“Stay back,” I shouted. “I am not here to fight. Only to return your invaders. Leave us be!”
He didn’t stop, though, and all I could see in that moment was my sister’s body, hacked to bits by human blades and strewn across the ground like she was so much refuse.
Without thought, I breathed in and let loose a gout of flame.
I would not force my people to survive me the way they had my sister. Especially not when they were close enough to see the murder happen.
When the human paused and held up a hand, I thought little of it. Warding off incoming danger was second nature, whether it was possible to succeed or not.
When my flame split down the middle and passed harmlessly by him, I . . . might have panicked, just a little bit.
Magic, the kind wielded by the mass murderer Athelstan Cavendish, was the bane of all dragonkind. Even if I took to the air right then and flew away, this monstrous creature could cut me from the skies, take the air from my wings and kill me without any chance of escape.
I thought the humans largely justified in their war against us, but this? This was too much.
I didn’t deserve to have the air taken from me for existing as a dragon. Before I thought the actions through, I was leaping forward, grabbing the armored human in both hands, and leaping into the air. He couldn’t crash me into the ground when that would also kill him, could he?
Well, he certainly could, but that would be ridiculous.
Oddly enough, he didn’t attack me. He had a sword in his hand, and he didn’t even use it. He didn’t wriggle or fight or hit me with his tiny two-legged fists.
He simply went still in my arms, and allowed himself to be carried off.
The only problem left, then, was that we’d been trying to return the humans to each other. What the fuck was I going to do with another one?
2
BLAKE
Bring me the head of a dragon, or I shall take yours.
My brother had always demanded so much of me, but this was beyond the pale. Yes, there were fewer mages in our number than there had been a generation ago, but that didn’t justify sending a Cavendish prince to the very edge of the realm to die.
Unfortunately, that was precisely what Evander meant for me to do.
Our great-grandfather, a hero to all of Llangard, had torn dragons from the skies with the flick of a few fingers and left their corpses smoldering on the mountainside. He’d buried entire clans as they fled to the Mawrcraig Mountains. He’d called the very Spires up from the earth to give us a home fortified against attacks from above.
And I? I could move wind around a bit.
It made me more than a passable swordsman, to be sure. It was impossible for my opponents to win a sparring match when they couldn’t cut through the air to get at me, when they meant to step here but the wind turned them there. But I didn’t havethe power to reshape the world like the first Cavendish. Even Grandfather had remained rather impressive to his very last day.
As for Evander, I didn’t know how he fared. He would not reveal his might to anyone, he said, so that his enemies never knew what he was capable of.
Apparently, I counted among that number, though I’d never quite understood why brothers stood as enemies to one another.
In any case, I wasn’t capable of fighting off a dragon, much less an entire clan of them threatening the throne’s building of a castle at the village of Merrick. But if Imightdie fighting a dragon, surely that was better than certainly dying at the hands of my own brother.
There was no love lost between us. My very first memory was of his serious, displeased scowl. He’d resented me for everything—a second son’s freedom, my skill on the training grounds, whenever Mother took time to play with me when we were young. It wasn’t her fault that he was a dour child uninterested in games. But after Father died, Evander demanded service.
He wanted to know what Lord Aronfort meant to do with the large quantities of grain his province had hoarded for the coming winter. He wanted to know who Lady Bevel took to bed, for she was a widow of considerable wealth and held more sway at court than Evander thought any woman ought to.
In the end, she’d taken me to bed, and I still didn’t see much value in what information I’d gleaned from her. Perhaps my brother simply wanted to diminish me in the eyes of the court by passing me around how he liked, but it didn’t matter.
I was still a mite happier than him; I could say that for certain.
But happiness didn’t buy me power, and when the dragons flew at Merrick, I rushed out to face them.
This was my chance to make it home and I?—
