Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 127722 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127722 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
“Just like riding a horse.”
Storm snapped his neck toward me, issuing a loud growl, one of his yellow eyes on me.
That was the wrong thing to say. “Bad joke.”
He issued another growl and stared ahead.
Ivory looked as if she wanted to smack me across the face.
Pyre took off first, opening his wings wide and leaving the ground in a powerful jump. His wings flapped in the morning light, and he soared. Ivory leaned forward and gripped the spike, her back arched and her ass sticking out.
Fuck, she’d never looked hotter.
I clicked my tongue in my mouth, just the way I did with a horse. “Let’s go.”
He looked at me again, that growl back.
“Sorry.”
He opened his wings and took flight, the ground far below us in a split second.
I leaned forward over the horn and kept my head behind his neck, away from the wind that hit me like a thick wall. He climbed and climbed, and I held on with all my strength so I wouldn’t topple back and splatter against the ground.
He finally leveled out, so high in the sky that the details of the island were difficult to make out. He glided next to his brother Pyre, just beneath the clouds, and they looked at each other as they soared.
Ivory smiled at me and shouted, “Isn’t this amazing?”
I’d captured the duke’s daughter from the castle and assumed I’d have to coerce her into cooperation. But it led to an adventure I couldn’t have anticipated, and now we flew together side by side, on the only two free dragons left in the world. “Yeah…it is.”
The ocean was a static mass beneath us, an endless sea of gray. It was cold up in the clouds, but not nearly as cold as it would be down below, the waves splashing over the hull and soaking our clothes. A trip that would last several days passed in the blink of an eye, and we spotted land up ahead.
“That was quick.”
I would have been quicker if my wings had been stronger.
It was dusk when we arrived, when the land officially appeared directly beneath us.
“Should we stop?” Ivory shouted from the back of her dragon.
I wasn’t landing our dragons anywhere they could be vulnerable—and they would be vulnerable anywhere outside of HeartHolme. “No. We’ll be covered by the night.”
“But how will we see where we’re going?”
“I’ll figure it out.”
We continued to soar through the sky, the wind so strong it made my eyes smart if I didn’t crouch behind the dragon’s neck. The world below was dark, not a single torch visible from this height. The world was dark, just as eerie from the skies as it was from the ground. “Turn slightly right.”
Storm corrected his course and headed farther south.
I knew we’d reached HeartHolme when I saw it.
Ivory saw it too, based on what she said next. “Huntley!”
The bonfires on the outskirts of the clearing were lit, illuminating the massive army that stormed the gates of HeartHolme. Ten thousand strong, at least. There were so many that I couldn’t believe they were Necrosis.
But they must be.
They used their bodies to make a physical ladder at the gates, and dozens were crawling over the edge and infiltrating the city.
HeartHolme had fallen.
“Fuck,” Ivory said. “We couldn’t have arrived a moment later.”
I didn’t come here to fight.
“You aren’t going to fight. You’re going to burn.” If Necrosis breached the gates, that meant my mother must be dead. That meant Commander Dawson had fallen. That meant…Ian probably hadn’t survived the night. “Burn them all.”
Ivory stared at me as she never had before, her eyes full of genuine sadness, as if the same thoughts had crossed her mind as they did mine. “Come on, Pyre. Light ’em up.” She went first, diving down toward the gate.
Pyre opened his mouth in the middle of the dive, and the stream of volcanic fire emerged, twenty feet long, the flames red and orange. It lit up the night, paused the battle for just a moment as everyone stared.
The flames hit the stone gate, catching the ladder of Necrosis on fire, and they collapsed to the ground, their corpses set ablaze.
“That’s my girl.” I patted Storm’s flank. “Drop me off at the wall.”
I refuse to land.
“You see the mountain above the gate?”
Storm continued to fly, his wings spread wide. Yes.
“Drop me off there. I’ll climb the rest of the way.”
Why?
“I need to help my people behind the wall. Continue to circle and burn Necrosis down below.”
Necrosis. He said the word, tested it in his mind.
“They don’t have weapons against dragons, so stay in the sky and they can’t hurt you. Burn as many as you can.”
Storm dropped down to the rocky outcropping and landed on the slanted surface. It was a heavy thud, and then he slid an inch or two, the rock slippery. Hurry.