Page 95 of House of Ashes

Holding on tightly, I bent low over his back. I’d thought things couldn’t get much dicier than our first flight, when I clung to bare scales and ropes.

I had never before appreciated the difference between riding a dragon trying his best to ensure I felt secure, and riding a dragon quivering with rage and bloodlust.

I held my breath all the way down, until he jerked out of his freefall dive so suddenly my entire upper body smashed forward into the saddle. Pain exploded in my nose as it violently met the front ridge of the saddle.

Blood trickled over my upper lip as I held back a gasp. I wiped it away in a hurry, not wanting to distract Rhylan—not when his people, the Bloodless who relied on the protection of Obsidian Flames, were burning.

He cut through the columns of smoke, landing heavily in the middle of the village. No one came out, not even to scream for help. Ignoring the sharp, throbbing ache in my nose, I practically tore my safety straps free and jumped down, trying not to let the ice in my gut overcome me.

If no one could even ask for help…then it was too late for any of them.

Most of the modest cottages were already so much ash, the beams of the roofs collapsing in on themselves. Embers still smoldered in charred trees and gardens; a scorched spot in the village square contained several bodies, twisted beyond recognition into blackened lumps of coal.

I heard Rhylan yelling as he shifted, throwing himself towards the first collapsing house. The shadows of wyverns circled the square; Kirana had arrived.

I didn’t wait for her. Instead I did the same as Rhylan, kicking a door in and raising a hand as cinders blew back into my face.

If anyone was inside, they were long dead. I wiped more blood off my mouth, moving to the next house, vaulting a crushed fence to check the coops in the back. A single unscathed feather was all that remained of the chickens.

No one…not a single voice. Not a whisper.

How many people had lived here? I tried not to count the charred bodies, but it was impossible to restrain myself.

With the thick stink of cooked meat in my nose, I kept a tally: fifteen, sixteen, seventeen…

I had hit twenty-five when Kirana bolted past me, Wyvern-Master Alriss on her heels, heading for the smoldering houses in the lower part of the valley.

Instead of following, I continued to spread out, venturing further to the west. Rhylan’s shouts grew distant.

Thirty. Thirty-three…and in one house, the count jumped to nearly forty. An entire family, dead before they knew what was coming.

Tears joined the blood on my face. I no longer bothered to try and wipe it away.

My sister had done this to send a message…and I wanted her to understand that her message had been received.

That it would be repaid in kind.

It was my first taste of war, of violence and bloodshed done in the name of power. I was used to the violence of Mistward Isle; of petty thievery, of desperation, of tension finally breaking between two dragons.

But this…this wholesale destruction of Bloodless, who never would’ve stood a chance against a dragon…this was what we called war.

Picking away at the innocent, just to send a message.

I had never believed my hatred for her could burn any hotter, but I’d been wrong.

By the time I reached the last house on the row, I knew it was hopeless. It still stood—just barely.

I opened the door as the ceiling creaked, threatening to collapse, but the house was empty. Which of the forty corpses behind me had lived here?

And then I heard something. A sound so tiny a mouse might’ve made it…but someone coughed.

I spun around, listening desperately, trying to still my ragged breathing. There—I followed the sound, ducking behind the remains of the cottage and into a copse of the surrounding forest.

There was a pond, the water rippling in the breeze, as though none of the violence had touched here. No birds; Yura and Tidas had driven away all the wildlife.

But the cough came again, quieter, and I strode into the knee-high grass to find…a woman.

She lay half in, half out of the water; her face was no longer recognizable. The hands curled to her chest had been burned black, the fingers twisted into twig-like sticks.

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