He blinked at me slowly. “Because I care about you.”
“Ha.” I scoffed and stepped right up to him to make sure he heard me. “You don’t tie up people you care about. You don’t leave them alone without any defenses. You—”
“I know!” he interrupted, more sweat joining the first small bead. “I know. I… I was wrong. I should have fought harder to convince you—” He cut off as a part of his wall failed and blue flames rushed through the opening.
I ducked behind another part of his wall and watched him re-weave the hole, forcing the fire above us.
“Stand closer to me,” he urged through gritted teeth. I stepped toward him.
“Closer!” he hissed. “Touch… my… hand.”
I wanted to argue and interrogate him, but he strained hard enough to say those few words that it would have been pointless. Instead I set my hand on top of his. He closed his eyes and, two seconds later, magic flooded my body.
I breathed in a deep, rich breath. Yes, the air was full of ash and heat, but being able to touch my own magic again drowned out the chaos around me with a deeper sense of rightness. This was how fae were meant to live.
I met Andar’s eyes—and if I didn’t know better, I would say I saw love. Whatever his reasons, he had come back and fixed what he’d done to me. As much as I wanted to freeze him in place, I could not turn on him while he was protecting us both. “Thank you,” I said, probably too soft for him to hear, but he surely saw the words in my lips.
He dipped his head. “I’m sorry.”
I nodded back, and spoke louder. “Push your shield at this dragon. I’ll freeze him while he’s distracted, and we can move on to one of the others.” Hopefully the musicians had survived the last few minutes.
Andar thrust his hands forward, literally throwing his shield at the dragon in front of us. It hit the monster with enough force that he rolled to the side, and I started freezing him, beginning with his head.
Ice dragons have a dual nature that makes them difficult to freeze—they generate heat in their cores to make terrible blue fire that melts ice attacks while their impenetrable scales embrace the ice magic of their native Kahunamons. Freezing them was a much slower process than freezing, for example, an obnoxious fae musician.
Before I finished immobilizing him, the dragon’s tail walloped around toward us, smashing through trees. It was too big to outrun, and I had all my energy focused on freezing his fire reserves. Andar caught the tail in another magic shield, and pushed it backward. I shifted my magic from the head to the tail—we couldn’t have that monstrosity flattening us.
Just before I finished with the tail, the head recovered enough to angle back at us. I kept freezing the tail, and Andar made another shield to block a new set of flames. He couldn’t use his fire or lava-like magic—between their fires and ice powers, these dragons were immune to any heated attack. Andar’s shield gave me time to finish the tail, and then I returned to the head, ready to stop this one once and for all.
But I didn’t have time to finish. Two other dragons came at us, one from the left and one from the right. This was why taking down more than one at a time was so hard. I rained down icy spikes on the one closest to me, and Andar lifted piles of stones from the ground and launched them at the dragon on his side.
The spikes and stones bounced harmlessly off the dragons’ hard scales.
I knew better. Nothing could cut through those scales. I should have sent the spikes into the beast’s eyes and mouth. I coalesced more moisture in the air into a new set of icy spikes, and sent them straight into the dragon’s eyes, but he realized my plan in time. A scale-coated wing blocked his more sensitive face. When the wing pulled back, fire filled my vision.
I tried to freeze it before it hit me, but I only chilled half the flames before I stumbled backward, tiring from the use of so much magic. A new shield surrounded Andar and me, covering my head only a moment before the flames hit it.
Inside the new shield, I risked a turn to see how Andar had fared against the dragon on his side. One of its eyes was gouged out, but it was still blowing flames at us.
Farther away, surrounded by burnt trees and charred forest, the three musicians huddled together inside a shield similar to ours. But the terror on their faces and the way they held their instruments made me think their shield would only last as long as they played. And even then—all fae get tired eventually.
Two of the three dragons that surrounded them left the last one to beat fire down on the musicians alone while they joined the three dragons fighting Andar’s shield. Well, two dragons were actively fighting us—one was still half frozen.
“I can’t freeze all five at once.” I turned to Andar. He didn’t say anything. I might never trust him again, but it didn’t matter now. All fae get tired, even if they could handle enormous amounts of magic longer than normal people. Trails of sweat already poured down Andar’s face. His shield would not last much longer. I could replace it with an ice shield, but that would crack in seconds under dragon fire.
I turned back to the dragons. I couldn’t beat them, but I could slow them down.
Starting with the one that had blocked my ice with his wing, I concentrated on the magic in his upper chest. It was harder to freeze it with the shield separating us, and I was already exhausted, but—
There. I caught onto it like frost catching a blade of grass, and then I gripped harder, freezing as much of that fiery energy as I could—
I cut off half of its flames before I collapsed.
My legs refused to hold me up any longer. I dug my fingers into the hot soil below us and tried to freeze more of the beast’s heart. My breathing grew ragged, but I kept pushing.
I clenched my fist closed around a handful of soil as my magic finished surrounding and freezing that dragon’s fire. Just one dragon’s fire.
Three more still pounded flames at us.
