Through strained eyes, I see her hands flash out, and then gold pours from them. Somehow, she manages to break our fatal fall as we crash into the front of Glassworth’s courtyard, her magic sloshing between us and helping to soften the landing.
Our bodies knock together in the teeth-jarring crash. The dragon bears the brunt of the collision, and even with Auren’s gold, the fall still stuns it. Stunsme.
I don’t know exactly how the manifestation magic works between creature and keeper. I have no idea if it can actually die or not. But it’s very fucking clear that it can feel pain and thatIcan feel echoes of that pain too.
The face of the palace glares down at us through hundreds of different stained glass windows. Right before we started tofall, Auren tried to warn me that these aren’t Stone Swords gathered, and she’s right. The soldiers rushing over are clad in black and red.
Apprehension grabs hold of me as I realize who they are. Who they serve.
My father.
Rage sparks to life and starts ranting against my ribs.
I grasp Auren and then leap us both off the back of my dragon, my boots splashing in the liquid gold as I set her down.
“Great Divine,” Auren chokes out, looking horrified at the grotesque break in the dragon’s wing.
When the soldiers start to surround us, the dragon tries to stand, but before it can, its back leg suddenly breaks too.
The sound of the bone is like a snapped tree, and the courtyard echoes with it. The dragon roars out in agony, and I stumble against Auren as that ripple of pain goes through me. I gasp, knowing my father is doing this, and I whip my head around, but I can’t see him. The fucking coward ishiding.
Auren cries out with alarm as she braces me to keep me from falling.
I grit my teeth and push past the pain and make my rot surge out, hooking it into the nearest soldiers in a wave of wrath that attacks them from the ground up.
Out of nowhere, a net falls over my dragon’s head, and I whirl. The beast bellows with its own fury at suddenly being held down, and its sharp teeth try to snap at the bindings.
But the net is too strong; it doesn’t so much as fray a single cord. And the corners are somehow secured to the ground, not allowing the dragon to rip it up and get free.
I lurch forward and try to yank it off too, but I can’t. Something is keeping it down. I try to let the dragon dematerialize back into me, but that doesn’t work either. It remains solid and trapped.
My limbs pulse with furious adrenaline.
Auren starts flooding her magic out at the same time that my rage expels from me. Rot cracks through the ground, ready to kill everyone here, when I see the flash of a shadow. I whip my head up, eyes widening when I see another net—the same kind on my dragon—suddenly dropping overourheads.
I snarl, my hands flinging forward to push Auren out of the way. She stumbles out of its trajectory a second before it crashes over me and takes me to my knees.
I try to stand, try to tear it off, but the gray bindings aren’t rope or fabric. The net is made from something else less pliant, something with grains that move beneath the clear overlays, making my skin itch. A strange weight presses over me that makes my muscles strain and my chest flare with panic.
“Slade!” Auren yells, her tone cracking with alarm.
She leaps back to her feet and races to my side to try and tear the webbing off with her hands and her ribbons, but she can’t. It’s holding me down as much as the other net holds my dragon.
When she realizes she can’t physically remove it, Auren lets magic flow from her instead. But the molten metal slips right off like beads of oil over water.
“I can’t gild it,” she exclaims, her eyes wide. “I can’t gild it!”
My rot isn’t affecting it either, nor can my power spread past it, no matter how fucking hard I try. The ground beneath me won’t soak in with rot.
This net isn’t just holding me down. It’s suppressing my magic too. Which means it’s also suppressing my dragon’s. My father is stripping me of my strength and my power all at once.
Crippling fear pummels me, stealing the breath from my chest.
Gritting my teeth, I try to straighten, but I can’t stretch up past my knees. There’s not enough give for me to stand. I’m trapped beneath this thing like a rabbit in a snare, and still, my father won’t show his cowardly fucking face.
Fury catches hold like an inferno, burning straight through me.
My eyes flash around at the soldiers. One of them must be responsible for using magic to hold down these nets, but they’re being discreet enough that I can’t pick out who it is.
