Oh. Fuck.

Visia shrieks.

“Tairn!” I mentally scream, forcing my body past the shock, the fear, the nauseating hopelessness of our situation. The orb falls from my hand, shattering on the ground at the same moment I reach for the women in front of me, but my hand only grasps the leather of Cat’s pack.

I yank her backward with all my strength just as Visia is swatted out of the way by a sharp, jagged claw. Cat’s body collides with mine, knocking us both to the ground, and the torch falls from her hand as Visia hits the side of the cave with a cracking sound that sickens my stomach.

The angle, the impact…gods…she’s…she’s dead.

“Silver One?” Tairn’s voice roars in my head as the dragon blocking our way out focuses his narrowed eye on me and opens his jaw wide.

Fetid breath fills the air a second before he curls his tongue, and his throat glows orange with rising fire.

“Solas found us!”

I’ll say one thing for dragonfire. It kills quickly.

—COLONEL KAORI’S FIELD GUIDE TO DRAGONKIND

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

A dark shape flies at us from the left, sweeping Cat and me into a spinning tangle of limbs and propelling us backward. I grab onto her in the chaos, forcing her body in front of mine as we come to a skidding halt, knowing the shelter of facing my back to Solas won’t be enough but trying anyway.

She has to live. She’s third in line to the throne of Poromiel. If she dies in Tyrrendor, Cordyn will hunt Xaden down and execute him…if he survives my death.

Survive. Survive. Survive. I push the demand down every mental bond I have just in case we aren’t out of range. Xaden’s too far, but Tairn will hear it, and Andarna—gods, Tairn has to get here in time to save her.

Kiralair and Sloane fly into us next, swept in by an unseen force, pushing Sloane and me backward, toward Solas, but my back hits a hard, rough surface as the cave walls illuminate with the eerie glow of impending fire a heartbeat before we’re overtaken by darkness.

“Take a breath!” Andarna demands. “Don’t argue!”

Not darkness. Wings. It’s her belly at my back and she’s wrapped her wings around us.

“Breathe in and hold it!” I shout, then fill my lungs with sulfur-scented air.

Heat blasts, roaring past us in a stream that shakes Andarna’s wings, and the temperature soars. I force my eyes closed to keep them from cooking as my skin burns as though we’ve been thrown into an oven. How can she survive this?

“She’s fireproof,” Tairn reminds me, but the panic in his voice doesn’t do much to soothe the terror clamping down on my heart.

“Do not breathe!” Andarna demands, and I know it’s because I’ll singe my lungs if I do, if any of us do. I count my heartbeats. One. Two. Three.

The blast feels like it goes on forever, like it’s become my eternity, like my soul has done exactly what Sloane asked in the first part of the year and gone straight to the depths of hell without being commended to Malek. Eight. Nine.

On ten, it ends, and Andarna’s wings fall away. Air rushes in, and I wait until I feel its cool brush across my cheek before I drag in a breath, hearing the others do the same.

I open my eyes and see Cat lunge in the torchlight across the small space, using her gloved hands to put out the burning tips of the feathers along Kira’s far wing. It must have been exposed to the flames. Sloane races to help as Andarna gains her feet, and I narrowly avoid her tail as she faces down Solas.

“No! He’s nearly twice as big as you are!” I lift my hands and throw the floodgates open on Tairn’s power, letting it burn through me as Solas’s blast failed to do, until I’m pure fire. But I can’t wield in here, not when there’s every chance I could hit one of us.

Andarna’s roar fills the cave, and my heart stops when she goes for Solas’s throat. He bats her away like she’s nothing but a nuisance, and I muffle a cry as she slides into the wall, right over the charred remains of Visia’s bones.

“I’m fine.” Andarna shakes it off as Solas sizes me up.

“Three minutes,” Tairn tells me. “You will not die today!”

Three minutes. We can make it three minutes. But time isn’t our issue. Tairn can’t fit through the opening of the cave. He’ll have to find whatever entrance Solas used.

“How the fuck do you kill a dragon?”

“Let me go!” Cat shouts. “You’re…you’re draining my power!”

What the fuck? I chance a look backward, but all I see is Cat disengaging from Sloane’s panicked grip.

“Go for his other eye.”

“Get out of the way,” I order Andarna, and this time, she listens, scrambling back to my side as I grab two knives from their sheaths and flip them, pinching at the tips for a heartbeat before loosing them.

The first misses as he swivels, but the second finds the mark.

His bellow of pain is followed by rage, and he stumbles backward into the forked tunnel, leaving a small, precious opening between his head and the wall.

Cat and Sloane are closer. They can make it.

“Get her out!” I yell at Cat. “Now!”

“Violet!” Sloane shouts, but Kira’s beak closes softly around her pack, and she hoists her into the air as Cat scrambles to mount.

They rush by on the left, making it through just before Solas’s claws come out swinging, his talons raking furrows into the stone of the cave.

I hit the floor, pain flaring up my shoulders. There’s no pop as talons swipe over us, but something bites into my palm. Glass from the conduit.

I spread my bleeding fingers wide in the dim light of the dying torch, locating the remnants before it goes out. The top of the metal joint has broken, leaving four jagged prongs and one secured piece of alloy.

“I don’t have fire,” Andarna tells me, following my thoughts.

But I have power.

“It’s about to get really dark in here.” It’s our only shot, and I’m taking it. “You have to run as soon as there’s an opening.”

“I’m not leaving you,” she stubbornly argues.

“One minute!” Tairn announces.

How the hell am I going to get close enough to stab the remains of the conduit into him? There’s no time to tie it to a dagger, and the force of a throw isn’t enough to—

Solas roars in pain, his head swiveling back toward his shoulder, and through the opening, I see Cat poised in the dim light, nocking another arrow.