“What in the abyss was that?” General Solas snapped.
Another boom. It sounded closer this time. Commander Dareth moved first. “To the field. Now!”
Kaen was already running, crimson cloak flaring behind him as they all burst through the great doors. The royal guards mobilized, sprinting behind. They reached the flight field in time to see dark shapes swirling above, shadowy figures mounted on grotesque beasts, flinging arcane dark fire.
“Mount up!” Commander Dareth roared. “Royal Fleet, airborne defense formation!”
The spell was done, and it was too late. Thaelyn’s vision blurred. A flash of blood, the sound of Nyxariel’s roar, and then everything shifted. A portal cracked open in the air like shattered glass. One moment, she was above the academy, and the next, in a flash of burning magic and smoke, Thaelyn vanished. Torn from the bond and sky.
Nyxariel spiraled upward, howling to the heavens. She incinerated one of the fleeing necromancers, her jaws brimming with white-blue fire. The others she chased across the sky, reducing them to ash. Nyxariel let out a scream that shook the heavens. She blasted the necromancers’ fleet in a final devastating wave, disintegrating the last shadowed mage, but the damage was already done.
It wasn’t enough. “She is gone,”came the whisper through her grief. Thaelyn was gone.
From the flight field, Commander Dareth, Kaen, and Solas descended into the air and watched in horror as the sky blackened above them.
“Sound every alarm,” Solas barked. “Now!”
Kaen’s face was unreadable. “They were waiting. Watching.”
Commander Dareth drew both swords, eyes locked on the distant clouds where a flicker of violet fire still raged. “That washer. That was Nyxariel.” Commander Dareth’s heart turned to ice. Hewatched Nyxariel’s scream echo across the valley, saw her circle violently in search, and then collapse to the mountainside in a tremble of fury and sorrow.
He turned toward his own dragon. “Call to Vornokh!” he told Razorth. “Tell him what has happened if he already doesn’t know from Nyxariel.”
Thorne wasn’t here or in the vicinity. He was dispatched on his own mission. But he would feel it one way or the other, and when he did, his world would burn.
Chapter
Forty-Two
The wind cut across the ridge in swift, slashing gusts, trailing veils of snow behind the high peaks. Vornokh soared above it all, massive and silent, wings wide and still as he rode the upper currents. Thorne sat tall in the saddle, one hand on the reins, the other resting against the warm leather strap over his chest. His eyes drifted toward where she was supposed to be, toward where she usually flew and would flash that beautiful smile at him.
He could still feel her fingers tangled in his hair, the brush of her breath against his jaw, the sharp flare of her power when she shoved him back during sparring, only to drag him closer again.
“Careful, Prince,” Garric’s voice snapped him back to the present. “You go soft on a patrol, and the next thing to find us won’t be friendly.”
“I wasn’t, ” Thorne began, but Darian cut in.
“Oh, you were definitely brooding or swooning from that dumb look on your face,” he said with a grin. “Right now, I’d guess storm-haired and trouble-mouthed.”
Thorne exhaled sharply. “You’re all exhausting.”
“Only because you make it too easy,” Rowan added, coasting closer. “We’re just here to keep you from drowning in your own mood.”
Before Thorne could retort, Sorren’s quiet voice came through the bond. “Eyes up. Something just shifted.”
Vornokh growled, not aloud, but deep within Thorne’s chest. A pulse like distant thunder echoed inside his bones.
"Vornokh?"
Something is wrong,the dragon rumbled, a warning edged in ancient weight.The storm stirs. The bond trembles.
Thorne sat bolt upright, eyes scanning the skies.
A second later, every dragon in the formation jolted. Mirra shrieked. Kaeroth folded into a dive. Tieren roared behind them. Garric’s dragon snapped its wings open wide, catching a violent shift in the air.
Then it struck. Not sound, butsensation. A scream not of voice but ofmagicthat tore through the bond. Thorne reeled back. It was Nyxariel. A surge of wild storm and flame, fury and fear, crashing into him like a blade to the chest. Thaelyn, her pulse in the bond flared white-hot, then vanished.
Thorne’s breath shattered. “Thaelyn!” He pitched forward, clutching the front of Vornokh’s saddle as though trying to hold his heart in place. Pain sliced through him, unbearable and raw.
