I instinctively jumped back from the white-hot conflagration roaring from Blodwen’s mouth, nearly colliding with Irian at my back. Immediately the broad vein of metal began to smoke, then melt, droplets of gold-streaked silver beading the black rock below. Wayland turned away in dismay, scooping the much smaller baby draig off the worktable and clasping her to his chest. I was so surprised by his easy familiarity with the draigling that I almost missed Blodwen’s head shudder. Her flame stuttered. Her wings flared wider, as if she was trying to lift off inside the cavern. There wasn’t room—the unfinished forge was narrow, the ceiling barely taller than Irian’s dark head.
Slowly, as if fighting some resistance, Blodwen turned her head, still breathing a ragged sheet of flame. The fire scorched along the wall, scathed the floor. Laoise cried out, jumping back and beating the edge of her tunic where tiny cinders alighted on her clothes.
“Blodwen!” she scolded, her voice touched with the barest note of alarm. “That’s not funny.”
But the juvenile draig was not engaged in caprice. The conflagration blazing over the forge workbench ignited my own alarm.I stumbled back another step. Both Wayland and Irian retreated with me.
“Blodwen!” Laoise cried out again.
But the draig didn’t seem to hear her—her graceful legs moving ponderously but purposefully across the floor, her neck coiling as she belched great gasps of sizzling red and gold throughout the forge. Heat blossomed, unbearable in the closeness of the room. Through the curling skeins of black smoke clouding the cavern, Blodwen’s eyes stared, glossy yet somehow unfocused.
Eyes suddenly gleaming silver. Silver… veined with filaments of gold.
Fear stampeded my heart, and I almost dropped to my knees, coughing as black fumes invaded my lungs. I squinted through the sheeting flames and opaque smog as another hulking serpentine creature with scales of shimmering red-gold joined Blodwen, screening us from the conflagration with broad, membranous wings.
Irian threw his heavy black cloak over my shoulders and wrapped his arms around my torso. The world stretched thin as silk before snapping inside out, yanking us away from the rampant wildfire.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Fia
The endless jet-black weight of the mountain swallowed me whole before spitting me out. I stumbled to my knees on more smooth, dark stone, bracing myself as I retched against familiar nausea.
I hadn’t experienced Irian’s peculiar mode of transportation in months. Time had not eased my opinion of it.
Worry and panic picked me up from the floor. I whirled on my heel, throwing off Irian’s cloak as I searched for him. He stood a pace away, glancing at his untarnished arms. Covering me with his cloak had seemingly shielded him from the worst of my starshine. I looked past him—to my surprise, Wayland stood beside him, one of his hands resting on Irian’s shoulder. Another surprise—Irian had flown us not out of the Cnoc, but simply back to the vaulted dining chamber, where all the hallways and caverns converged.
“Find Sinéad,” Irian commanded, simply, with a gesture toward the Armory. “Wayland, warn Idris and Balor. I shall try to find the aughiskies. Then meet outside—I do not think any of us should linger here.”
I nodded—the roar of flames echoed through the twisting caverns, and the thunder of serpentine bodies colliding with stone shuddered beneath my boots. Or perhaps that was Talah, testing the bonds of the new home I’d given her.
“Laoise?” I hated how my voice trembled.
Irian’s jaw tightened.
“Laoise can take care of herself,” Wayland answered as he wrestled the rotund baby draig, hissing like a furious cat, into his own mantle. Her needlelike claws were extended as far as they could go, and tiny sparks ignited in the air as smoke curled from her nostrils. Her pupils were hugely dilated and noticeably silver. “Irian’s right—we’re not safe here.”
As if to punctuate his words, another of the juvenile draigs—smaller than Blodwen, but not by much—came shrieking into the main cavern, swinging turbulently from the arched ceiling to the floor as the points of its wings scraped the rocks. Erratic flames rocketed from its mouth, sending light and heat to blossom like captive suns in the black night of the caverns. I hurled myself out of the draigling’s unsteady path, diving down one hall as Wayland veered the opposite way. I did not see Irian, but the singing of the Sky-Sword vibrated along my bones, humming in counterpoint to the soundless throb of the Heart of the Forest.
Confusion and fury puddled in my gut as I dashed along the halls. No matter what Talah had done to Laoise’s draig family, I did not wish to see these creatures harmed.
Sinéad was in her bedroom—if her wet hair was any indication, she’d been bathing. She looked up when I flung open the door without knocking, surprise swiftly turning to alarm when she noticed my soot-striped skin and scorched clothing.
“What’s wrong?”
“The draigs,” I gasped out. My lungs felt congested with acrid smoke. “Something’s wrong. They’re…attacking. We need to get out of the Cnoc. Now.”
Sinéad did not hesitate, shoving her feet into boots, snatchingher daggers, and whipping her mantle around her shoulders before dashing after me. Smoke snaked a terrible warning along the ceiling. We slammed our fists on the closed doors as we passed back through the hall. No one exited.
The main cavern was a thunderous cacophony of roaring fire and splitting rock and scales colliding with stone. Another two draigs—these with patterns of gold scales on their red bellies—had joined the first. They circled one another in volatile spirals, the unsteady beating of their wings buffeting the smoke into great stinging sweeps. I swallowed as tears sprang to my eyes, wetting my lips against the ominous taste of char.
“The exit!” I screamed at Sinéad, who was staring in shock at the draiglings. “Do you know how we get out of here?”
“There!” She gestured toward a sharp, narrow crevasse cut into the far wall. Renewed panic pulsed through me—we’d have to cross beneath all three frenzied draigs in order to reach it. We could skirt around the edges, but we were both already coughing and retching from the stench of smoke and burnt metal.
“On my count, we run!” I screamed, yanking the collar of my tunic over my nose. “One, two—”
“Three,”Sinéad shrieked.
