“Stay in your saddle!” he demands but rolls us horizontal.

The venin grabs a horn and holds on, his eerie, red-rimmed eyes never leaving mine during the maneuver or the seconds after when we fall into a rapid descent, the wyvern’s weight pulling us downward. No spiderwebbed veins—he’s just an asim, and I can handle him.

“You’re the one he wants,” the dark wielder announces, shoving his wet, stringy blond hair out of his eyes and striding down Tairn’s neck as I yank at the belt with my left hand, but the buckle doesn’t give.

He looks so…young. But so did Jack.

Tairn releases the wyvern, his shoulders bunching to push off the dying creature, but it snaps at his neck, and Tairn retaliates with a stronger bite, bleeding the life out of it as we fall and fall and fall.

“Your Sage?” I wrench on the leather, but the belt is stuck, and so am I.

Fuck.

I flip the dagger to its tip, catching the water-slick blade between my thumb and forefinger, and flick my wrist, firing the dagger toward him when he reaches the spikes between Tairn’s shoulders.

He catches the blade, and pure panic floods my bloodstream as I pull my spare.

“You’ll meet them all soon enough,” he promises, raising my own blade as he marches toward me.

A green blur comes at us from the right, and we both look as Rhiannon jumps from Feirge to Tairn, landing in front of my saddle in a crouch.

The easiest way to defeat a dragon is to kill its rider. Though the creature will most likely survive the blow, it will be stunned long enough to be felled.

—CHAPTER THREE: THE TACTICAL GUIDE TO DEFEATING DRAGONS BY COLONEL ELIJAH JOBEN

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

No. No. No. This is too familiar.

Losing Liam was… I can’t lose Rhi. I just can’t.

She surges forward as the wyvern screams, our rate of descent so fast that blood appears to fall upward. I yank on my belt again, but the leather is swollen with rain, wedged tight, and I watch, my heart launching into my throat, as she engages the dark wielder in a series of moves that would have had me on the mat.

He knocks her blade loose with a backhand to her wrist, and it flies from her hand as he kicks her. She skids backward along Tairn’s rain-slick scales, and I reach for her, wrapping my left arm around her waist to steady her and pressing my dagger into her palm with my right hand.

She looks over her shoulder and nods at me, gaining her feet when he’s almost on us. I force myself to look away as their blades clash and mountains rise, alerting me to how low our altitude is as I unstrap the crossbow at my thigh, then quickly open the quiver strapped at my left and slip the arrow into the flight groove. At this range, the wind and rain shouldn’t matter.

“I need you to roll this fucker off you in three—” I start. “Rhi!” I shout out loud, taking aim. “Two.”

She glances back, then throws her body flat between Tairn’s shoulders, and I reach forward, grasping her ankle and pulling the lever without hesitation. “One!”

The arrow hits true, striking the venin in the sternum as Tairn banks hard right.

The dark wielder falls, but the sound of an explosion comes from behind us as I grip Rhi’s ankle, ignoring the screaming protest of my shoulder as the wrap fights to keep the joint in place.

Rhi holds fast to Tairn’s spikes, and he levels to horizontal quickly, pumping his wings to climb as she works backward toward me, then turns, wrapping her arms around me in a tight hug.

I hold on to her, still clutching the crossbow, and breathe deeply as Feirge mirrors Tairn’s wingbeats just beneath us, keeping pace. She’s all right. They’re both all right.

This isn’t Resson, and I didn’t just lose my best friend.

“You reckless, irresponsible—” I yell.

“You’re welcome!” she shouts, rain streaming down her face when she pulls away and hands back my blade. “Fix your saddle. I’ll retrieve the dagger from the ground.” She stands, then gives me a flash of a smile before jumping from Tairn’s shoulder.

I track her fall, breathing a sigh of relief when she lands effortlessly on Feirge.

“My saddle is stuck!” I tell Tairn as we climb back to the battle.

“Good. Maybe you’ll stay in it.”

Sunlight glints off Quinn’s labrys as she swings the double-sided battle-ax from Cruth’s back into the shoulder joint of a wyvern trying its best to sink its teeth into Glane.

“Melgren is ten minutes out, but only two of his aides could keep up, and there’s a general consensus that most of the dark wielders are holding back for a second wave.” Tairn passes Cruth, and I look up into a sea of gray and barely suppress the urge to vomit. There have to be at least six riderless wyvern up there. How long can we keep this up? Pivoting in my saddle, I note Xaden beneath us on Sgaeyl, dragging wyvern by the throat into the side of the mountain one by one at speed as they dive toward them.

“Sgaeyl’s outnumbered!”

“If she wants help, she’ll ask for—”

A pain-filled roar joins the cacophony above, and my chest tightens. “Andarna?” I reach out, my gaze sweeping the blurred mountainside as we fly upward.

“I’m quite annoyingly safe and hidden,” she responds.

“Aotrom!” Tairn bellows, and my stomach sinks.

Ridoc.

Tairn sweeps right, avoiding the plummeting body of a wyvern, but there’s another above us with its teeth locked onto Aotrom’s hindquarters, and three more closing in for the kill.

Sawyer and Sliseag fly from the opposite side of our sector, tracking to intercept at the same time, but everyone else is beneath us. I sheathe my dagger at my hip, then load the crossbow and strap that at my thigh as we surge upward.

Tairn’s roar shakes his entire body as we approach, and I hold on to the pommel, bracing for the jarring collision, but he flies past as Sawyer and Sliseag reach the fray, then swings his massive tail into the trio of approaching wyvern.

I pivot as much as the saddle will let me at the crunching sound of bone shattering. A wyvern falls from the fight, half its head bashed in. One down. Three to go.

Tairn pulls the steepest turn I’ve ever experienced on his back, and my vision dims at the edge as he brings us nearly vertical before tipping his wing left and falling into a dive. I blink furiously into the wind and rain as we fly to Aotrom and Ridoc’s aid.

Ridoc’s doing all he can from Aotrom’s back to dislodge the wyvern, stabbing his sword into its snout, but the dammed thing won’t let go.

Sliseag gets there first, slashing out at the wyvern with his swordtail and cutting into a foreleg. When it doesn’t let go, he pivots to close his jaw over its neck, but unlike Tairn, he isn’t strong enough to snap a neck with a bite and loses precious seconds, leaving himself exposed to the remaining pair of wyvern.

We’re not going to make it in time.

The pair changes course, veering from Aotrom at the last second and aiming for Sliseag.

We’re almost there, but everything happens so fucking fast that it’s as if the rest of the world slows down.