“And then what?” she hollers back but ushers the children toward the dragon nonetheless. A couple of the boys run forward, excited. The little girls hang back.
“Then you won’t die!” I grab a little girl and carefully place her on the dragon’s back. I want to tell her it’s going to be okay, but I don’t know that. The dragon snorts, and I don’t quite let her go yet.
The boys clamber on top of the dragon, pulling at its spine for leverage and using its joints and spikes as stepping stones, hardly even thinking the creature might turn around and eat them.
Erik lifts a few children onto the dragon’s back. Stranna moves to climb up but then shouts over the noise, “This dragon is too flimsy!”
A lion lunges at her, but the dragon snaps it up in its jaws and eats the beast with a single swallow.
“Flimsy?” I ask incredulously, indicating its head. “Did you see that?”
“It’s made from nightmist! It’s not reliable.” She hauls herself up all the same.
Crixus shouts, and a spear flies my way. I duck, but the dual-mistblade spear sticks in the dragon’s wing. The creature roars and rears up. The children all scream, grasping spines and spikes to stay seated. One little girl tumbles backward, but Stranna catches her and pulls her onto her lap.
The dragon knocks a guard down with its tail, then spreads its wings and surges forward. I barely manage to grab a spike and hoist myself onto its back in front of Stranna. Then we’re on a roller coaster with no seat belts.
The dragon smashes its way through one of the Arena walls, spectators screaming and diving out of the way. Then it’s flapping fiercely, and the gush of wind and shrieks of riders are the only things that fill my ears. I pray no one is falling off.
Come on, dragon. Get us airborne.
We’re up. Climbing. But the dragon’s body is almost vertical, and we all cling to it like a rising ladder instead of a flying carpet. My own grip slips with each flap.
“Cain!” Stranna yells my name in a desperate tone.
I nudge the dragon with my knee, which is absurd because there are fifteen other bodies on its back, but maybe it recognizes me as its creator because it relieves some of the incline and switches to a glide. We’re hardly over the coliseum buildings, but at least we’re in the air.
That’s enough for now.
I breathe for what feels like the first time in forever and glance down at the ground. I don’t see any injured kids or fallen bodies. Thank you.
We’re flying. On a dragon I made. I laugh.
“This isn’t over yet,” Stranna shouts in my ear.
“It’s working, Stranna. Be happy about that.” I got them out of the Arena. We’re free. For now.
“You made the dragon from nightmist.”
“So what? I did the same thing for the saber-toothed tiger we rode out of the Macella Quarter.”
“Light destroys nightmist and we’re Adelphoi.”
I think of when she dropped a match among the snakes and they all shriveled up. I think of how Erik sparked like a faulty lighter. The field of wheat—how nightbeasts couldn’t enter it. The flashes from the children when they disappeared.
A hollow cold chills my chest.
Maybe she senses that she got through to me because she gives my arm a squeeze. “Thank you for saving us. But we need to land. And soon.”
“We’re almost there,” I say.
“Where?”
I direct the dragon with a thought, and it miraculously obeys, adjusting its course. Then an electric shock snaps past my ear—a black lightning bolt. It plants itself in the dragon’s shoulder. Startled, I jerk my head to glance behind us.
Luc is chasing us atop the back of his stingray. He’s no longer the weak, frail Emperor I last saw.
The dragon roars. Luc throws another bolt. It sticks, and the dragon’s wing starts to deteriorate. Stranna was right—this dragon is flimsy. A real dragon would have thick enough scales to deflect such an attack. Not mine. And Luc knows it.
A third bolt hits the dragon in the neck.
And we drop from the sky.
The dragon spirals through the air, and my body lifts from its back in a free fall. The wind is so loud I can hear nothing else, but I see the children’s mouths open in muted screams. Some lose their grip on the dragon’s back. We are like a tossed handful of confetti, waiting to land in the darkness below.
I clamber up the dragon’s back to try to gain some control. I wrench its head one way and actually slap its neck as best I can from behind. It tucks its wings to its side, and we fall faster, but then it spreads them out wide, and the deceleration is so extreme I smack into its back and lose my breath. Wheat kernels burst from my pockets and fall like golden rain.
Several children thwack into the beast’s wings and then tumble down into the air.
“No!” I reach out to them, and this time what comes out of my fingers is not nightmist. It’s not created from emotions but from desperation mixed with an inexplicable hope.
Bright red cardinals burst into existence—as big as SUVs. Three. Four. Five. They stream after the falling children and snap them from the air with their claws.
I’m so stunned by this new creation I hardly realize the dragon is still flying. Though it’s wounded and teetering, it has gained control again. Several children are still holding on to its back.
The cardinals turn and follow us, each child safe. I set aside my awe and focus on directing the dragon, but my connection with it seems to have been lost. No thought changes its course or actions. It glides in whatever direction it had recovered itself in the air.
