The wraiths saw their opportunity and descended on him like a swarm of vampires.

Still falling, Gwen reached a hand toward Asher as his indigo head rose like a serpent above the thrashing wraiths attacking him, mouth open in a silent roar.

“No!” Gwen screamed.

Before she could unfurl her wings and try to help him, a brownish green dragon claw scooped her out of the air.

“Don’t worry, little pixie. I’ve got you,” an unfamiliar voice drawled in her head. One with an Australian lilt to the words.

She didn’t know this guy, but she had to assume he was here at Meilin’s orders. “Help him!” she yelled, pointing up to the skies where the roiling storm had closed the clouds around Asher and the wraiths. “Help my mate!”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Gwen

* * *

“They’ve got Asher covered, sweetheart.” The green dragon hitched his chin off to the right and Gwen followed his gaze only to gasp.

Dragons. At least twenty of them. Two blues in the lead of multiple greens of all shades and shapes and sizes, and at least one red in the mix.

They shot through the skies like deadly arrows.

As one, the dragons opened their fiery maws and roared their challenge.

As if the storm itself—or whatever was controlling it—tucked tail and ran, the lightning and thunder stopped abruptly, quickly retreating.

Some wraiths flew away immediately, their dark shadows like holes in the clouds and then gone. Gwen couldn’t see what happened with the others. Sitting in the curled talon of the green dragon that carried her, peering between its digits like cage bars, she couldn’t see the fight going on above them. All she could do was listen, the roars of dragons battering her ears. The skies, instead of lighting with electricity, flashed with dragon fire reflecting off the clouds around her. Green. Blue. Red.

But she didn’t care about any of that.

She was watching.

For Asher to fall from the sky. How he’d woken up at all, let alone healed enough to get up here to help her was a damned miracle. But no way could he have held off the wraiths without burning through whatever stubborn reserves he’d tapped into.

He’d need to truly heal this time, and soon.

“Asher,” she whispered to herself.

And maybe she thought it loudly enough for the dragons to pick up on, because a vaguely familiar voice—like gravel—sounded in her head. “We have him.”

They had him.

He wouldn’t fall to his death.

The relief that swept through her was sharp and sweet, only to immediately dull with realization.

“Get me above the clouds,” she ordered the dragon who still had her.

“No can do, pixie woman. I have orders?—”

“Asher’s been poisoned by a shadow wraith. I need to absorb moonlight to try to save him.”

A beat of silence in her head. Then, “Understood.”

With a great beat of his wings that stirred the clouds around them, the dragon lifted them up and up and up until they burst through the cloud tops, which were slowly dissipating.

In the pristine, clear skies, Gwen felt the sheer moonlight all around her. Like a fizzing excitement under her skin. In her blood.