Smiling, I flashed my fangs at him.
“Come take her back then … if you can.”
Chapter Twelve
RONAN
Panic seized my heart and squeezed.
“NO! NO!” The word ripped out of me before thought, before air, before anything except panic.
I’d found the child in the arms of a strange draken. Veskor. It had to be him. Because how many other random fucking drakens were just zooming around?
He stepped backward through the thin seam in the wards, the girl clutched protectively to his chest. The little girl whimpered.
Something snapped inside me, something I didn’t recognize, something primal and vicious and older than language.
I lunged at him.
He dodged, taking flight and flying straight up.
I followed, only for the wards to slam into me like iron fists. Pain burst across my chest. My wings spasmed. I hit the rock hard enough to crack scales.
What the fuck? Why were they trying to keep me in and letting them pass?
“Please—PLEASE?—”
I pushed and shoved and screamed, using my leg muscles to push off the volcano as high as I could, my leg muscles screaming into protest. The wards shattered and let me through. The child’s frightened cry echoed down the cliffs, muffled by distance but still sharp enough to carve through my ribs.
I didn’t think. I didn’t breathe. I chased.
The wind punched my face. The ocean roared beneath me, black and jagged. I snapped my wings wide and shot toward the sound, every instinct in my body screaming.
“VESKOOOOOR!”
My voice tore the air open, but he didn’t answer.
The only sound was the wind, my own jagged breathing, and the beating of distant wings slicing through fog.
I angled down the coastline, pushing my body harder than I’d ever pushed it in my life. My heart slammed against my ribs. My muscles shook with every stroke.
I didn’t care.
I had to reach her. I couldn’t fail her, or her parents, or Benedict, or Wren, or?—
I must not fail.
I banked around a jut of rock and caught sight of him again. He was a dark shape streaking through the mist, low above the waves in an effort to avoid being seen. It was a smart play since the seawitches were on land, at the party, and unable to snatch him from the water. His wings were massive, powerful, beating a rhythm I couldn’t match. His body was angled forward in a predator’s dive.
And the child—gods—the child was pressed against him, tiny arms wrapped around his neck, her cries weak but audible through the wind.
Fear lanced through me.
Not fear of Veskor, but fear of failing Perri, Benedict, Wren, and our unborn child.
“LET HER GO!” My roar cracked in my throat.
Veskor didn’t slow, turn, or even look back.
