“That is precisely what I mean. I see no other option. We all agreed that we cannot leave any witnesses, so we take her with us.”
I shake my head in furious denial. “No! No, please, don’t—” My words choke off when he releases me to step back far enough to spread out his arms. After a moment, I realize that he’s giving himself room, space to change back into his dragon.
He’s going to transform and take me with him.
Into the skies...among them. Their prisoner to be kept and studied and inspected.
Turning, I run.
21
Falling
The air explodes in a burst of light. I don’t make itthree steps before I’m caught.
Tage the dragon snatches me up and closes me in his claws. I’m no more significant than a fluff of dandelion, my bones no more substantial than the veins beneath the thin skin of a leaf. So very crushable in the massive arms of a beast. It would take nothing for him to end me. It might even happen by accident, with no effort from him at all...just the slightest pressure, the slightest flexing of his considerable brawn, and I would be no more.
A quick, panicked glance around reveals shapes of green, bronze, and pearl: the other dragons, also fully transformed.
I glimpse them before Tage lifts off with a single woosh of his wings. And then we’re moving and everything is a screeching blur.
I’m flying.
Well,I’mnot flying. A dragon is flying and carrying me with him.
I’m his captive because he decided I should live. Tage decreed it. Not the others. An important distinction. The others are more than willing to see me dead. As long as they’re around, I’m not safe.You’re not safe with Tage either.An important reminder. I live or die at his whim. Once his curiosity for me is satisfied, he could revoke his protection.
I sit in the cradle of his claws, tucked close to the curve ofhis muscular chest, holding fast, as insubstantial as a thistle in grass.
Scaled dragon flesh surrounds me, rippling with his movements. I cling to the hard curve of his talons, fear sour in my mouth. I glance down and then yank my gaze up with a sharp inhale, looking away from the swiftly stirring clouds, the vast, wild unknown speeding by below, steering my thoughts from the very real possibility that I might fall and plunge to my death.
Would I die on impact? The moment I hit land? Or might I die on the way down, a victim of my own terror and the roaring, breath-stealing wind?
The air howls around me like an angry animal, clawing at my skin and hair with sharp teeth. Tears stream in steady ribbons down my face, and it’s hard to say whether they’re from the force of wind or my despair.
We’re moving north. Deafening wind fills my ears. Through my blurred vision, I glimpse the jagged outline of the immense mountains ahead amid the breaks of fog. I can’t see the ground below anymore. The clouds float all around us like smoke.
All of it is too much.
I’m a captive of these devils. And yet I have long been a prisoner. I’ve merely traded one cage for another.
The atmosphere is thin, impossible to catch and drag into my lungs. I grow faint, hungry for air.
Wind rushes past me in a screaming roar, and I think I’m screaming, too. I feel the strain in my throat.
There is only sky and the smell of water-soaked wind and vapor. Fog. And something else undefinable. A lush, earthy musk I’d never experienced before.Dragon.
The fear of falling swallows me. Plummeting. Dropping. Tumbling through the air.
I tighten my grip, hold fast to the smooth curve of claws, clinging for life.
I still want to live.
After this day’s losses and suffering, after losing everyone, after everything...the will to survive still pumps through me, indomitable, speeding along in the hot flow of my blood.
I don’t want to die.
I don’t want to join Da and Maretta and all the others. Not yet.
