I send a warning shot of magic towards his feet and he leaps away, swearing loudly as my light scorches and sizzles the sandy earth.
I take my opportunity and bolt through the gap in their formation, racing across the sand towards Blaze. He’s already lowered his head to the damp ground, and I scramble up his neck, swinging myself onto his back, and gripping his scales tightly in my hand.
“Briony!” Beaufort says, more desperation in his tone because he can see I’m serious. “I command you to stay!”
“What? As my protector?” I spit back.
“As Prince of this realm,” he roars, “I command you to remain here!”
I glare at him. He can go to hell!
“We’ll go to the Empress,” Thorne says, still trying to convince me. “We’ll get the permission we need to go after Tudor, and we’ll come with you. We’ll help you. Just please, please don’t do this.”
“I have to,” I say, the wind whipping around me like a wild thing, making me feel just as wild. The magic in my veins is wild too and desperate. Desperate to find Fox, desperate to rise up into the sky, and desperate not to leave these men behind. Tears I didn’t even know I was crying, roll down my cheeks and drip onto my chest. I don’t want to part on bad terms. I don’t want toleave them behind. I want more than anything for all of this not to have happened. My stupid plan – my stupid, stupid plan! It’s my fault Fox is in this position. “I can’t lose Fox!”
Blaze lifts his head and spreads his wings. He sweeps them back and forth until the air catches in the sinewy material and his clawed feet rise from the ground, lifting us higher and higher.
I stare down at the anguished faces of my mates.
Beaufort lifts his hand as if he’s about to strike me down with his magic. I brace myself, ready to strike him right back, but he thinks better of it, dragging his fingers through his wet hair instead. Dray attempts to jump into the air and grab at Blaze’s tail. Thorne stands still as a statue, dark eyes boring into me.
My heart rips right down the middle. But what choice do I have?
Chapter Two
Dray
“Briony!” I yell, cupping my hands around my mouth as the dragon lifts my little mate into the swirling abyss of the clouds up above, dragging her through my fingers and out of my reach. Damn that fucking dragon – I knew he was trouble. “Briony, fuck, Briony!”
Beside me, Beau scrubs his hands down his face, screwing up his eyes like he’s been physically wounded, stabbed in the heart, punched in the gut.
“Shit, Beau, what do we do?” I ask frantically, because every single second she’s being pulled further and further away from us. “How do we stop her?”
Beau doesn’t answer me. He doesn’t open his eyes. I feel the pull of my magic, the magic I placed inside her chest, whipping up into the sky, becoming fainter with every lash of the dragon’s wings.
I don’t know what to do.
For the first time in my damned life, I don’t know what the hell to do.
“Beau, Beau,” I say, my voice even more desperate. “What do we do?”
Beaufort always knows what to do. He always has a plan. He’s always calm, collected, cool. I’d follow him to the ends of the earth and back because he’s smart – smarter than me, though I’d never tell the asshole.
“I don’t know,” he whispers, finally looking at me with wide helpless eyes. I’ve never seen him look like that. Never. It has my head spinning.
She’s going. Briony is going to the demon realm and we don’t know how to stop her.
“Should I blast her out of the sky? Blast the dragon?” I ask next, scrabbling around for some sort of action.
“N-n-n-n-no!” he stutters. “You could kill her.”
“She’s going to get herself killed if she makes it out of the realm!” I snap.
“I know that!”
“We have to stop her.”
“I don’t know how,” he snaps right back, so viciously it has me freezing on the spot.
