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My sun is setting, Elena. You must find a way to ensure yours still rises
His attention again snagged on the nearby tents. No good-byes. No last words.
She didn’t have a heartbeat to spare to marvel that Abraxos had not balked at the fight, that he had not yielded. Her warrior-hearted wyvern. She’d give him an extra ration of meat.
Abraxos gave a warning growl, and Manon whipped her head to discover another wyvern sailing hard and fast for them.
“I should die with them,” was the king’s answer.
“I was sent here to keep you from doing just that,” Rowan said at last.
“You were going to kill her.”
“Why did you tell me not to?”
“I wouldn’t trust her,” Rowan said after Dorian had finished, “but perhaps the gods will throw us a bone. Perhaps the Blackbeak heir will join our cause.”
Lethal by nature, but untrained.
She was as alien to him as the warrior sitting at the other end of the boat—more so.
“She was … in a very dark place. We both were. But we led each other out of it. Found a way—together.”
“You will find your way, too, Dorian. You’ll find your way out.”
And I wonder if the gods have weighed the costs of that storm. And deemed the casualties worth it.”
And I think we have yet to see the full extent of Aelin’s fire.”
Manon’s eyes slid to the wyvern across the aerie—shifting on her two legs, awake when the others were not.
What would become of the mare when Asterin was gone?
Abraxos nudging the backs of her thighs with his snout. She reached down, brushing his scaly head. She didn’t know who it was meant to comfort.
Manon sheathed Wind-Cleaver at her side and strode for the stairwell, unable to meet Abraxos’s curious stare.
He can read your thoughts, your motive
The sunlight gilded the balcony as Asterin whispered, so softly that only Manon could hear, “Bring my body back to the cabin.”
And Manon understood in that moment that there were forces greater than obedience, and discipline, and brutality.
Understood that she had not been born soulless; she had not been born without a heart.
For a heartbeat, she thought of that sky-blue mare in the aerie, the wyvern that would wait and wait for a rider who would never return.
High above, a wyvern roared. Abraxos.
The kick to Manon’s stomach set her screaming, a roar again answered by Abraxos, locked high above. Soon to die, as she would. She prayed the Thirteen would spare him, let him join them wherever they would flee.
She breathed to Abraxos, “Let’s make it a final stand worthy of song.” He bellowed in answer.
Manon panted through her bloody teeth, “Fly, Abraxos.” And her gentle, warrior-hearted mount flew.
“To the very end, Abraxos,” she said. His roar was his only confirmation.
Their scales, he realized, matched her eyes perfectly as she flicked her stare over Dorian and Rowan once more and said coolly, “Don’t keep him waiting.”
Maybe she is a long lost sea dragon herself?
She was still strapped in the saddle, Abraxos sprawled beneath her, neck craned so he could monitor her breaths. His dark eyes widened with panic as she moaned, trying to sit up.
A large head nudged at her knee, and she found Abraxos there, neck stretched—his head just below her feet, the offer in his eyes.
His breath warmed her chilled skin as he gently lowered her onto the grassy clearing. She lay on her back, letting Abraxos nose her, a faint whine breaking from him. “Fine …,” she breathed. “I’m…”
Abraxos was curled around her, his wing angled to form a makeshift covering.
Though he supposed both the queen and prince possessed a sadistic streak that made them compatible.
“The world,” Aelin said, “will be saved and remade by the dreamers, Rolfe.”
Love had broken a perfect killing tool.
Lorcan said quietly, “Would you like me to kill him for you?”
They could burn the entire world to ashes with it. He was hers and she was his, and they had found each other across centuries of bloodshed and loss, across oceans and kingdoms and war.
Aelin was insane, Dorian realized. Brilliant and wicked, but insane. And perhaps the greatest, most unremorseful liar he’d ever encountered.
“Because you’re the only one arrogant and insane enough to hunt a goddess?”
“Because I’m the only one arrogant and insane enough to ask Mala Fire-Bringer to let me stay with the woman I love.”
“Perhaps you’re just the only one arrogant and insane enough to love me
Then Sam must have been too...
The wyvern completed its circle, sweeping lower this time, readying to land as near the boat as possible. Not to attack … but for help.
She bolted upright. Abraxos. Where was Abraxos
“Your fussy nursemaid of a wyvern is fine, by the way. I don’t know how you wound up with a sweet thing like that for a mount, but he’s content to sprawl in the sun on the foredeck. Can’t say it makes the sailors particularly happy—especially cleaning up after him.”
“Your wyvern flew straight as an arrow for us. You tumbled off the saddle and into the water barely fifty yards from our ship. How he found us, we don’t know.
“Witch, woman … as long as the parts that matter are there, what difference does it make?”
She went back to eating. “They are all I have left.” “Then I suppose you and I are both heirs without crowns.”
And her parents … murdered by her grandmother. They had promised the world a child of peace. And she had let her grandmother hone her into a child of war.
Here’s hoping you discover more creative terms than “bitch” to call me when you find this.
