Page 29 of A Witch and Her Dragon
His body puts off steam in the cold air, drying the rain so fast that he’s barely even damp. At the same time, the chain he wears around his neck starts to glow with strange white-blue light. Like magic.
Raelan screams, and I start, my stomach twisting violently.
I want to help him, want to fix this. But I have no idea whatthiseven is. Is he sick? Hurt? Is the chain doing something to him?
My eyes cut toward the castle, but the fog is so thick now that I can’t even see the stairs leading to the entryway. The towers that usually look down upon the grounds are lost in the clouds above. It’s just us out here.
Breathing heavily, heart racing, I turn back to Raelan.
As his muscles strain, the chain shifts on his neck, revealing what look like burns etched into his skin.
Maybe that’s the problem—the chain is hurting him, though I’ve no idea why or what it is. Could it be cursed?
Raelan screams again. I can’t believe no one else has yet come to see what’s happening. Perhaps they can’t hear us over the wind and thunder and lashing rain.
No one else is coming. I have to help him. I know if it were the other way around, he’d help me.
So I push to my feet, coat my hands in a thin layer of frost to prevent any burns, and reach for him. He’s too distracted by his pain to pull away from me this time. My fingers close around the clasp holding the chain taut, and with one movement, I have it open. The heavy metal links come away easily in my hands, slipping from Raelan’s neck and into my palms.
The chain stops glowing. Raelan ceases screaming.
Pride goes through me. I helped him. I took his pain away. I—
Raelan’s body starts to contort, moving in ways that look anything but natural. His back twists, his arms straining like they’re about to be wrenched from their sockets.
Chain still gripped in my hand, I take one step back, eyes widening while nausea roils in my stomach.
Something isverywrong.
As thunder rumbles and the rain intensifies, casting more mist and fog across the courtyard, Raelan...changes.
His body writhes, his bones breaking, and I don’t know how I remain standing as he becomes something I’ve only ever heard whispers of, something that is said to be so rare it might as well not exist at all. Somethingfrom a time long past.
The creature rises up, rain pelting its onyx scales, and its eyes—dark as pitch and flecked with shimmering gold—meet mine.
Terror shoots through me. It tells me torun.
But the grass is wet from the rain, and when I turn to flee toward the castle, I slip, falling hard. The chain snakes from my hand and coils onto the rain-soaked earth, no longer aglow. My hair sticks to my face, impeding my vision of the creature looming over me. I whip around and use a muddy hand to push the hair from my face. And when I do, my breath freezes in my lungs.
Because the dragon is gigantic, the single largest living thing I’ve ever seen. It’s taller than the outbuildings dotted through the courtyard, and when it spreads its glossy wings, they block out the dim light from the stormy gray sky, leaving me trembling in deep dark shadow.
Its black-gold eyes home in on me, and its lips pull back into a snarl, exposing lines of glistening white fangs.
I know I should run, should try to escape, but I can’t move. My body is frozen there on the wet earth, my knees coated in mud and grass from falling.
The dragon extends its head toward me, its neck long and sinuous in its movements. A single ridiculous thought goes through my head:Lyra was right.It exhales a steady stream of smoke, dousing my body in heat. I’m shaking so hard now that the songbird pendant my mother gave me is thumping against my chest with the sharp movements.
Just when I think the dragon is going to shred me with its razor-sharp teeth and swallow my ragged body whole, it rips itself away from me and gives a powerful downstrokeof its wings, then another. The wind it creates buffets me, making me hold up a hand to shield my eyes from the rain and dirt and grass tearing through the air.
And then the dragon lifts from the ground, fog swirling around it, and with another few strokes of its wings, it rises into the misty gray sky and is swallowed up by the clouds, vanishing from existence almost as quickly as it appeared.
For a moment, I can still hear its wings beating the air over the sound of the howling wind, but after a short while, even that fades into nothing.
Now I’m in the courtyard alone, soaking wet and covered in mud. The rain continues to fall, only intensifying.
My whole body trembles fiercely, shaking so hard my teeth clack together.
What . . . was that?
