“Reload!” a sailor screamed, but it took too long compared to a dragon’s flight. Aderyn opened his mouth and a spout of flame crackled the wooden deck. Leaning out the window, I couldn’t see what he’d lit aflame, but I smelled the smoke and ash, heard cries and then the creak of varnished wood beneath a dragon’s claws.
He roared, and in the rough sound, I heard my name.
“Where is Roland?”
His voice was guttural and deep, and no human voice carried in quite the same way a dragon’s did. There was shuffling around on deck, and moments later, the door unlatched.
Forov’s manservant came rushing in and grabbed me by the shoulder of my coat. Unceremoniously, he tugged me across the room. I hardly needed his encouragement, but as unsteady on my feet as I was, I did appreciate the bracing hand. I staggered out into the light of day, squinting against the sun’s rays. The warmth on my face wasn’t sunlight, though.
Above us, a sail burnt, the middle sagging in crisped black edges while men rushed to put the fires out.
It was a warning—recoverable, perhaps, but Aderyn had?—
It’d never occurred to me that he would fight for me. I never would’ve asked him to, but there he was.
I stared up at him, even the stinging light I’d been denied for days was unable to keep me from taking him in. He was large but svelte, like a serpent rather than the boulder Bowen made or the solid, muscled sturdiness of Tris when he transformed.
Aderyn was as graceful as a silk flag on the breeze, bright green and shining before me, and my heart squeezed at the sight of him. The whole ship listed slightly with his weight, and my stomach twisted.
But sun and moons both, he was beautiful.
“Aderyn—”
I staggered toward him, held firm by the servant’s grip on my shoulder.
“You see?” Forov spat, voice laced with fury at the inconvenience he’d brought down on himself. “He isfine. Completely unharmed. Andyoumight’ve killed him, you great bloody?—”
There was a shout behind us as a burnt rope gave way and a wooden beam groaned.
Didn’t matter. Only Aderyn mattered.
“I’m fine,” I croaked, staring up at him. My eyes stung, and I couldn’t place the feeling.
It wasn’t just that I’d been taken and he was there. I’d have been so overcome just to see him at all, as sure as I’d been that what I’d broken was irreparable.
Aderyn hadcome.
However angry he was, however righteous his anger, he had still come.
“You did perfect,” I assured him. Forov was full of shit, railing against the damage done to his ship, but Aderyn had come to save me. He’d been quick and smart and kept himself from being hurt. I hadn’t ever been so proud of him—he’d grown from the scared, abused little dragon at Windy Pass tothis. It was incredible.
With a low, threatening growl, Aderyn lowered his head toward the deck. He took a step forward, and it was only then that I realized he’d perched himself atop the ballista. All the sailors and soldiers had scurried back from it, and though some of them had grabbed the hilts of their swords and yanked them free, none dared threaten a dragon with a chest full of fire.
“Release him, now,” Aderyn snarled, his lips pulling back over teeth sharp as daggers.
The man holding my coat let me go. He held his hands up as he took a step back from me.
The only problem then was that I had to stand on my own feet. The boat swayed, shifting with the waves and with Aderyn’s weight.
I stumbled forward, reached out to brace myself on Aderyn’s scaled leg, and then I was tipping down—down toward the wooden deck.
And everything else? It came up in a rush of acid and a sharp cramp in my stomach.
I vomited right there on the deck, clinging to Aderyn’s arm, gasping with spit-slick lips.
Still, he was there, scales smooth beneath my palm, and if there were anywhere I was going to die, I’d have it with him, at his side, in his arms.
“Roland!” He snatched me with enormous clawed paws, held me steady as he could, and I grinned sloppily as I stared up at him.
