Lightning kindled in Skylash’s throat, released with a roar.
Serenna’s pulse lurched as she pivoted hard. No time to think—instinct snatched the reins. She reached for the charge and wrenched the bolt off course.
Her hands trembled as the light disappeared into the clouds, her thoughts floundering. The gulf between the dragon’s furyand anything Serenna could reason with stretched impossibly wide. How was she supposed to speak to a raging storm?
“Skylash!” Serenna shouted. “My people aren’t here to harm you!”
The dragon neither slowed nor answered, her chest flaring with sparks.
Skylash arrowed past her so fast the air fractured. The shockwave flung Serenna into a spin, pain lancing through her shoulders as the wind tore at her wings.
She barely righted herself before another lightning strike came, as precise as a dagger hurled for her heart.
With a snarl of her own, Serenna thrust her palms forward. Flames erupted from her fingertips, intercepting the bolt.
The elements collided, fire and lightning shattering in a burst of cobalt and gold. The recoil struck Serenna like a hammer, tossing her backward through the sky.
Her wings snapped wide, catching the wind until she steadied. Then an eerie calm reigned as the storm went still.
Across the sky, Skylash hovered. Every stroke of her wings thundered through the air, the rhythm shivering deep into Serenna’s chest. Lightning crawled over her scales in crackling arcs, her violet eyes blazing through the rain.
“Clever little spark,”Skylash crooned into her mind, voice a silken hiss.“Shall I hurl another?”
Serenna’s pulse jolted when she recognized the voice—the dragon who’d spoken through the Heart when she’d been Lykor’s prisoner.
Lightning gathered again in the dragon’s throat, humming with threat, a predator savoring the moment before the strike. She bared her fangs and released a careless volley that streaked toward Serenna—half test, half dare.
Serenna didn’t flinch.Barely. She snatched the sparks, the charge skittering between her fingers. She twisted it slowly,unraveling the current strand by strand until the light dispersed into the wind.
Preservation begged her to flee, but she didn’t.
Beneath the scorched edges of fear, the ache in every wingbeat, and the thunder pounding in her blood, she’d flown to reach the dragon—to meet the storm with spine.
“You spoke to me through the Heart,” Serenna said, lifting her voice into the wind. “You told me where to search for more relics.”
Skylash’s snarl lashed through the air, lightning veining across her wing talons.“I would not aid creatures like you who chained me to the realm of dreams.”
An argument burned against Serenna’s tongue. None living had wrought that crime. And Skylashknewit.
Instead, Serenna reached for the truth that bound them, a sliver of common ground even if the dragon would try to scorn it.
“I know it was you who helped,” Serenna insisted, the memory from Lykor’s tower resurfacing. “You told me, ‘Search in tempest’s eye, where fury reigns; nature’s roots, the shade of a glade; or volcano’s core, where flames cascade.’”
The dragon’s pupils narrowed to slits. Lightning flashed behind her eyes, spinning like a gathering storm.
“We found two of those Hearts because of you,” Serenna continued. “We freed Cinderax with one, and—”
Skylash cut her off, voice crackling like shattered bone.“And was Rimeclaw’sfreedomyour doing too?”
Serenna faltered. “We lost one of the Hearts.” The admission scraped her throat. “And because of that…we failed him.”
The silence that followed cradled the weight of consequence.
“That’s why we need you now,” Serenna forced out. “Rimeclaw told us the king broke the mind of another dragon. If we don’t find the final Heart before the elves do, the last dragon will be lost too.”
Skylash’s nostrils flared as she stilled. Then, with a slow blink, she began to spiral through the air—a serpent closing in, lightning warping to her will.
“Ah,”she purred, her voice curling through Serenna’s skull.“You’ve come to beg. So tell me, little spark, what will you offer me if I choose not to snuff you from the sky?”
