Dragon skin undulates around me.
Time is lost. I don’t know if it’s been minutes or hours or days. Maybe a lifetime passed. Maybe I’m an old woman now who has been clinging forever in this dragon’s grasp. I feel old and battered. My trembling arms tire and weaken.
Despite everything in me that cries out to fight, to survive, I can’t hold on anymore. My shaking fingers slip from the dark, steel claws. I let go.
And then I’m falling to the ground.
Down.
Down.
Down.
My arms pinwheel violently at my sides as the wind rushes me.
The sight of Tage fades, the gleaming-dark underside of his belly growing more and more distant. He goes from a charcoal-dark giant to a blot, then a speck, then a pinpoint, then nothing. Nothingness eaten up by clouds and fog and terror, I don’t see him anymore. I don’t see any of them.
They’re gone.
I twist, turning until I’m facing down. The far-off ground swells closer and closer, coming for me asIam coming for it.
I scream against my death, against my grief, against the sadness of this life, against the lonely years, against the cruelty of magic, against the stinging, earsplitting roar of wind, the force of which attacks my skin, threatening to rend it from my body.
Spots flash before my eyes. Darkness pushes at the edges of my vision, closing in.
My screams fade and wilt, turning hoarse until no sound escapes from me at all as I fall.
My limbs go limp, no longer doing anything except flopping in the air.
My head goes fuzzy. Then heavy. My neck boneless.
Then the world...
Dark.
22
The Sound of a Name
Iwake with a jolt, sucking in a violent, icy breath.
I’m not dead.
It’s my first thought before I wonder how I know that for certain. I’ve never been dead before.
Blinking wide eyes, I assess myself, verifying that even though I’m flat on my back on a solid surface, I am well and truly alive. My chest lifts and falls with harsh breaths. Somehow, I did not collide with the ground. I’m not a broken heap in the snow with body parts strewn everywhere. My insides are still...insideme.
I’m whole and relatively pain-free. My skin, though raw, chafed, and abraded, will heal. I’m not shattered. Not wrecked. Not bleeding.
Not dead.
I didn’t crash-land to my death.
The sky is awash in purple tones above the jagged horizon like one giant bruise, hinting at the coming day, but the moon still looms, providing enough light to stave off total blackness.
I gradually become aware of the cold seeping into me. I prop up on an elbow to try to escape it, swiping the tangle of inky strands of hair free of my chilled cheeks.
The earth cracks and shudders beneath me as though struck by thunder. I jerk and twist around. My gaze lands on a dozen great, clawed feet the size of Maretta’s kitchen table. They circleand stomp and shift their substantial weight with enough force to shake the ground, sending a fine cloud of snow spraying all around me, catching in my lashes, melting on my lips.
