Page 105 of Gemini Wicked

My breath spills out with a winded “Oof!”

The impact empties the air from my lungs before I can let loose with the lightning voice.

The crackling electric charge in the air fizzles out. My balance shifts. I stagger back to stay on my feet. But I lose my grip on Cleo.

That’s when the slippery bitch twists out of my hold and shoves me hard in the direction I’m already heading.

Which is backwards.

Right off the treacherous sloping surface of the study carrel roof.

I’ve got a heartbeat to grasp that I’m falling. The flagstone floor rushes toward me with bone-breaking speed, while Cleo sprints across the carrels toward the cloister and her mentor.

Then a taloned foreleg closes around me and snatches me right out of the air.

The world swings upside down and the blood rushes to my head. I flail around with a yell. Before I can summon any kinda witchcraft, hard hands encased in green leather gauntlets grip my flailing arms and drag me into the dragon saddle.

I scramble behind a gilded leather pommel worked in green and gold like something from a jousting match at the Renaissance Faire, tug my plaid skirt down over my thighs, and fight furiously free of Zephyr’s hold.

That homicidal Dark Fae maniac lurks right behind me in the saddle.

“What do you think you’re doing, you crazy fuck?” I shout over the earsplitting crack and grind of the settling floor and Xhevith’s trumpeting bellow. “Telling Xhev to boil Lucius—?”

“No time,” Zephyr says tightly, arms closing hard around me (again) to snatch his discarded reins. “Watch the girl.”

My gaze veers toward the carrels to see Cleo launch into a flying cartwheel that morphs into a catlike twist. She can’t fly, but it’s pretty obvi she’s been trained in freerunning or parkour or some shit (one more secret she’s been hiding). She pushes off from the carrel roof, uses her outstretched hands to bound away from a flying buttress, and hits the floor in a tight roll that absorbs the impact.

Hissing with menace, Vasili’s flying serpent twists in a tight loop and flows through the air to get between Cleo and the enclosed maze her mentor just vanished into. V’s silver mane streams in the wind and his pretty blue eyes narrow in rage. His long muzzle splits and a flurry of snow and ice streams through his gaping jaws.

Cleo pivots in mid-stride to avoid his icy breath and darts into the narthex that connects the church to the piazza. She slams the door hard behind her.

Yeah, no. That’s stopping no one.

Vasili veers to overfly Lucius’ wolf, who’s herding the shocky Hadrian kids and Skyler’s abandoned besties toward the same exit. Our headmaster’s growling and snapping to make them run faster, like he’s a massive German Shepherd.

With a sinister hiss, the Goblin King flows through the broken oculus window and soars into the open sky.

I tense and lean out, all ready to levitate from the saddle and launch right after him and probably shift myself. But Zephyr’s gauntleted arm wraps tight around my waist and drags me against his supple strength. With a powerful bunch of the massive scaled body between my knees, Xhevith roars and launches into the air after the Goblin King.

Le Chiffre, I mean Nikolai, is temporarily outta reach.

Which has to mean we’re all going after Cleo.

I catch a flashing glimpse of Lucius and my classmates scrambling to safety through the same exit Cleo just took. Then Xhev tucks his wings tight and sails through the broken oculus into the hot blue blaze of the summer sky.

As the church’s slanted roof drops away beneath us, a brisk wind, briny with sea salt, whips through my pigtails and flutters my skirt around my thighs. If I’m gonna ride like this, I really need my catsuit or, better yet, the nifty dragonscale armor Zephyr had made for me in Avalon, and not my school uni. Right now, I’m barely decent.

Then again, it’s not like the whole witching world hasn’t already seen me naked.

Thanks for that, Witching Inquisitor.

A powerful beat of Xhev’s vast green wings tilts us sideways. We chase Vasili’s glittering silver scroll as he twists lithely through the air. We plummet from the sky with the wind screaming in our ears and soar across the piazza’s cobblestone expanse. My own inner dragon (who doesn’t like it when someone else takes the wheel while we’re airborne) bugles in alarm.

Sweet Jesus.

I’m not even wearing the fighting straps that are supposed to harness you into a dragon saddle. But I know Zephyr (whatever his other shortcomings, which are major) won’t let me fall.

I lean way out to see around Xhevith’s scaly green shoulder so I can get eyes on Cleo.

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