Page 440 of Kingdoms of Night

The humans were not giving them the time they needed.

Her entire body ached with the pressure of having to connect with the other dragons, but she had to try. Sinking down onto the crystals, she winced and folded her wings around them. There were many crystals in this back portion, but that also meant she had to stretch the delicate membranes of her wings over their sharp points.

Only then did she let her mind wander. The memories that were most urgent for her to see would connect with her first. She always knew they would find her. And those that she saw today terrified her.

Flames surrounded the last dragons as she watched through Attor’s eyes. Someone had corralled her people into the back of a cave, and the entrance was filled with pikes and sharp spears pointing toward their throats. Someone threw buckets of acid upon them, and the dragons screamed in rage as their scales melted away. One of the braver mortals lunged forward and sank his spear into the exposed neck of the nearest dragon, who hissed and spat fire at him.

But it was too late. The dragon died even as the others rushed forward to help.

Attor’s head swiveled from side to side and she felt the same thing he did at that moment. They were all going to die in that cave. He had lost, and the humans had won.

Tears streamed out of her eyes as Attor rushed away from the fight, pushing through the dragons, who urged him to do something. To save them. To be the crimson dragon they needed him to be.

He paused before a pool of water and waited for it to still as fire burned behind his silhouette.

“Tanis,” he said, his voice croaking with the damage from smoke and acid. “Run. Take the children and run. They are coming for the isle. Hide our people. Keep them safe.”

She tried to split from the memory, but it had locked her in place. Attor turned and let out a roar of rage and anger. He rushed through the group of dragons in front of him, shoving them aside as he lurched toward their attackers. He didn’t care about the acid that burned him or the spears that bit at his flesh. Attor knew he was going to die. So he threw his body upon the mortals and tumbled down the mountainside until he thudded against the ground and stopped moving.

Tanis wrenched her mind from the memory. She shoved herself away from the crystals so fast that they ripped through her wings, tearing at them just like the pain she’d felt while being inside Attor’s mind. He had sent that memory to the crystals with the most powerful and horrible of deaths.

Her people.

They were dead.

All of them.

And he had said the mortals were coming for their kingdom. Soon, ships full of warriors and acid would arrive at her homeland and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

Fear made her blood turn cold and for the first time in centuries, that fear urged her to lose the dragon form, which she had always felt safe in. The dragon form which had never once made her feel ashamed or broken.

But there was another form dragons could take.

“Tanis?” Rowan called out. “I heard you scream. What happened?”

She couldn’t tell him. She couldn’t think through the horrible fear of what would happen to her people and all the blood she would have to see in her home.

Tanis tried to control herself. Instead, the fear won. She felt her entire body ripple into something new. Something very different from that of a dragon.

She hadn’t been in her human form for a very long time. And she didn’t quite know how to stand right, considering how this form used two legs rather than her arms as wings. She staggered, only to be caught in Rowan’s arms.

They had to go. They had to warn everyone about what Attor had said because she didn’t know how long ago that message was made.

Looking up into Rowan’s startled eyes, she feared he might pass out as well and send them both tumbling to the ground.

“T-Tanis?” he stammered.

Did she look so different? She didn’t remember what her mortal form looked like, other than perhaps she might be a little pale considering she’d been in the caves for such a long time. And her hair was longer, she realized as it wrapped around her arms. A deep red, almost purple, it was so dark.

“It’s me,” she hissed, struggling to get out of his arms. “We have to warn them all. Attor sent a message. He said we have to hide. We have to run. There are many we need to warn that the armies are coming here. They might have already set sail. I don’t know how much time we have.”

He was still staring at her with a dumbfounded expression on his face. The foolish man needed to move. She needed him to run, not look at her with his mouth agape.

“What?” she snapped, using a crystal to prop herself up once she got free from him. “Why are you staring at me like that?”

“You’re... you’re a person.” Rowan shook his head as though he’d heard himself say the words and how awful they sounded. “Not like that. I mean, you’re not a dragon.”

“I am a dragon.”

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