I throw both hands on the pommel and do just that, spotting the rider on the center wyvern as we drop hundreds of feet in seconds, power a constant buzz in my ears.
Tairn strikes from above, flying directly into the wyvern on the left, and the impact whips my body forward as he sinks his teeth into the neck of the beast, dragging it down under us as we continue to fall.
The wyvern screeches, and I reach for one of my alloy-hilted blades, pivoting in my seat to watch Tairn’s back and squinting into the rain as two massive shapes give chase. “They’re coming.”
A sickening crack sounds beneath us, and Tairn releases the wyvern, its neck broken as it falls the last hundred feet to the terrain below, somewhere behind the administration building.
Banking right, Tairn begins to climb with hard beats of his wings, but there’s no way we’ll have the high ground in time. They’re less than fifty feet away, and at the angle of the remaining two wyvern’s descent, we have seconds before Tairn becomes a chew toy. I check beneath us—we’re clear—then grasp onto the conduit and take a steadying breath to calm the racing beat of my heart and the wild rush of adrenaline in my veins. Control. I need complete control.
There’s only time for one strike. I release power, drawing it upward with my blade, and lightning streaks into the sky, hitting the closest wyvern in the chest.
“Yes!” I shout as the creature tumbles from the sky, but my joy is short-lived as its counterpart, complete with dark wielder, surges forward, opening its jaws to reveal rotten teeth and a green glow in its throat. “Tairn!”
The warning is barely past my lips when a band of shadow winds around the wyvern’s throat and jerks it backward like a rabid dog at the end of a leash, its teeth missing the tip of Tairn’s wing by mere feet as we continue to fly upward.
“Sgaeyl has claimed that one. We’ll have to find our own,” he tells me, climbing faster than ever into the driving rain.
I use precious seconds to scan our surroundings. Every sector is overwhelmed, ours included. Only flashes of color appear through the swarm of gray as we soar toward the conflict above us, but the majority of the wyvern still hover in the distance, held back on the edge of the thunderstorm.
“They only sent the first wave,” Tairn explains. “Probably to probe for weaknesses.”
Falling toward us, Aotrom has his claws raked into the belly of a wyvern, and I catch a glimpse of Ridoc as they spiral past, Imogen and her Orange Daggertail, Glane, on their heels.
“Ridoc!” I shout at Tairn.
“Focus on your mission or the plan falls apart. Trust the others to do theirs.” He flies straight through the mayhem of gray, bursting into the airspace above it before he levels out.
He’s right, we have a job to do, but trusting my friends to do their part feels a lot like ignoring them, too. Rain soaks my scalp and runs off my leathers as I survey the battlefield beneath us, forcing my breath in through my nose and out through my mouth to lower my heart rate.
This isn’t the melee of Resson. This is a coordinated defense, and I need to focus so I can do my part.
Feirge is locked in close combat with a greenfire—a blast of blue fire erupts from its mouth—make that bluefire wyvern, and my heart clenches when Rhi narrowly misses the fire stream by leaping from Feirge’s back to Cruth’s. Quinn grabs hold of her forearm as the Green Scorpiontail stabs hard with her tail, and I rip my gaze away when I realize they have it under control and there’s nothing I can do.
But Sawyer is outmatched fifty feet below as Sliseag goes head-to-head with three wyvern, one of whom bears a rider. I grip the conduit, then flood my body with another wave of power and lift my hand.
“Don’t miss,” Tairn warns.
I focus on the wyvern farthest from Sliseag just in case, then wield, drawing the power to my target with full focus and intention. Energy rips through me, and lightning strikes from the cloud above, white-hot and fatal to the wyvern below.
The rider looks up and locks eyes with me for a heartbeat before the pair dives, falling out of the battle. My stomach sours. There’s only one reason to go to ground. To feed.
“Xaden—”
“On it,” he assures me, and when Aotrom and Glane arrive to help Sawyer and Sliseag, I turn my attention to the other sectors.
“Three,” Tairn notes, using the hands of the clock like we’d discussed, and I look right, where wyvern overrun a squad in Third Wing. The body of a dragon lies beneath them on the mountainside, but I look away before I take note of who they’ve lost.
If I focus on tomorrow’s death roll, I’ll be on it.
“Hold as steady as you can.” I throw open the floodgates of his power as he banks right, flying toward their sector but not into it, and I wield, heat prickling my skin as I take down one wyvern.
Then I aim again for another.
And another.
Again and again, I wield in targeted, precise strikes for the sectors around us, hitting two-thirds of my targets but never striking a dragon, which I count as the ultimate win. Rain sizzles as it hits my skin, but I don’t dare remove my flight jacket when my daggers are strapped to it, so I put the heat, the pain, into my mental box and slam the lid shut on it, forcing my mind to ignore the agonizing burn and wield again.
“Twelve.”
I face forward and find the target, missing twice before I hit it. There are no venin left in our sector, but my hand trembles on the conduit as Tairn locates another wyvern, another threat, and I pull lightning from the sky so quickly that I no longer feel like I direct the storm.
I am the storm.
“You tire,” Tairn warns.
Fuck exhaustion. “People are dying.” A quick glance over the sunrise-lit battlefield reveals more and more spots of color among the gray carcasses littered on the ground, but I only stop quickly enough to note my squad is still fighting, handling each wyvern that crosses into our sector with teamwork and efficiency.
“Nine,” Tairn rumbles but doesn’t argue with me as he rolls left, keeping us above the battle, as I wield for the next squad, taking only the targets I’m certain of hitting without endangering our own riders.
Beneath me, shadows streak into other sectors as Xaden does the same.
Gods, the heat is going to cook me alive. Even the wind and rain aren’t enough to cool the inferno growing inside my chest. I slip the conduit’s bracelet from my wrist, then wedge it between my thighs long enough to strip my flight jacket off and slide it under the strap of my saddle, leaving me six daggers short, but they’re in easy reach and the other two are the only ones that matter any—
“Twelve!” Tairn shouts, and I whip my head toward the plains to see another wave of wyvern soaring over my mother’s sector, dangerously close to the clouds but not in them, leaving me unable to strike, given who’s under them.
My heart stutters as they pass my mother without stopping, then barrel through the next without engaging.
Flying on top of the battle has given me the needed vantage point to wield, but it’s also made us an undeniable target, and they’re coming for us. I shove my hand through the strap of the bracelet so I don’t lose the conduit. “We should lead them away—”
