Total pages in book: 247
Estimated words: 235897 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1179(@200wpm)___ 944(@250wpm)___ 786(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 235897 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1179(@200wpm)___ 944(@250wpm)___ 786(@300wpm)
“It’s simple, actually. Occupying ground that has already had its magic repurposed creates a barrier.” She lifts her silver brows. “The easiest solution is to drain it yourself. If you do so before I get there, you’ll live. You’ll keep your love—at least what it masquerades as—and your power, and even your dragon if you wish.”
“And if I don’t?” The desiccation spreads and wingbeats fill the air, but Tairn’s still out of reach, so I’m guessing I’m about to meet more of her wyvern.
“You die.” She leans onto her hand, and the ground withers at four times the speed, the magic draining in a circle of gray that approaches like a tidal wave. “I can wait for another lightning wielder, but you’re too dangerous to be left alive, so choose quickly.”
Fuck. I have seconds—
Already had its magic repurposed. I need a barrier.
I break right, then sprint like hell, dropping the conduit. It smacks my forearm with every stride as I unsheathe another dagger from my thigh, and my foot slips on the rain-slick grass, just enough to throw off my pace. My left knee screams, and I block out the pain, keeping one eye on the spreading circle of death that races toward my feet and the other on the nearest wyvern carcass. Ten more feet. I can make it. I have to make it.
I’m not dying on this field.
My heart pounds and my lungs burn as I leap those last three feet, soaring toward a wall of gray. I slam into the fleshy area between the wyvern’s talons and stab my right dagger deep, then immediately pull up and thrust the left as high as I can. My feet kick for purchase on its slick, leathery skin, but I manage to get a foothold and use the daggers to climb.
I scramble to the top of its claw, then race up its scaly leg, over its ankle, and find the shredded meat of its thigh.
The wave of desiccation ripples underneath me, then passes right by on the other side of the wyvern’s carcass, and I lift my hands to my chest to feel the drum of my heartbeat. If I was dead, I’d know it, right? I definitely wouldn’t still hear wingbeats.
“My, aren’t you clever.” Theophanie focuses on something behind me. “No!”
The curve of talons appears in the corner of my eye, and I throw out my arms. A claw closes around me, then jerks my body into the sky. “Tairn.”
“Not quite.”
Rain bombards navy-blue scales. “Sgaeyl?”
“You are an inconvenience for which there is no adequate measurement,” she snarls, flying west as the clouds churn above us, darkening with an abysmal quickness. “But you have done an excellent job keeping the Maven occupied.”
West is the wrong direction when Xaden is south.
“You can’t leave him!” I shout.
“Which is why I’m leaving you.” She swings her foreleg forward, then releases her grip. “She’s all yours.”
I careen into the storm with as much grace as a flailing drunkard held hostage by physics, and I lock my jaw, swallowing the scream that rises in my throat. Fear grips my lungs, and power rushes through my veins in response, coursing with a hundred times the force of adrenaline.
That’s Tairn.
The fear that summoned my power evaporates into the storm, and I throw my arms outward. A gargantuan void of black cuts through the rain ahead of me as my trajectory shifts and gravity takes hold, pulling me back to the ground.
“A little help here?” I begin to fall faster than the rain around me.
“I told you to stay on the field.” Two talons hook over my shoulders, and every bone in my body grates on the others as I’m jerked upward. “But in this case, I’m relieved you did not listen.”
“Sgaeyl made that choice, but me, too.” I’d be dead if she hadn’t. “Teine?”
“Quickly recovering under Brennan’s care at the top of the pass.” Tairn swings me up toward his snout, then tosses me onto his back.
I land at the base of his neck and skid. My left knee buckles, but I hold my arms out for balance and rapidly navigate the spikes of his back against the will of the wind and rain. “Mira?” I settle into the saddle and breathe a little easier once I’m buckled in and my goggles are in place.
This is how we’re meant to face combat. Together.
“She lives,” he replies as we descend. “We’re approaching the field.”
The clouds above us start to rotate counterclockwise.
Fantastic.
“Watch the weather. Theophanie’s a storm wielder. She’ll try to force you out of the sky.” I grasp the conduit in my left hand and throw open my Archives door, changing the stream of power to a deluge as the field comes into view.
“She may try,” he growls.
The field bears the circle where she drained the magic from the earth, but she’s nowhere in sight. “She’s gone.”