
The dragon is perched next to my mum’s apartment. I can see its rooftop from here…dripping in sickly green acid.
4
I lurch.
Saipha throws her arms around me, nearly deafening me when she shouts right in my ear, “You can’t!”
She thinks I’m going to run toward the dragon. My friend believes far too much in me. She has no idea that my knees have given out. That I’m pressing so hard against her arms because I can hardly hold myself upright.
The spinning in my head is threatening to turn the world upside down and my stomach inside out.
“Do you hear that?” Saipha points to Mercy Spire. It’s an ominous, thorny structure of a hundred vantages for ballistae and crossbows. But the distant clicking and grinding emanating from it is something Vinguard has never heard before. “Just wait. They’re going to fire it.”
We both watch. Saipha still has the shine of anticipation in her eyes. Somehow, she’s able to ignore all the risks—even the danger to her parents and older sister up on the wall. All she sees is the final kill. The thing that makes all the sacrifice worth it:
One less dragon in the world to spread Ethershade and suck up the Etherlight of our Font.
The dragon turns its head my way, emerald eyes luminescent in the waning light. Out of the whole city, for a breath, it feels as if it findsme.
In an instant, I’m no longer standing in a cage of Saipha’s arms. I’m on a rooftop six years ago. It’s not a green dragon staring me down, but a copper one, and I’ve no idea if this is a hallucination from the haze drifting through the city or one of my mind’s favorite nightmares to torture me with.
Flames, hotter than I ever felt before. So hot the stonearound me is starting to melt. Corpses. Destruction. Death. I’m surprised my eyes haven’t boiled in their sockets as its massive snout emerges from the thick smoke.
The beast crawls forward. Eyes locked with mine. It reaches out a clawed hand, straight for my chest, as though it wants to play with its food before it—
Abangso loud it rattles the ancient foundations of Vinguard jolts me back to the present. A beam of light that could rival the sun shoots from Mercy Spire straight across Vinguard, striking the dragon where it’s perched. The shot goes straight between its wings on its back and punches out through its chest, killing the monster instantly.
Saipha lets out a cheer with the rest of Vinguard, releasing me. Forgotten for a second, I sag against the wall at my back, breathing hard as wave after wave of Etherlight strikes me. The world suddenly seems too bright. Every color is blinding. I swear the raindrops on my skin evaporate into steam as I burn from the inside out.
My best friend turns back to me, and a raw, sharp terror cuts through me as I half expect her to scream and tell me my pupils have turned to slits.
But she doesn’t. “Amazing, isn’t it? I didn’t believe it when my dad told me, butdamn.”
She doesn’t notice. She doesn’t see what’s happening to me. Never has.Probably because she doesn’t want to. She can’t admit it to herself—that’s the only reason I’ve ever come up with.
I lock eyes with the point on Mercy Spire where the shot originated.A cannon, Father had called it. His greatest work.
Good job, Father. I’d say you succeeded, I think as I push away from the wall. “It used a lot of Etherlight,” I murmur.
“Worth it to kill the beasts.”
“I’m going to check on Mum.”
Saipha’s expression falls from excitement and wonder to stern concern. “You can’t.”
“Saipha—”
“You know no one but Mercy Knights can be around a dragon carcass.”
Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m afraid of. “I must know if she’s all right, Saipha.”
“Her building is still standing.”
“That doesn’t mean anything, and you know it,” I counter.
