My heart clenches.
I freeze, everything squeezing tightly within me as though I canwillthe sound into nothingness, into a whisper, into never happening at all.
But it did happen.
My mind races, speeding and catching like flame.
Maybe they didn’t hear me. Maybe they didn’t hear the sound because I’m invisible. Maybe—
No.
That hope is dashed. Their big heads whip in my direction.
All eyes land on me. I amfullyvisible. As corporeal as the wasteland of destruction around us.
They see me.
They.Dragons.
I don’t know what is more shocking in this moment: being visible, or that dragons still exist. These colossal, winged leviathans that once reigned supreme, living for nigh on centuries, wreaking death and destruction...stilllived.
Of course I should not be so shocked. Like witches, they are creatures of magic, and I had lived under its poison for years.
Magic.
That ugly word skitters across my mind. That most-hated, powerful, and bitter thing has struck again and ruined my life. It has taken everything from me. First it tookme. Then Ulrika and Linnea. Now it has taken my father. Maretta. Even Hilla is dead. They are all gone, and that loss strikes me like a blow, twists and grinds into me like a knife, stuns me and leaves me shaking all over, filling me with such deep and abiding loathing for magic and all its instruments: witches...dragons.
Now I am here, no longer invisible, but captive still.
No one moves. For an endless moment, across the distance separating us, our eyes clash. Human and dragon assess each other.
I feel like a bunny caught in the sights of a predator, paralyzed, heart beating a thousand beats a second beneath the thin layer of my chest.
Then they come for me.
They lift off the ground a fraction, clawed feet curled up beneath them as they sweep forward through the soupy air.
Fuck.
And yet I still cannot make myself move. Terror holds me in a vise...along with an odd sense of fate.
Magic held me captive these many years. It only makes sense that magic would be the thing to end me now.
I swallow. It’s come to this.
Their big bodies cut cleanly through the miasma like a hot knife through butter. I see them in a haze of dread, rippling brawn in a wild variety of colors and sizes against the smoke and mist. They are as different as one human is from another. Even the smallest one is as big as a building.
They areallbig. Too big.
Frighteningly big.
They wing past me, so close the drip of saliva on their enormous teeth gleams.
Their giant heads with their wide, horned frills toss side to side as they move with fluid speed, their dragon eyes slitted and flashing, taking in everything, missing nothing,seeing me. They’re toying with me, an ant in their midst.
A dry croak escapes me as I command myself to move my legs. To run.
Stop standing here like a statue, meekly submitting to your death!
