It shouldn’t be possible. She should not be able to ridehisdragon, not when he is already here. She should be dead by now.
We are coming for you, Mjolnir says.Get off that dragon, Skylar—he is not from Draka.
Skylar can see Bruma far below her on the ground. She can’t tell from here whether he’s dead or not.
Astrid. Where is Astrid?
But Kaida—
We’ll help her. We’re—
But she hears another clash of thunder, answered by blinding light. Zryan. He has another dragon to fight, because Ziva and the queen will be going after Astrid, who still has the wand. Which means Skylar’s on her own.
The shadow rider reaches for her, and she reacts without thinking, throwing her power out to him.
Only it doesn’t connect. It isn’t like with the queen—there is no wall. There is nothing at all.
The stranger gives her a small shake of his head, tutting. “You didn’t really think that would work, did you?”
Before she has time to reflect on what that means—that her power doesn’tworkon this man—shadows coil around her, holding her in place. She tries to reach out to Astrid, but her mind feels sluggish. The man is doing something to her, fucking with her brain.
They are flying higher, away from Mjolnir and Astrid, and the man lifts his hand, pointing it in front of them. She sees, now, what he’s holding. And she knows what it is—because it’s the exact replica of the pin she’s worn in her hair her entire life.
She is powerless to do anything other than watch, even as every muscle in her body contracts, trying to break free of the shadows’ hold. Even as her heart surges in panic, her skin still searing from Ziva’s light.
She hears her mate scream her name from somewhere far away, as the man slashes the wand—and cuts a hole in the sky.
60Astrid
There’s a hole in the sky. There’s aholein the sky.
And through it she can see stars, thousands of them. On a blanket of black as dark as the dragon that is flying through the rip in the world. With Skylar on its back.
Skylar!she cries into her mate’s mind.What’s happening? Talk to me.
Astrid. Her voice comes through weakly, like something is interfering with the bond.
Goddess, the queen was right: there is another world. And Skylar is currently hurtling into it, careening from day to night.
“Bastet, follow them!” Bastet banks, changing course, panting as he pumps his wings harder. But they’ll never make it. They’re too far away, the lunar dragon too quick and—Astrid almost falls off the back of her familiar. The cut is sealing shut. Sealing Skylar on the other side.
Skylar, she cries again, and her mate’s voice comes back, distorted—she can’t fully understand what she’s saying, except for two words.
Wand. Unlock.
She looks at the silver wand, ignoring the blood smeared across her arms—a mix of her own and others’—and wills it to make sense of Skylar’s words. She lifts her head as the outline of the dragon disappears inside its own shadows, Skylar with it.
Shit, shit, shit. She’s not going to get there in time. And she’s not the only one who’s noticed the window. Ottilie and Ziva are spearing for the world beyond, Zryan and Mjolnir on their tail. But the Celestial has the advantage of being much faster than the Elemental—and much smaller. Small enough to get through the gap that’s left.
“Zryan!” Inexplicably, he seems to hear her shout over the roaring winds, and his head whips toward her. “Teleport!”
She tunnels into her Gift, quicker and deeper than she’s gone before, praying Bastet can handle this one last surge, and she finds the thread of seas and storms that she knows is Zryan. She unleashes her power down the thread, sees the moment it hits him, even from this distance. His back arches and Mjolnir roars, the sky cracking as if in response to the gargantuan dragon, and Ziva is thrown from the air. The solar dragon spirals toward the ground, her wings flapping wildly as she tries to regain control, the queen screaming up at her son. But Astrid is screaming, too.
“You find her!”
The hole is closing, barely bigger than Kaida now, and Astrid’s still too far. She swallows a sob, then gasps as Zryan and Mjolnir vanish. The dragon, larger than the old fortress in Isfjell, simply disappears, and a wingbeat later, just as the cut is knitting together completely, she hears the boom of his thunder from that world of night beyond. She sags against Bastet, fear and relief mingling, as he dips in the sky, the use of her Gift taking yet more from her poor, tired familiar.
“Just a little farther, my brave Bastet.”
