Page 72 of Dragons Of Shadow and Sea

And everything goes black.

Chapter

Eighteen

MALIK

“This had better be the right place," Rafe's dragon grumbles in my head.

I ignore him the same way I've been ignoring him for hours now. My annoyance with him...our rivalry--it's nothing compared with the gaping emptiness inside me.

We have to find Ember. Rescuing her is the only thing that matters.

My dragon agrees, putting on a burst of speed, our talons skimming the surface of the sea and sending up a wash of spray. Rafe grunts and flies higher, his Fire Dragon repelled by the jets of water.

I glance toward Jianyu, whose silver dragon flies alongside mine. He's had little to say, which makes him my preferred companion of the two automatically. But as our gazes meet, his impatience is clear in his eyes. He may not be complaining as obnoxiously as Rafe, but he's just as anxious.

"This is the right place," I promise.

After my mother confessed to handing Ember over to the Shadow Dragons--after I raced to my home only to find her missing, the back balcony reeking of shadows and smoke--I tore the archives apart. I found the old maps that led to the Shadow King's Citadel. A young keeper of the ancient texts warned me that the Citadel was once hidden behind a veil even more powerful than the one that cloaks the Water Dragon Kingdom; there's every reason to believe that it still is.

And yet. My dragon can sense a deep, dark magic in the waters. Shadows flit beneath the surface of the waves.

Rafe growls, extending his crimson wings menacingly. "If it's not..."

He doesn't need to finish his sentence. We're the only ones looking for Ember. If we've followed some wild goose chase, we'll have wasted time that we don't have.

I refuse to even entertain the thought. "They're here. Somewhere. I can feel it."

"I can, too," Jianyu agrees, soaring higher. "The stone beneath the surface of the water--it's..." He shudders. "Wrong. Dead. My magic can't touch it."

"Hippies," Rafe's dragon mutters.

I snort and dive below the waves, searching with my eyes and with my magic for any sort of boundary, any tingle of spellwork, any sense that the veil might be pierced.

Or that it even exists at all.

My frustration mounting, I rise into the air again.

Only for the silence to be torn apart by a whisper. Help me.

My heart erupts into chaos.

"Ember," I growl.

Rafe and Jianyu hear it, too.

"This way." Rafe turns in mid-air, swooping back the way we came.

Jianyu is right beside him, and I'm not far behind.

And forget our differences. Forget my petulant anger at the idea of having to share my mate. She was taken, and these two men were the first people I turned to. They're the ones who feel her absence with the same pain that I do. They're the ones who hear her now.

My bond-mate connection to her opens up, and after hours of silence, it's the sweetest relief.

Or at least it would be. Except that in that moment, a burst of brilliant light rips a hole in the sky.

I raise a wing to shield myself from the blinding glare.

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