He staggered to the side, then collapsed on the ground with a grunt.
His eyes fluttered closed.
They rounded on him as the mountains keened. The dragon roared, but the warning had come too late. The ceiling was falling in.
Alarik grabbed Greta, pushing her back against the wall and covering her body with his own. Rocks pummelled him, swift and merciless, until he sagged against her, groaning into her neck. She tried to hold him up, but he slid to the ground in a heap.
‘Alarik!’ She rolled him over, but his eyes were closed, his face ashen. He was bleeding badly, his breath coming in laboured wheezes.
She turned her face up to the dragon, tugging desperately on that bond between them.
Help me.
Please.
The beast stretched, making a shield of her wings as more rocks fell, sealing off the tunnel. The mountains were buckling. They had to get out of here.Now.
Greta tipped her head back, squinting into the groaning dark. She couldn’t climb with Alarik on her back, but maybe they could fly. She grabbed her dagger and crawled to that last shackle,her fingers shaking as she jammed the blade into the lock.
‘Hang on!’ she yelled, as much to herself as the dragon and the king. ‘We’re getting out of here!’
The dragon grunted, seemingly urging her to hurry. Greta held her breath, every muscle in her body going taut. Each falling boulder brought them one step closer to death. Even the dragon wouldn’t be able to withstand this battering for long.
Breathe, Greta.
Focus.
The lock yielded with a click. She ripped the shackle free, and the dragon roared, not in fear this time, but triumph. The beast stepped on to a mound of rubble, her wings twitching. A warm breeze stirred the cavern.
‘Wait!’ cried Greta, scrabbling out from under her. She crawled back to Alarik, dragging his lifeless body back to the beast. Tears striped her cheeks and strangled her voice as she looked up into those ancient, frosted eyes. ‘Please,’ she begged. ‘I can’t leave him.’
Greta would sooner cut out her own heart.
The dragon snuffed, her head swooping low to take his collar in her mouth. In one fluid, heart-stopping movement, she yanked Alarik off the ground and tossed him up on to her back.
Greta scrabbled up after him, the thickened scales working like narrow footholds. She threw herself on top of Alarik’s lifeless body, pinning him between two large ridges as she grabbed hold of the dragon’s spiralling horn. There came a sudden blast of heat, and then a wall of fire so high, it lit up the blackness overhead.
Somewhere beneath them, Elias’s body burned and burned.
Greta couldn’t bring herself to regret it as she stared up into the yawning dark, praying with every inch of her heart, that somehow, they would find their way through it.
The dragon climbed up the rubble, flexing her wings wider and higher. When she found the space she needed, she flapped once, twice, gathering air beneath her. With a determined huff, she pushed off the mound, Greta’s stomach swooping as they dipped to one side. But the beast soon found her rhythm, reclaiming her balance as she rose up, up, up into the unknown.
The mountain narrowed, the stone trembling as it closed in around them. They could only go back down or crash head first into the rock face. Greta squeezed her eyes shut as the wall loomed closer, but the dragon simply ducked her head and loosed an onslaught of flame so powerful it blasted everything before them into smithereens.
Greta pressed her forehead to Alarik’s chest, listening to the faint thrum of his heart as the world exploded into rock and fire and smoke and—
Air.
Somehow, there was air.
Crisp and bracing and scattered with snowflakes.
The wind howled as it slammed into Greta. She held on tightly to Alarik as she raised her head, her eyes streaming with relief when she realized they were no longer in the mountain but the wide bowl of the sky.
Not falling. Soaring.
Far below them, the spires of Grinstad glinted in the morning sun. Nobles and servants crowded the front lawn to look up at the sky,screaming at the sight above them – an ancient dragon, rising on pearlescent wings from the crumbling mountains. And on her back, the ferocious king and dauntless wrangler who had dared to free her.
