“You will turn for something much more dangerous…” Wasn’t that what he said in the nightmare?

“It will be me! Me!” The venin shoves her shaking hand into her scraggly red hair.

Cat’s doing this, heightening the woman’s greed, spinning her out on her own emotions. Have to admit, it’s a pretty badass ability when she’s not using it on me.

“Enough, Wynn.” A dark wielder in leathers the same color as the pulsing veins beside his eyes appears from the left, walking around the body of the fallen green and throwing out his hand.

Cat flies backward with a shout, slamming into the ground behind me. Shit. No more time for curiosity. I wield, heat erupting from every inch of my skin as I draw the strike from the cloud above, hitting Wynn instantly. She falls where she stood, her eyes open and vague, smoke rising from her corpse.

“Fascinating.” The new one strides for me, closing his fist.

The conduit flares with intolerable heat.

I drop it, watching in horror as it disintegrates, leaving nothing at the end of the bracelet. He flips his hand, palm upward, and I’m lifted off my feet, suspended in midair, completely immobilized.

Just like the dream, but that isn’t the Sage.

My throat closes. I can’t lift a hand to wield or even yell for Cat to run while she can. This isn’t a dream. There’s no waking up from this.

“Stay calm!” Tairn orders, nearly on us but not close enough.

“I’m on my way!” Xaden shouts as the venin steps over the body of his counterpart like she’s a feature of the landscape and continues toward me.

They won’t make it in time.

I won’t, either.

Which means I’ve killed us all.

But Andarna can live. She just has to hold on, has to choose to survive.

“He’s almost here, so let’s move this along, shall we?” the dark wielder says, less than a dozen feet away now. “The horde tires of hovering, waiting for permission to attack.”

A shape moves in the cliff behind the dark wielder. No, not a shape; part of the cliff itself; a giant…boulder?

A boulder with slivers of golden eyes.

It springs forward from the cliff like a projectile, expanding, changing colors, sprouting wings and claws and black scales.

I am alone in thinking the knowledge of wards, the protections they provide, should not solely benefit Navarre, and it has cost me everything.

—JOURNAL OF LYRA OF MORRAINE —TRANSLATED BY CADET JESINIA NEILWART

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

The dark wielder turns, but he isn’t fast enough. Andarna lands directly in front of him, then opens her mouth and breathes fire down upon him, roasting the dark wielder before she snaps her jaws down and rips his head straight off his body.

I fall into the melting slush at the same time his corpse does, and she spits out the decapitated, smoking head, then huffs a hot breath of sulfur-laced steam.

What. The. Actual. Fuck.

“You…” I scramble to my feet and stumble toward her. “You just…”

“I breathe fire.” She preens, flaring her wings.

“Did you just eat him?” Cat stands but keeps her distance.

“You do not speak to dragons you do not ride, human.” Andarna snaps her teeth in Cat’s direction.

“You looked like a part of the cliff.” I stare at Andarna like I’ve never seen her before. Maybe I never have.

“I told you I could hide.” She blinks at me.

I open my mouth, then shut it, searching for words where there are none. That wasn’t hiding. Her scales are as black as Tairn’s now. Maybe I’m seeing things?

Tairn lands to the right, sending slush flying, then looks over our small battlefield with quick appraisal. “You made quick work of it.”

“She did.” I point to Andarna as Sgaeyl and Sliseag land behind Tairn.

“You breathe fire,” Tairn acknowledges, a note of pride in his voice.

“I breathe fire.” Andarna extends her neck to the fullest.

“Melgren orders us to the Vale.” Tairn’s eyes narrow, and his head swivels toward Sgaeyl.

“They’re pulling the whole squad to the Vale?” I glance upward, noting there are only two wyvern left in our sector.

The horde tires of hovering, waiting for permission to attack. That’s what the dark wielder said. The final wave hasn’t struck yet.

“Not the whole squad. Just us,” Xaden clarifies, walking around Tairn. Tiny tendrils of steam rise where rain meets the exposed skin of his arms. He looks as tired as I feel, and there’s a laceration on his forearm, but the lack of any other visible damage makes my shoulders dip in relief.

“They haven’t sent their last wave yet, and Sawyer and Aotrom are already wounded. Moving the two of us leaves the squad and Brennan and the wardstone too exposed.” I shake my head. We can’t let that happen. Brennan’s our best chance at surviving this.

“Exactly,” Xaden says as he reaches my side. “You’re all right?” His arm winds around my shoulders as he presses a hard kiss on my temple. “They’re holding their own up there while this wave recedes. We need to go argue our point quickly.”

“I’m all right,” I promise. “Let’s go.”

“They’re out front. We’ll meet you there,” Tairn says.

“Go to Marbh,” I tell Andarna, pushing on my left shoulder and rotating the joint to try and ease the sharp, pulsing pain deep within the joint.

“I will be where you need me,” she huffs.

“Fine, as long as that’s with Marbh.” I lift my eyebrows. At a dragon.

She flicks her tail twice, then walks off, but at least she’s headed in the direction of the wardstone chamber safely below.