Page 24 of House of Embers
She swore that wouldn’t happen.
The people needed to know she was alive. Hiding out in the mountains was only helping the Society. She wasn’t going to turn herself in or doing anything rash like Fordham suspected, but hiding wasn’t the answer either. The people needed to have hope, or else there would be no rallying call left.
That all hit her in a moment, and she pressed her urgency on Tieran, giving him a final boost of energy. He slid around the next rock outcropping and slammed sideways into the rock, sending it raining down onto the other dragon.
A cry rang out from the rider as rocks fell onto him. But they were still going, moving out of the worst of it as Kerrigan and Tieran pressed in closer and closer and closer. They just needed another minute.
They pulled up alongside the other dragon, bumping against the larger beast and then veering out of its way as it tried to throw itslarger weight into Tieran. Without the bulk to stop him, they could only poke at him. They needed to be smarter, since they weren’t larger.
The rider’s eyes flared at the sight of her recognizable red hair and freckled face. “You’re alive!”
He shouted the words as if he found them unbelievable. He must not have been there the day that Bastian had sent the might of the Society against her. That likely made him local. Was he scouting for them? Wrong place, wrong time?
“Land!” Kerrigan yelled back at him.
The Fae male’s face contorted at those words. “I won’t land! You’re the one who came after me!”
“If you won’t surrender, then we’ll have to make you.”
“Make me!” the male yelled in fury. “They said you were a bitch.”
Tieran snarled in fury at the insult. It was a step up from being called a leatha but still wholly unoriginal.
“Well, never mind,” Kerrigan said on a laugh and moved to standing.
Because what the male didn’t know was that she now had Fordham’s powers at her disposal. The Daijan bond had wrapped itself around their powers, and they could share. She could feel the shadows come to her hands as fierce and terrifying as the first time she’d seen Fordham do it. And the benefit of shadows was that she couldjump.
Which Kerrigan had never done before but was prepared to do to take him out.
And then Netta appeared overhead.
“Mine!” Wynter shouted.
From one second to the next, Wynter launched off Netta’s back. Midair, her entire body disappeared, and she landed squarely on the back of the other dragon. The male looked shocked at the sight of another person on the back of his dragon. His instincts took over too late. Wynter was a formidable fighter who could see the auras of someone’s magic. It gave her an edge in almost all ways in a fight,except for when her magic couldn’t work on Kerrigan, when Kerrigan had been wearing the Ring of Endings. The ring that was currently on Bastian’s finger.
“How?” the male gasped before Wynter’s fist cracked into his face.
He fell backward, and his dragon roared in anger. It whipped sideways, and Wynter careened to her knees, clinging to the beast. If she wasn’t careful, it was going to send her flying. She hadn’t had the training for this.
“Kerrigan!” Wynter screamed. “Catch.”
Kerrigan only had a second to process what Wynter was saying, and then she bodily threw the Fae male off the side of his dragon. When his dragon dove for him, Wynter was already gone, back on Netta’s comforting back, and racing after him.
Kerrigan swore at the sight of the Fae free-falling toward the rocky outcropping below. She and Tieran pushed down at the same time. He was only a few feet past them. Tieran reached out and grasped him between his claws. He pulled up quick out of his dive, missing the other dragon’s claws by inches. Then he sped away from the rocks.
“Call off your dragon!” Kerrigan shouted down at him.
“I will not! You started these hostilities!”
“We’ll kill you,” she snarled. “And then you’ll have a dead dragon.”
She hated even making the threat. Itwasbarbaric that this was the outcome—that the death of one would kill the other. But it was the world they lived in, and it was the only threat they had. They could outpace his dragon, but if he fled without his rider, then it would all be for nothing.
The male cried out in anger and then went silent. “I told him of your threat. He will have words with your dragon,” he snarled.
Tieran tightened his grip.“His dragon is called Henrley. His rider is Gerrond. They have been bonded for fifty-seven years,”Tieran explained into her mind.“He says that killing them would be against dragon code,but I told him we are at war. He went silent after that. He will follow us back to the mountain if we do not kill his rider.”
“Good,”Kerrigan said.“Then let’s go back. Gerrond has some explaining to do.”
