As soon as I hear those words, my dragon tears free.
No warning. No build up.
The threat made to Auren makes the manifestation happen with an intense suddenness that yanks the breath from my chest as shadows surge out of me.
The dragon forms, body rippling as it solidifies with wicked teeth and curved spikes, and golden scales gleaming down its chest.
It’s massive and it’s fuckingpissed.
Auren doesn’t move an inch as it solidifies, but Wick and the others cry out in shock and leap out of the way.
When the dragon’s mouth opens with a furious roar, Auren sends her gold rushing out. The terrified Stone Swords take one look at the dragon and her power and turn to flee.
But her gold is faster.
Like a mudslide, it floods the ground before rising and crashing over the soldiers like a tempestuous sea. They’re knocked down and trapped beneath its hardening weight, their screams louder than the snapping teeth of the flames.
She controls her power flawlessly and with astonishing ease. It goes after every soldier, while avoiding everyone else. With precision, she also drags it up like spreads of paint, stretching up the buildings and into the trees to douse the flames.
Fucking magnificent.
She turns to me, hands still outstretched, still pouring with power. “I’ve got it here. Can you go take care of the soldiers outside?”
A dark grin twists my lips. “Absolutely.”
While my aggravated bond wants me to protect her, I also recognize how fucking strong she is, and how much she needs me toacknowledgethat strength. How it will empower her even more because I have complete confidence in her.
I stroke at her ribbon that’s wrapped around my arm before it tugs away, and then I turn toward the dragon, looking it in the eye. The terrifying creature blinks at me with an innate sense of familiarity. Manifested from me, but its own entity.
I use the spikes down its leg to climb up, and the scaled creature rumbles beneath my hold. I settle on its back, right into a notch behind one of the sharp black spikes.
Then we lift into the air. I look down, watching Auren walk calmly forward, her magic eating up every enemy in her wake asgold seeps over the flames, snuffing out the fire with its viscous spread.
The king thought he could burn down this city? Burn her?
She burns brighter than anything else ever could.
My dragon lifts higher, snapping branches from the giant trees as it breaks out from the covering and into open air. When it spots the Stone Swords gathering on the road just outside the city, it snarls.
I grin.
The creature swoops down, and soldiers shout and start to flee in terror. Some of them toss magic our way, and flares of sparking light land against the dragon’s chest and belly. But it does nothing except bounce off the gilded scales.
That, and angers the dragon even more.
It opens its fanged maw and roars out rot. Like black flame that writhes with roots in a poisonous spew. It descends upon the running soldiers, consuming them in sprays of death.
The dragon flies lower, reveling in the destruction, and I revel with it. After the threat made to Auren, my aggravated bond craves retribution with bloodthirsty demand.
It swoops down with another air-splintering roar, opening its mouth to spread carnage. The Stone Swords fall, some caught up close, getting so much rot blasted at them that their bodies disintegrate into dust the moment they hit the ground. Others try to run, before their bodies succumb to the noxious fumes and they’re left to fester.
We circle, and the monster yanks up the dying, swallowing them down whole. It decimates the entire contingent, turning the ground a sickly yellow, leaving nothing in its radius alive.
Auren comes walking out, stopping just beneath the archway. There’s a gold-slicked street behind her, and remnants of smoke in choked-off tendrils rising from the crisped trees.
Fae gather at her back, and my dragon circles once more before we land in front of her. Everyone else backs away, but not her.
She strides confidently forward, stopping right in front of the creature.
