Page 49 of Monsters of Air

Landers went down, his eyes wide as though he had missed exactly how that had happened.

Breathily heavily, I stared down at Landers, his focus angry and shocked as he stared back. The Fae was cheering, the other two just stood there with their mouths hanging open like hungry dogs.

Teach them not to believe in me.

“Who’s next?” I turned to the others, chest heaving.

All they did was stand there.

Chapter Seventeen

We were all unprepared for snow. Even the dragons were beginning to feel the low temperatures, their body heat not enough to keep them warm.

“What do you hear?” Philit asked me as he stepped over a log, the claws on his feet dragging over the surface and leaving four long lines in the snow.

“Do you mean besides all of our teeth chattering?” I was in no mood for this. I gave him a look and he glared right back. “Do you really want to play this game right now?”

“No. I want to know if you can sense any place for us to buckle down for the night. The snow will only get heavier. It’s best if we set up camp now before we exhaust ourselves trying to walk through snow and freeze to death.”

Right. Of course he was asking for a completely logical reason.

Philit stopped the procession and faced me, waiting.

“Give me a second.” I closed my eyes, not that I needed to block out a sense to enhance my hearing, but the deep ocean blue of Philit’s eyes were distracting. Beautiful. Even without staring into his eyes, it was hard to hear past all the snow and wind. I shook my head, blowing out a frustrated breath.

“It’s windy.”

“No shit,” Landers snapped.

“I’m not saying it’s windy. I’m saying it’s all I can hear.” Neither Philit or Landers were amused.

“Focus past that,” the Fae said, all of the dragons turning to him and snarling. “The wind is only white noise. Block it out. Hear beyond it.”

He sounded like some of the elders back home, the old ladies who sat and knitted and talked about how things used to be. I knew I shouldn’t listen, I knew he was probably lying. But I couldn’t help myself, there was something in the way that he spoke that pulled my eyes closed, and my mind to focus not on the white noise of the wind, but what was behind it.

“Something sounds…solid. As though the wind is hitting against it, but it’s unmovable. When the wind hits it, the sound changes.”

Philit stopped snarling at the Fae at that. “Where?”

I pointed in the direction of the sound, and everyone turned. We battled against wind and snow Landers giving me more than one concerned look before we came to stone outcropping. The rock was massive, stretching high overhead with another one on top that created an overhang. It wasn’t much coverage, but it was better than freezing to death out in the open.

“Thank fuck,” Landers said, already moving closer to the rock. I followed him, but so did the wind. So maybe this wasn’t as much protection as I thought.

“Everything’s too wet. The fire isn’t going to amount to much,” Zilon said, kicking a few of the soaked sticks on the ground.

“Now would be a good time for dragon fire,” I said, teeth still chattering.

The Fae chuckled, but cut himself off when all the dragons turned to him and snarled.

“Something funny?” Landers took a step toward the Fae who didn’t even have the decency to cower.

“Only to me.” He was dead serious, his eyes drifting to mine and giving me that same zing of panic he always did.

“Well, keep it to yourself.” Even Landers was too cold to come up with a good comeback.

“We’ll stay here for the rest of the night,” Philit said, but even he didn’t seem happy about it. The chances of us finding something better were close to zero, however.

“This is going to be a long night,” I mumbled, already digging out Da’s heavy wool blanket.

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