She curses, trying to catch up. “They weren’t even trying,” she defends.
I smirk, not that she can see it. “You got distracted, admit it. And now you can’t burn the rope or you’ll fall too. God damn, what is up with this city and rope climbing? This whole fuckin’ Gauntlet, every other thing is climbing!”
She snickers behind me, but her words turn wistful. “It’s the closest we can get to the sky. Most of them will never get their wings, and until I do, this is all we have. We strive to climb higher and higher in the sky, to reach for the clouds that taunt us every day. And even if we fall, we get that brief moment of freedom, of weightlessness.”
I risk a glance over my shoulder, seeing her nearly close enough to grab my ankle as she adds, “We are dragons, even if we never get our wings. Why settle for something as mundane as simply existing when we have the potential to be so much more?”
I don’t slow, pushing my screaming muscles to their limits because I owe her that, owe her my best. “And how many times have you fallen? How many bones have you broken in your quest to get there?”
So close, so damn close to the ledge.
“Does it matter?” she counters on a heavy breath, exhausted. “I’m just going to get back up, no matter how many times it takes. Even if it’s only once, I’m going to look down on the world at my feet. The people, the cities, the problems; they’ll be too small to hurt me, won’t be able to touch me. That power everyone is after, it’s already there, I can feel it. I don’t need my wings for that because everyone forgets the most important thing.”
“What’s that?” I huff as my fingers curl around the ledge at last.
Her hand wraps around my ankle, her nails extending into claws that sink into my skin. With a shout that rival’s a warrior’s, she jerks me back with strength I wasn’t expecting and I lose my grip.
“It takes more than blood to be a dragon.”
My palm burns as the skin is torn away, just barely catching the rope halfway to the ground. She disappears over the edge and I’m forced to climb again, this time with my hand screaming in agony.
I’m sick of fucking climbing, sick of looking over my shoulder for threats. I want to sleep for a goddamn week and just live out my days with my flight in peace. But Ezra’s words echo in my ears with each heaving breath, with each beat of my hammering heart.
When you’re born a dragon, you don’t get a choice. You have to fight for everything you want in this world then fight to keep it because there will always be someone that tries to take it away from you. In a world of nothing but predators, the only way to the top is to claw your way there. You build your castle from bones and surround it with a moat of blood, yet still people will come for you.
You have to be the monster other monsters fear.
I roll onto the platform a bloody, sweaty mess. Each breath I manage to draw lances pain through my chest as I realize just how much I’ve underestimated her. She may have been kept sheltered from the world outside of Hadeon, but still, she sees it clearer than the rest of us. She doesn’t worry about the politics or bullshit, has a firm grasp on what the rest of the world has forgotten.
We’re savage beasts that posture as men and formed societies to keep ourselves in check. Take away the suits and the rules someone made up and we’re nothing more than lawless beasts. Now that so many of our women are gone and society is collapsing, it won’t be long until we revert back to what we once were.
Only the strongest survive and people are already amassing armies to make sure they come out on top. But we have something they don’t; her. And Ezra Veles? She’s a force to be reckoned with.
Chapter 14
Vyrian
