Page 224 of Mama Si's Paradise

At that point it didn’t even matter. He’d made me doubt my own self for a minute there—they all had. And I’d never forget it.

Then, the dragons moved.

They jumped off the ground so suddenly, flying into the sky. A scream escaped my lips, but I wasn’t the only one. The other brides hanging out together a dozen feet to my side screamed, too, and the Evernight brothers on their side of the clearing watched. We all did.

It was possibly the longest half hour of my whole life.

The trees whispered. The wind howled. Storm roared like a beast, barely noticeable so high up in the sky, Shadow completely invisible.

And then they began to attack one another.

Storm spit fire, leaving a trail of it all around himself as he chased a lightning-fast Shadow, spinning around him about twenty feet off the ground. Grey and Valentine had their arms to their sides, their eyes on their dragons, and they didn’t move a single inch.

I held onto my chest, afraid my heart would beat out of me any second. I didn’t dare even blink because I didn’t want to miss something vital. The way the dragons were moving was absolutelyinsane. It was like they were dancing around each other, one attacking, the other retreating, then coming back again from the other side, moving up and down almost too fast to make out in the dark—especially Shadow.

While Storm attacked Shadow with his large hands, throwing him miles away into the air before he came back again, Shadow’s only play was to wrap his wings around himself and spin around like an arrow or a bullet, just like he had done that morning with the snake. I couldn’t even understand why, but I was more terrified of him when he did that than I was of Storm when he roared and basically squashed Shadow between his large hands. So much more terrified—maybe because Storm was big, and you knew exactly what to expect of him. You saw all of him clearly, to the very last sharp tooth on his jaws, but with Shadow, anything was possible. He was small, almost invisible, cunning.

And minutes later, my biggest fear came true.

Storm caught him by the tail and spun him around and threw him to the side, into the trees, but Shadow came back soon, spinning fast, and this time Storm couldn’t stop him. This time Storm couldn’t swat him away like he usually did.

Shadow spun his slim body to the sides to avoid his claws, then struck Storm right in the face.

The roar that came out of him shook the ground. Storm fell down so hard most of us were on our knees. He rolled onlya couple of times, but because of his size he was already slamming against the tree line right where Emil had been watching until a second ago. Now, he’d gone to the other side with Romin and Tristian, grinning ear to ear, all of them enjoying the show.

Blood everywhere, and Storm seemed to be clawing at his face, wailing in pain, while Grey, holding onto his own face, raised a hand toward him.

Storm stopped instantly. He pushed himself up on his back legs and took his claws down to reveal the left side of his face—and his eye. Hismissingeye.

Across the clearing, Shadow was snickering, licking his small jaws, possibly having swallowed Storm’s eye already.

Valentine smiled proudly, his eyes challenging Grey.

No idea how my legs were still holding me.

Storm beat his wings again and rose in the air with a furious roar. He chased after Shadow, spilling out so much fire it was like the sky was burning with the rising sun for a moment. I kept my eyes on them, though for a long time I could hardly see anything, just a blur of movement. Shadow escaping through Storm’s claws, and Storm slamming his large body parts onto Shadow, knocking him to the sides until he gained his balance again.

On and on they went, and I didn’t dare hope that the dragons would get tired, and I didn’t dare hope that one would knock out the other.

Fuck, they werebrothers. How did they not see the absurdity of this entire situation? How could they not see that killing one another—or killing one another’s dragon—was pure insanity?

Then a loud roar took me out of my trance. More dragons—another three of them—were in the air around us, watching the fight. Balthazar, Blackheart and Rider had come to witness the fuckingshow.

It made me sick to my stomach, but then Storm spit fire out of his mouth not even fifty feet over us, and I had no choice but to look. No choice but to see how he stood perfectly still right there in the air, hovering like gravity couldn’t touch him at all, even though his wings weren’t beating.

And Shadow was coming.

Right after the fire burned out of Storm’s mouth, Shadow came fast as lightning, aiming for Storm’s face. For his other eye.

My heart stopped beating altogether. If Shadow succeeded, the fight would be as good as over.

But Storm must have been expecting it. That’s why he was standing so still, arms to the sides, waiting…

And at the perfect moment, he slammed them together, catching Shadow in between his hands.

I gasped, and so did everyone else watching.

Shadow fell to the ground, motionless, and Storm followed. Valentine was on one knee, but that’s all I could see before Storm landed in front of Shadow’s limp body with a gut-turning roar, wrapped his claws tightly around him and pulled him up to his open jaws lined with two sets of razor-sharp teeth.

---