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)
I can’t let Sgaeyl die. Can’t leave him to stumble down the same path I did. Can’t allow my friends to perish because I selfishly want to keep Violet by my side. A clamoring, consuming emotion pounds at the ice, but I can’t let it in. She has her own path.
No matter what I choose, it’s wrong.
But only one path leaves Sgaeyl alive.
“This is not what we agreed to!” Panchek shouts, stumbling backward toward his own shrieking, netted dragon.
I don’t bother looking in their direction. Fucker deserves to suffer for selling us out. Whatever the Sage—what Berwyn—does is of no consequence to me. How much information has he sold to the enemy? Certainly enough to lure us all to Draithus. How many times did he give them Violet’s location?
He dies. The decision is made without debate.
“Do not lose yourself,” Sgaeyl warns, thrashing against the net that has her pinned to the rocky ground twenty feet in front of me. “You have not turned as a result of his ploys this afternoon. Do not give in to this one!”
But he hadn’t had her, and now he does.
“There’s no other way,” I reply, slowly unsheathing the two alloy-hilted daggers I keep at my thighs and earning a glare from the dark wielder standing at the tip of Sgaeyl’s tail, his fingers splayed in obvious threat.
“Did you not ask for power?” Berwyn snarls, holding two alloy-hilted daggers of his own as he approaches Panchek. “Have I not provided?”
“Put those away. We both know you’re not going to hurt me.” Panchek reaches for the net over his dragon. “I’m the only one who can give you access to your son.”
“I have another.” Berwyn stabs deep between the dragon’s scales, and it desiccates, green draining from its scales and shrinking in on itself to a husk.
Terror busts through the ice.
Berwyn just killed a dragon with a dagger.
How the fuck is that possible?
“Were you watching? Because that’s exactly what’s about to happen to yours.” He turns to me and saunters toward Sgaeyl as she thrashes futilely under the net. “You’ll have to channel deep to replace the loss of her power.” He lifts the blade, and I don’t just skate over the ice.
I become it.
“Stop!” Sgaeyl roars, blowing back Berwyn’s robes. “Do not do this to save me!”
Do this? It’s already done.
How fucking dare they pull my dragon from the sky, snare and hurt the one who anchors my existence.
I throw my blades into the air, fall to one knee, splay my hand over the canyon floor, and break.
In my final act of resistance, I become the very thing I despise. Maybe it’s good that I can’t feel a single damned thing.
I breathe in the power that pulses beneath my hand like a living, breathing creature, and exhale darkness. Shadow streams through the canyon, thick as tar and black as ink, blacking out the afternoon sun and turning the space pitch-black. Shadow plants my daggers in the chests of the two venin standing guard. Shadow drags Berwyn from Sgaeyl and knocks both him and my new brother unconscious. Shadow brings quiet.
My soul departs like pieces of ash from a fire, flaking free and drifting away as power consumes the space it once inhabited. I’m no longer on the ice—I am the ice.
And still I feed, tunneling deep into the source of magic itself and surging outward simultaneously, finding the identical heartbeats that mark wyvern and slicing through scale with shadow, ripping their runestones free. I start with the one who dared set its teeth in Sgaeyl’s shoulder, skim past the one who now thinks himself my brother, then destroy the six blocking the entrance to this canyon.
Save them, the last remaining pieces of me beg, holding on with teeth and claw to keep from being torn away, too. My shadows surge from the canyon, over the city, ending every wyvern in the air and on the ground. I’m everywhere at once, shredding the net that ensnares Sgaeyl, tearing the heart from the wyvern who has Dain and Cath backed into a corner, rushing over Imogen as she looks to the sky. I’m at the pass, plucking wyvern off one by one, listening with satisfaction as their bodies hit the ground in front of the people she loves. I stream up the cliffside, fall back at the magic that burns to the touch, and surge north.
“I love you.” Violet’s voice cracks the cold, and a silken thread of warmth wedges itself in the opening before it seals shut, locking it in place.
No. Wait. I grab for that thread with desperate hands, clawing to keep her as more of my pieces are blown away, lost to the void. She is warmth and light and air and love.
My shadows consume the valley she stands in, dagger bared, defending Tairn from the same style of net that caught Sgaeyl. I shove the Maven to the ground, regardless of her rank, then slide over Violet with a gentleness that takes all my concentration.