Fireborne (The Aurelian Cycle, #1)

by Rosaria Munda

Fight each other? A sound fills the air: my own cry, wild with despair, in time with Pallor’s blast. It feels as though I, like Pallor, am igniting. He twists down, inhales, and fires. There’s a moment of perfect stillness, as the fire that filled my vision leaves me blinded, as the gorge becomes, for an instant, perfectly quiet. Then the silence breaks. An inhuman, hair-raising keen goes up, unearthly, alien, full of unbearable sorrow. Though it’s a sound I’ve only ever read about, I know it at once. It is the sound of a dragon who has felt the bond with its rider break in the only way it can be broken. It takes the breath out of my lungs. Pallor recovers before I do, driving us forward, firing again to finish what we’ve started. The grieving stormscourge barely resists. It’s as though she no longer has any reason to.