My power recognized the threat and surged. Even with the bright sun overhead, I could see the blue glow of my coven mark burning between my eyebrows. Hundreds of sets of eyes turned, found me, and began to move. To riot.
Garrick pulled the bow from its sling and nocked an arrow in one fluid movement. I’d never seen him wield the weapon, but his proficiency spoke for itself. He was going to kill his father.
“Kill her!” someone screamed.
“Burn the witch!” yelled another. More took up the chant.
The king released his hold on the crowd, and we were surrounded. Garrick did not have a clear shot at the king any longer, and the crowd was too close. He swung it back into place over his shoulder and drew his sword.
Get on my back.
I stumbled at the authority in Isanara’s high-pitched voice.
You… no. Riding a dragon is... insanity. A death wish.
If you stay in this valley, they will kill you.
“What is she saying?” Garrick demanded. He recognized that I was speaking to Isanara at long last.
Less than a minute, then the crowd would be upon us.
“She wants me to get on her back.”
Garrick’s eyes went so wide they consumed the entire upper portion of his face. But then his silver brows notched down. I recognized that expression. Calculation. Garrick the Red, the bounty hunter. “Do it.”
I grabbed his arm. “Garrick.”
I cannot carry you both. Not yet.
She was still an adolescent. One day, she would be the behemoth I’d seen in the Unknown Gate, but not yet.
Garrick did not need a mind connection to Isanara to understand. She had grown considerably since she’d chosen me as her witch in that snowy mountain forest.
I held tighter to Garrick’s arm and began to summon my power. A wall of ice would hold them back for a few minutes at least. Then it would melt in the heat from the fires overhead and all around. But I could reinforce it. I had a new, deeper well of power now.
“I won’t leave you,” I said.
But Garrick disentangled my hand from his arm. He gripped both of mine between his to keep me from grabbing him again. “Koryn, there is no choice here. If you die, I die too. But beyond the Lifebind—there is no world for me without you in it. Syleris is safe. Let me see you to safety, too.”
“I cannot lose you.” Without either him or Syleris, there was no future.
His familiar smirk curved the corner of his mouth. “I am very good at surviving.”
Now. We go now.
Garrick gave me a little push.
They were the hardest three steps of my life. I grabbed onto one of Isanara’s spikes and threw my leg over her back, careful to keep from impaling myself. She gave me less than a heartbeat to adjust my seat before she launched into the sky.
This was what I had truly been training for when I climbed through the mountains. My thighs shook, but they gripped the shimmering lavender scales of Isanara’s back. I was wedged between two spikes, preventing me from pitching forward or back. I just had to hold on.
The sky was thick with smoke. I heard a roar—much deeper and louder than anything that had ever come out of Isanara. A plume of fire shot by us. Isanara dove to avoid it, then swept upward with a beat of her wings.
She swiveled her head through the air, just like she did on the ground, and roared. But instead of sound, plumes of ice spewed from her mouth. Not a dragon of fire, but of ice.
Two more beats of her wings, and we were past the ridgeline.
We flew over the mountains, away from the fire and carnage, and both of the men I loved. But I already knew, no matter how long or how far we flew, we would not find safety anywhere in Velora.
