Page 132 of Gemini Hunted
Whipped into being by the Glaive, a slim column of air twists into a tornado between us. In a breath, the wind builds to a howl. It sucks at me with killing force.
Clutching the Horn to my chest with both arms, I sprint for the Ceres statue. The stone goddess waits for me, hand extended in expectation for her treasure.
I can almost touch her fingers when the wind whips under me and plucks me from the ground.
Now I’m the one who’s airborne.
And not under my own steam.
I can’t levitate in this shit.
While my limbs windmill for purchase, the Horn of Ceres flies from my arms and spins away on the wind. I yell in protest and dismay, but the twister roars in my ears like a locomotive to deafen me. The stinging scourge of my ponytail lashes my face. The golden walls blur around me. I’ve got maybe a heartbeat toregister that I’m about to be Hulk-smashed and smeared across all that gold like a bug on a windshield.
Then my inner dragon roars and her wings snap open. The shift sears through me, my world goes white, and all fucking hell breaks loose.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Ash
I’m pelting through the witch academy choir loft library, pounding after Pendragon and Maxim and those two gal pal housemates from Zara’sdomusas hard as I can push these old bones of mine.
That’s when Xhevith’s nails-on-chalkboard scream rips through the church walls and just about shreds every eardrum in the joint.
Oh, Geezus.
A combustible rocket fuel of anticipation and dread launches my ticker right into my throat.
Because there’s only one reason Xhev would bust out screaming from the ruins of the old Roman warehouse down by the harbor where we’ve had him holed up hiding.
Sparrow.
If that dragon heard his rider calling through the empathic dragonrider bond they share.
Or if Xhev felt his rider in pain.
Or dying.
Good old-fashioned terror dumps a bucket of adrenaline through my system. Mainlining cortisol like a goddamn drug, I veer off from the group and power for the gable window.
Unlike the fancy-shmancy stained glass art in the nave downstairs, most of the library windows up here are plain leaded glass.
I don’t waste time. I hit the nearest latch and swing the pane wide.
Under a drizzly night sky, barely visible through a curtain of rain and fog, Zephyr’s big green dragon is winging up, climbing steeply from the rain-washed cobblestones of the village piazza right underneath me. A lithe rider in green dragonscale clings to the saddle, fierce with intensity behind the slash of his eyepatch, moss-green hair streaming in the wind like a banner.
That’s my Sparrowhawk.
All the fear for him I didn’t realize I was carrying loosens its clamp on my neck and rushes outta my shoulders.
“Sparrow!” I shove my head out and bellow, heart thundering in my veins.
Shooting past me in a windstorm of powerful wings and buffeting gusts, the dragon screams like a chick in a horror flick. As the two flash past, my retinas fill with a single blazing glimpse of Sparrow’s slim body, braced in the dragon saddle with muscles straining, leaning all his weight back against the reins to urge his dragon higher.
Okie-dokie. Guess we’re done being subtle.
I wonder like hell where Zara is. Geez Louise, could she be in the Vault already? Is my princess already throwing down with Cleo?
I shove my big shoulders through the jambs right into the rain and give a good holler.
