Page 69 of Connor and the Dragons

“They dropped me, you know. This isn’t a secure form of transportation.”

Sky shot me a cheeky grin. “Well, you’re still alive, aren’t you? Wow, it’s beautiful. Con. Look at it.”

“I looked at it the whole way out here.”

“And?”

“And being dropped wasn’t very much fun. Sit down.”

Sky sat down.

“This is the greatest thing that has ever happened to me,” he said. “And I found the love of my life a few months ago, so that’s saying something.”

“You’re in a basket.”

“I’m in a basket hanging off a dragon over an ocean at night.” He got his back against the wicker and put his face up into the wind. “How big do you think Lord Frost’s wings are? Tip to tip.”

“I don’t know.”

“You could ask him.”

“He’s a dragon. He can’t talk as a dragon, neither of them can.”

Sky leaned back and smiled. Then he pulled the horn pendant out of his shirt and closed his hand around it and held it there, looking off to the left, where Moerrven, Poppy, and the mirror were being transported by Oallian.

“Can you talk to each other through that thing?”

“It’s more like I can sense him,” Sky said vaguely.

“Well, do whatever voodoo you do to make him sense that we’re very grateful he had you prepare the baskets.”

Sky laughed. “He made me do it every single day. Break down camp, pack everything up, wait in baskets. It was fucking tedious. Good thing I had him for company. And sex.”

I rolled my eyes. “It was good of him to do, we were able to pick you up with only a quick stop to arrange the baskets and the mirror.”

“Yeah, he wanted to be ready to go in case you had to flee.”

“Is he okay with this?” I asked.

“He hates it.” Sky was grinning with his whole face. “He absolutely hates it. I doubt he’s opened his eyes once, and this would be really good material for a novel. I suppose I’ll have to describe it to him.”

“You could stop enjoying that.”

“I could not.”

The wind pushed up through the floor of the basket and blew out the other side and took most of what was in my coat with it. I found the blankets by feel and threw one at my brother’s head and kept one, and pulled my sleeve down over my left wrist and made sure the bracelet was still under it.

Then I got my elbows on the rim and looked left, where Oallian was.

He was low, not dangerously low but lower than us and holding it, and there was a half beat missing out of his rhythm. It hit every fourth or fifth stroke. Down, down, down, and then a shorter one that did not go all the way through, and then he made it up on the next.

“Sky.”

“Mm.”

“Watch his left side.”

Sky slid over and hung on the rim beside me and looked out at a dragon in the dark over open ocean.