Or to Helen directly. You can see him?
I can see, the fieflord replied,what you face. I will not tell you that discretion is the better part of valor.
Don’t. I lived that life until I was thirteen and I’d sooner die—horribly—than go back to it.And he was a large part of that early fear.
The stone flooring cracked beneath the feet of the Aerian who was not Aerian. Orange-eyed, his smile no longer looked lazy or condescending. But when he breathed again—and he did—he wasn’t aiming at the Arcanist. He wasn’t aiming at thepraevolo, either.
He was aiming at Kaylin.
* * *
She stood her ground, not because she was counting on the familiar, but because she was counting on her partner. He’d set the weapon chain into a slow spin, and it had worked its way up to a fast one; it was a wall of chain and blade. She had no doubt that it would stop the fire from reaching her; it had stopped magical fire before.
Fire hit the moving wall and splashed to either side of it. The rock it hit in that splash sizzled. A second breath broke, as well. The third breath wasn’t aimed directly at Kaylin; it was aimed toward the ceiling above Kaylin’s head. The ceiling was a long way up, but given the way the rock had sizzled, she didn’t think it would be any safer than a direct hit.
And then it wasn’t a problem, because Bellusdeo leapt. Something as large as a Dragon, when grounded—and if the cavern was large enough for Aerian flight, it was very, very cramped for Dragon wings—should have been ungainly. Awkward. It shouldn’t have had the grace and suppleness of movement that Bellusdeo displayed.
She had been, she had said, a warrior queen. Kaylin could see why.
The outcaste snapped his wings to either side; they extended, and then extended again, their span far larger than an Aerian’s. They snapped shut on Bellusdeo’s jaws, scraping her scales as if their feathers were made of metal or stone. His guards leapt into the air; they didn’t land. Unlike Bellusdeo, the Aerians didn’t find the cavern too confining for actual combat. They weren’t stupid enough to think they could take on a Dragon.
She reared back, roared, breathed; the outcaste stood in the stream of her fire, his Aerian face upturned as if to meet her gaze. He was still, silent; fire lapped at his wings before sliding off them, just as fire did off Dragon scales. Or Dragon skin.
One of the Aerian guards shouted,“Praevolo!”
He wasn’t talking to Moran.
Chapter 26
That single word made so many things clear. The Aerian guards would not bend knee to Moran; they didn’t recognize her aspraevolo. They believed the outcaste waspraevolo; to them, Moran was a pretender, a fraud.
The Aerian Hawks maneuvered in the air as they tightened their formation around Moran. They moved, their flight a weave that implied wall. There were drills and flight formations that were characteristic of the Aerian Hawks, and Kaylin recognized them as they fell into place.
The outcaste’s Aerian guards were aiming for Moran, and Kaylin was wingless. There was nothing she could do for the Hawks in the air.
The outcaste lifted wings that were far too large for his current body.
And the familiar roared.
* * *
It was a Dragon roar, it occurred beside Kaylin’s ear, and before she could react, the small creature had propelled himself off her shoulder with enough force to cause a stumble on Kaylin’s part. She lifted a hand to grab him—not the world’s smartest move on a good day, which this wasn’t—and missed.
He headed straight for Bellusdeo, roaring, his minuscule form home to a voice that would have been impressive even from the Emperor.
Bellusdeo drew up short, skidding across the stone floor; her weight gave her a less easily controlled momentum. Given her size, it should have taken her longer to stop. The outcaste’s wings closed in a snap of sound and, oddly, light. The light was multicolored and shifting, as if every color it contained was fighting for dominance. But they closed inches from her Draconic face.
When the outcaste spoke, he spoke in pure Dragon; the world shook. The air moved. Bellusdeo reared up, and up again as her wings spread; she answered in kind.
The caverns took their voices, magnified them, sent them bouncing against the walls and the ceiling. And if Kaylin couldn’t understand the words, she almost understood the tone of them.
The outcaste was offering Bellusdeo something. Kaylin wasn’t entirely certain that the closing of his great wings had been meant to harm her; she thought it might have been meant to restrain her, to hold her in place, while he spoke. The intervention of the familiar meant that there were no restraints; she reared, and her left wing clipped a low-flying Aerian—but not a Hawk. The Aerian in question was thrown against the closest wall, and did not immediately rise again.
She had always understood that Dragons were death, but on a visceral level, Bellusdeo was just...Bellusdeo, to Kaylin. It was jarring, to watch her so casually dispose of a random enemy as if he were a fly. Or a mosquito.
Severn eyed the Aerians; he continued to spin the chain, but shifted the direction of the spinning wall as he made his way to the only other people who were trapped on the ground: Teela and Tain. Teela was eyeing the sky with frank apprehension, which also surprised Kaylin.
It shouldn’t have. She gripped a dagger in hands that were locked with tension, and turned away from the Dragons and the Aerians that were in the air. One Aerian wasn’t.
