There was no time to think. Just act. He launched himself forwards, shifting mid-air. Wings tore free from his back. By the time he reached her, the hands he grabbed her with were claws.
Air moved behind him, a fraction of a second before searing heat blasted against his scales. There wasn’t enough space in this tiny passageway for his dragon, but it didn’t matter. Steel and concrete splintered as Julian shifted fully into his dragon form.
And the world flew apart.
Fire roared around him. Agony coursed down his side and suddenly vanished in a way he knew should worry him, but he ignored the pain. He had Francine.
Now he just needed to keep her safe.
He dropped into the shadows to avoid the worst heat of the blast. It took effort to bring others with him into the shadows, but it was possible—and it was his best chance at protecting her.
The shadows were a mystery even to the shadow dragons. A world that existed alongside the physical, a place where those in the sunlit world could not see you. Every shadow dragon could walk in the shadows as easily as breathing. So could any human holding a piece of a shadow dragon’s body, which was why Harper had torn so many of Julian’s scales from his flesh.
But there were levels to the darkness. Deeper shadows. Places where things in the sunlit world not only could not see you, but could not touch you, either.
Julian leaped into those deeper shadows with Francine clutched in his claws, and the explosion was suddenly a resounding echo, nothing more. He leaped, surging upwards through the house on the ghost of a fireball that destroyed everything in its path.
Julian unfurled his wings. Pain seared their delicate webbing, but they caught the updraft from the explosion, and he wheeled into the sky.
It had all taken less than a second. Shifting, escaping into the shadows, taking wing—an eternity gone by in less than a heartbeat.
“Oh shit,” he thought he heard Francine gasp from where he was clutching her against his chest. “Ohshit.”
She’s alive,he thought, and then:I’m alive.
And for the first time in months that feels like a good thing.
He wheeled above the burning house and reached out with his psychic powers. His guards’ familiar psychic signatures hummed from the edges of the devastation, and he sighed with relief. Their psychic presences were overlaid with pain and shock—but they were alive.
*Was that what you were expecting?* he asked Francine telepathically.
There was no response, except for her continued swearing.
His dragon snarled in the back of its throat in the way he knew meant it was snarling athim. Julian cursed himself.
*Are you hurt?* He shouldn’t have been so glib with his first question. He’d tried to shield her from the blast, but if she was injured…
She didn’t answer. Julian flapped his wings again, riding the wind further away from the smoke-choked air above the explosion site, and felt Francine go stiff.
“Can they see us?” she shouted, then broke into a coughing fit.
*No,* Julian reassured her. Flying meant invisible—you never flew without falling into shadows, even if you couldn’t sense anyone else around you. He’d had that drilled into him as a hatchling.
“Can they—ah, shit.” Francine coughed again. Her body shuddered against Julian’s chest. “Can you land in the trees?”
Julian followed her pointing finger to a patch of forest where the trees looked thinner. He glided over, sensing the guards’ psychic signatures becoming dimmer as the distance between them grew, and landed with a thud in a small clearing.
A too-small clearing. Julian hissed as a tree cracked against his side, scraping against whatever wound he had there and didn’t want to think about. Panting, he lowered Francine to the ground.
She caught her balance and went still, gathering herself before she turned to face him. Julian knelt back on his haunches, vaguely aware that the movement hurt but focusing his attention on the woman standing in front of him.
He’d had time to look at her when she first shoulder-barged him into the house and activated the lockdown. She was tall and statuesque; utterly feminine but powerfully built rather than willowy. Her silver-blonde hair was several shades lighter than Mathis’s, or at least what Julian remembered of Mathis’s hair when it wasn’t sticky with sweat and blood.
Francine’s was sticky, too. Stinking of smoke and rank, animal fear.
His dragon snarled at him again and took a step forward, raising its wings protectively above Francine.
At least it tried to.
