Page 90 of Dreams and Dragon Wings
“Fly,Therya’kai!” Velda screams, her voice piercing my awe. “Fly!”
I glance upward just in time to see Malice slick his wings and dive straight toward me.
His maw opens.
His fangs gleam in the moonlight.
Fire gathers in his throat.
Without thinking, without questioning, I wrap the Air around my waist and gather it into my hands. Twisting it like rope. Pulling it taut.
And then?
Then I let go.
An exhilarated scream rips from my throat as I shoot off into the sky like a loosed crossbow bolt, my mother’s gown fluttering around me, Malice’s Fire careening harmlessly past. The ground falls away, the Shadow Lands but a mere blur of darkness and decay far below.
But even in the darkness, there is so much beauty.
Magic courses all around me, crackling against my skin, filling my vision with wondrous color. I thought I knew these threads. They have been my constant companions for the past twelve years.
But now, I finally see them as they truly are:
A promise of life. Of great possibility.
The Great Weaver’s gift to the world.
A roar shatters the air behind me, driving me onward. Higher I rise and higher still, straight up into the heavens where everything sparkles like crushed diamonds. Where the breath in my lungs is cold and crisp.
Air brushes against me like star-dusted silk as I linger up here, far above the world, basking in the awesome power of all that the Great Weaver has made.
I no longer care about the black-scaled dragon surging toward me with every beat of his wings. I no longer care about the muted pain throbbing through my left leg.
For once in my life, I’m not afraid of what might come next.
I am simply… happy.
I am free.
Beneath me, Drakara unfurls—a sumptuous tapestry of forests and fields, valleys and mountains, and far off in the distance to the southeast, a shimmer of something. A something that hooks deep in my soul.
That calls me home.
« Come. »
I will,I promise.I will come to the Living Waters.
But I need something first:
Na’theryn.
Malice’s voice oozes across the edge of my consciousness, oily and slick, as he draws near to my lofty resting place.“What did you do to me, wench?”A growl thunders from his throat as if to punctuate his words.“Why can I not touch you?”
A laugh bubbles up from deep inside me as I meet his draconic gaze, his crimson eyes split by reptilian slits ablaze with his fury. Monstrous. Unsettling.
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” I whisper aloud a split second before I release my hold on the Air keeping me there in the sky.
Before I tumble back toward the earth.
