Page 83 of Firedrake Betrayal
“Oh, that’s easy.” Her expression transforms with her delighted grin.
Right before she shoves me.
My arms windmill, and I slam into the surface of the water.
Swimming is impossible. This is no water I’ve ever felt before. Thick and sticky. My movements are sluggish, and no matter how hard I kick my feet, a current drags me down.
My lungs are heavy, filling with whatever strange water this is when I see it. Some… thing above me.
It slices through the water, smooth and easy. As it closes the distance, I realize it’s me.
I’m swimming toward me. And as I watch, my body ignites into flame and I transform from a woman to a firedrake. Brilliantly gold with hypnotic bright flame-gold eyes.
Me. It’s me.
I’ve run out of all the air in my lungs when the gold firedrake opens her mouth. Fire pours toward me, igniting me into flame.
“Jade?”
I shove myself upright, skin burning, an ashy taste in my mouth, and I swear, in the second before I’m fully awake, that smoke or steam is drifting from my skin.
Patten is rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “You okay? You were whimpering.”
We’re still in his bed. I’m hanging off the edge, was probably minutes from tumbling right off it to the floor.
I look at Patten, almost afraid to ask. “I don’t seem…differentto you, do I?”
He gives a jaw-cracking yawn. “Still beautiful. Why?”
Do I tell him about my weird dream and of changing into a firedrake?
Will he think I’m crazy?
“You’re not blinking,” he says.
“Sorry.”
He lies down and draws my head back to his chest. “Then come here. Go back to sleep. It’s still early.”
Sleep?
After the dream that I just had, sleep is off the cards.
23
SHEP
Istand outside, staring toward the mountains as the sun rises.
“We should have gone after him last night,” Isaiah says from beside me.
I’d considered it. We both had. None of us wants to put Jade at risk, and going into those mountains with her would be tantamount to handing her back to Atticus.
So we stayed up, taking turns to get a couple of hours of shut-eye between making sure Almeth and Atticus didn’t attack during the night.
A man like Atticus would have covered everything up. Probably within an hour of us having left. There’d be nothing but faded scents, boot tracks ground into the dirt, bullet holes pockmarking white stone, and the sense that whoever had been there left a long time before.
“Why has Almeth stayed away? He knows where we are, knows where Jade is. What is his game?” Isaiah asks.
