This is an emergency.
I rip open the shredded remains of his fatigues. The wound is like a canyon carved through him. I can see the glint of shattered ribs, the dark pulse of organs that shouldn’t be exposed to the smoky air. I pour the thick, red liquid directly into the gash. Ithisses, steaming as it hits torn flesh. The torrent of blood slows to a sluggish ooze, the edges of the wound knitting with a faint glow, but it’s like trying to patch a dam with a spiderweb. It’s not enough. It’s nowhere near enough.
Edwin’s eyes find mine, a flicker of pained awareness in their depths. His lips move, but only a bloody bubble forms. He’s dying. Right here, in my hands. And my magic, my knowledge—all of it is useless.
A sharp gasp sounds behind me. “I’m so sorry.”
I glance over my shoulder, my mind a blank slate of shock. The silver dragon is gone. In its place stands a girl, tall and naked, her skin luminescent in a way that seems to drink the firelight from the sky. A dark bruise blossoms near her left temple. Silver-blonde hair tumbles around a heart-shaped face, and bright amethyst eyes are wide with a dawning, sickening horror, as if she’s only now truly seeing the ruin she’s wrought.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispers again, her voice trembling. She takes a stumbling step forward, her hands coming up to cover her mouth. “I—we—had no choice. King Anees, he forced us to join the war.”
She’s shaking, her gaze fixed on my uncle, on the blood, on what a body looks like when it’s been broken by a power it seems she doesn’t fully comprehend. She looks less like a soldier and more like a child who has just realized that dropping the vase means it can never be put back together again.
There’s no time for her. No space in my brain for her apology, her excuses, her trembling form. She is static, a ghost at the edge of my vision. All that matters is the failing rhythm of my uncle’s heart.
“Get help!” Nyv screams, her voice cracking into a raw sob as she looks up at Ridge. “Now!”
Ridge lurches to his feet, his grief momentarily forged into action. He puts two fingers to his mouth and lets out a piercingwhistle that cuts through the din of battle. Almost instantly, two dark shapes detach from the chaos near the trees—vampires, their movements fast, fluid. They converge on us in a silent rush of wind and black leather.
“Careful,” Nyv chokes out, her hands fluttering uselessly over her father’s body. “Gods, be careful.”
What follows is a slow-motion agony. They produce a reinforced stretcher, and with a terrible, practiced gentleness, the vampires and Ridge work to slide it beneath my uncle. Every slight movement, every millimeter of adjustment, draws a fresh wave of blood from the wound and a low, pained groan from Edwin’s chest that tears another piece out of mine. I watch, paralyzed, my blood-soaked hands clasped in my lap, as they lift him. He seems so fragile, a broken doll in their strong, steady hands. Nyv and Ridge move with them, flanking the stretcher, their faces pale and streaked with dirt and tears.
Please, hold on. We… We can’t lose you.
When they disappear through the trees, the night rushes back in to fill the space they left. The roars, the screams, the percussive blasts of magic. I’m still kneeling in the churned-up earth of the cemetery, my jeans stiffening with my uncle’s drying blood. The air is thick with the coppery smell of it.
Alone.
Except I’m not.
The silver-haired dragon-girl is still there, eight feet away, wrapped in a shocked, guilty silence. She’s staring at the dark, wet patch of ground where Edwin lay, her arms now wrapped around her bare torso as if she’s suddenly realized she’s cold. Or exposed.
My gaze lifts from the blood on my hands and fixes on her. The part of my brain that catalogs, analyzes, and thinks slowly reboots. And all it can process is a single, glacial fact.
She did this.
I get slowly to my feet, my knees popping in protest. My body feels ancient, hollowed out. I take a step toward her, then another. The girl—Nyssa, that’s her name—flinches, her eyes widening.
“I didn’t want—” she starts, her voice a reedy whisper.
“Shut up,” I say. The words are flat, dead. I don’t have the energy for rage. Rage feels like a fire, and all I have inside me is ice. I keep walking until I’m standing right in front of her. She’s taller than me—almost Galadriel versus hobbit—but right now she seems to be shrinking.
I look at her, at the perfect, almost-unmarred canvas of her skin, at the trembling of her lips, at the guilt swimming in her eyes. And I think of my uncle’s body, torn open. Of Nyv’s scream.
My hand comes up, fast. The sound of my palm striking her cheek is a small crack in the night. Her head snaps to the side. A red handprint blooms instantly on her skin. She doesn’t protest. She doesn’t move. She just stands there, taking it.
It’s not enough. It will never be enough.
“You’re coming with me,” I say, my voice frigid. I shrug out of my cloak and shove it at her. Not the best fit, but it’ll do. Then I grab her arm. Her skin is oddly chilled for a dragon, but the muscle beneath is steel. She doesn’t resist as I start pulling her through the chaos, away from the cemetery and toward the fortified heart of the coven. “If you're actually sorry, you’ll prove it.Helpus now.”
I’m about to lead us toward the sounds of the heaviest fighting, when I spot something.
Walking out of the smoke and chaos near the western battlement is… Ariella Rogon. The dragoness we just pulled from a clearblood van. She should be in the infirmary, or fighting, or helping, or even cowering somewhere. Instead, she’s walking with an oddly calm gait, moving away from the battle and deeper into the academy’s inner grounds.
And she’s not alone. Another figure, apparently another female dragon, of almost identical height and build, walks beside her. They move in sync, like two silent ghosts gliding through the grounds.
A roar splits the sky, a sound so immense and full of primal rage it feels like the sky itself is tearing apart. My head snaps upward. I know that sound. By now, everyone in this coven knows that sound.
