Page 162 of A Promise of Peridot
Dry, punishing wind stung my face. I scrambled for purchase with my free hand and swung the blade into the air before plunging it down into his back.
Another ear-splitting, bone-rattling roar—
And a ricochet of glaring, golden lighte streaming out from the fine point of my blade and into Lazarus’s reflective, glasslike scales.
I strained to keep my eyes open against the brightness, shook with the force of my lighte leaving my body in huge, penetrating bursts, funneling through the blade—
Shook with the fear, with the rawpowercoursing through my muscles and limbs—
Why... why was nothing happening?
I swung the blade into the air to bring it down again, harder—muchharder—this time, but it never made contact.
I was shoved forward, grunting with the force as my face was thrust into the piercing ridges of Lazarus’s scarred spine, my mouth tasting ash and wind and ice.
Halden propelled his body into mine again, attempting to use the angle to pry the blade from my hands. I drew my knees up, knotting myself until I had leverage to stand, and hefted the blade with all its might—a mere extension of my hand—out of his grasp and directly toward his head.
Halden ducked, barely catching his footing on Lazarus’s craggyback. We breathed heavily in unison, uneven pants drowned out by a wind that howled like it was in agony.
And Lazarus, beneath us, only sailed higher. Before I could discern why, Halden lifted his sword and it whined through the air toward me.
The blow missed by a mountain-sized margin as I feinted right and drove my own blade forward, narrowly nicking his rib cage.
I was better than him.
Stronger.
More confident in my footing as Lazarus ebbed and bowed through air currents.
The Blade of the Sun—myblade—hissed pleasurably against my palm.
“You don’t want to do this,” I yelled into the wind as Lazarus swooped to the side, nearly knocking Halden off and sending him plummeting toward a dark green death.
“I don’t have a choice!” Halden spat back as we sailed up, up,upinto the sky, the bright sun now blinding over the ledge and harsh wind making it impossible to see what was up and what was down.
Halden heaved his sword again, sloppy and haphazard, and I deflected the blow with my blade. My muscles throbbed sweetly, and I drew in a breath as I thrust once more, this time clipping his sword and sending metal splinters like ribbons into the air.
Lazarus was still moving. Heading for the lip of the island. Escaping, with us. Withme—
One tentative foot after another, I maneuvered until I could grasp an outstretched wing with one hand, my blade firmly clutched in the other. I kicked Halden in the chest with all my strength,quads straining, pushing myself dangerously close to Lazarus’s narrow neck.
His neck...
His soft, penetrable neck—
Halden caught himself against Lazarus’s tail, sword dangling from his left hand. It was only then I noticed two things: the crudely healed burns that covered one side of his face in splotches from where I had lit his tent aflame back in Peridot, and his right hand.
Or rather, lack thereof.
A mottled stump was all that remained where his hand had once been. A hand that he had bitten the nails of in worry and irritation. A hand that had helped my mother wash vegetables for dinner. A hand that had caressed my face. Had seared hot iron into my flesh.
Now, gone.
“Halden,” I heaved, air funneling erratically in and out of my lungs. “Your hand.”
But he stayed silent, sucking in a lungful of air himself, his scowl both defensive and ashamed. Halden turned his sword on me.
“He did that to you? Punished you by... by amputation?”
