The first thing I see is a smear of dark on the horizon. Not a cloud, not a weather front, but the unbroken outline of land. Real, actual land.
My lungs burn with the urge to scream it, but Ebron’s already shouting the thought straight into my skull.Land, land, land!
I pop upright in the saddle, hands fisting the harness. “There! There, look!” My voice is ragged and wild, but I don’t care. “Volcaris. That’s got to be it.”
Gareth, flying ahead and a little above me, cranes back with an arched eyebrow. “You sure?”
“As if there’s anywhere else on this side of the world,” Sevrin yells. “That’s Volcaris!”
Alaric lets out a whoop, slapping his dragon’s back. “Thank every goddess. I was ready to murder someone for a fresh loaf of bread.”
Lucien, because he’s Lucien, just flips his hair and shouts, “I have a feeling we won’t find any better eating there!”
“There are many good things to eat there,” Sevrin explains, a lightness to his voice I haven’t heard in days. “It’s very different from Dravari lands, but wonderful in its own way.”
My heart is beating like a war drum. Ebron’s pulse floods my body, and I know he wants to be the first to land, to plant his claws in that scorched earth.
I let my gaze linger on Sevrin longer than I should. Pink dragon beneath him, black clothes clinging to him, a perfect jaw beneath his face paint. Even from a distance, I see how he leans in when Rosanthra banks, how he grips with knees instead of fists now. It’s embarrassing how much I want to tell him he looks good up there. That he’s making history just by existing. That he’s the first Hollowborn to be a dragon rider.
But I keep the words quiet, for now. There’ll be time when we get to land and rest. Time to say a million things that have been running through my head these last few days.
We are almost there, Ebron tells me, excited.
As we get closer, the details start to sharpen. The continent is massive. An endless range of mountains, every ridge black and alive with red veins of molten rock and lava. The landscape pulses, literally pulses, with energy. Between the volcanoes are valleys of glassy, shattered earth, spidery rivers of lava winding toward the sea. Above it all, a haze of steam and smoke, orange in the sunrise, makes everything look like it’s burning in slow motion.
Not a single tree for miles. No green, no lakes, no sign of civilization. I think of Sevrin saying “home” and my chest aches for him.
Gareth pulls even with me, and I see the tension in his jaw. “You ever imagine something like this?”
“Not in a hundred lifetimes,” I admit.
He nods. “No turning back now, huh?”
I glance at the dragons trailing behind us. “Not a chance.”
He smiles.
My eyes are locked on the lava flows, those liquid arteries splitting the black land. “Is it weird that it’s… beautiful?”
“Yeah,” Gareth says, with something like awe. “It is.”
“Over there!” Sevrin shouts. “That’s where the sacred lava rivers are, and just over the hill is a small town. They should be able to help us with supplies. I warned them that if everything went well, I’d be back with dragon riders.”
We come in low, following Sevrin’s lead. Rosanthra banks and swoops toward a crescent of higher ground, a ridge cut by three distinct rivers of molten stone. There’s a dip in the land, and at its center there’s an impossible lake, glowing so red it hurts my eyes. A dozen smaller pools cluster around the main one, some shimmering silver, others blue-white, all radiating a heat I can feel even from the air. The whole place is ringed by crystalline rock, jagged and sharp as the teeth of a predator.
Sevrin signals. We spiral in, single file, until the dragons find enough space to land on the blackened earth. The ground is cracked, patterned like the scales on Ebron’s back, but beneath the cracks I catch flashes of color, flashes of movement, motes of gold and something like electricity. It’s wild, a place that wants to eat you alive and then send you home on fire.
We touch down and I nearly collapse from the sensation. My legs are rubber. My mouth is dry as ash. But I’m alive, and so aremy men, and so is every dragon in our flock. I want to fall to my knees and kiss the earth, even if it singes my lips.
I dismount and slide down Ebron’s side, while he uses his wing to help me get to the ground, and the heat nearly knocks me out. It’s like stepping into a furnace, but the air smells sharp and clean, not like burning. More like… lightning, or the moment after a thunderstorm. Behind me, the others are getting their bearings. Alaric is already rubbing his neck. Lucien strips off his gloves, fanning himself. Gareth inspects the cracks in the ground, boots crunching on what looks like diamond dust.
The female dragons circle the big lava lake, keeping their distance.
“Sevrin?” I ask.
He’s smiling, but refocuses at the sound of his name. “These are the lakes. The dragons can go in safely. The lava won’t hurt them. But, just to clarify, it’ll hurt us.”
“Good to know.” Not that I was planning on taking a dip in lava.
