Page 65 of A Reign of Roses
And over the sound of my own labored breathing, my own teeth chattering—
Feathered wings flapping.
We peered up and witnessed the strix, with its newfound sight, soar into the muggy night sky, high above those smog-tinged clouds. Bright, jubilant shrieking echoed from its lungs.
“He’s free,” I told Wyn.
“It’s a she,” he said with a grunt. When I peeled my eyes open, Wyn’s nose was bleeding down onto his lips.
I squeezed my eyes shut to quell the nausea.
Not squeamish.
I wasn’t squeamish.
I was…dying.
That dragon’s roar I’d heard in the atrium ripped through the cold night air once again. A roar of fury and anguish and pure night-black power. Rising up into the sky.
The rush of relief bowed my heart inside my chest. Such a beautiful, harrowing roar. The roar of a conqueror, the roar of a king. A grin that tasted of blood split my face.
Not Lazarus.
That was my dragon.
Tears burned my eyes.
Go, Kane. Do not come back.
“I don’t think he can hear you,” Wyn grunted before we stumbled backward.
The ground shook as Kane landed before us, and my eyes cracked open wide to behold the enormous night-black creature—blade-sharp, glittering talons, scaled obsidian wings, hooded silver eyes that gleamed like a harvest moon as he cocked his enormous head at us, nostrils flaring. Horrendous, spectacular, beauty and nightmares incarnate…
Guards in that thick layered armor were already hurtling toward him. They’d been waiting at the perimeters for me. The gilded arsonist who’d set their capital ablaze.
Fools, I thought. They were fools with their weapons raised high into the air—
Lighte flew out of their crossbows and swords and my dragonreared up on hind legs and spread his marvelous wings wide. He bellowed out with each painful blow, blocking us from the assault.
But blackness spotted across my vision until all I could see was the darkness and all I could feel were Wyn’s jagged, desperate inhales and his grunt as he deposited me onto something cool and textured. A small, pathetic noise split from me at the touch. My hands grasped aimlessly for Kane’s familiar scales.
Those guards hastened toward us, roaring. Their heavy footfalls drawing closer and closer—
Wyn’s pleading cries seized my stomach as he begged Kane to get me help.
With strength I didn’t know I still had, I forced my hands tightly around Kane’s back just in time for my stomach to hollow out at the sight below. We shot into the air, past the swarm of silver guards who converged on Wyn, and up into the night-dark sky.
18
Kane
Lazarus’s mercenaries were gaining onus.
After touching the blade, I’d awoken from whatever Fae God power had made me full-blooded to find an inferno of firelighte. That, and my father gone, along with the Blade of the Sun. He’d left me for dead in the explosion I could only assume was Arwen’s doing.
She hadn’t gone to Aurora as I’d instructed her to.
But anger was the farthest thing from my mind as I soared from the palace.
