Page 55 of Bound to the Shadow Queen
I could practically hear Eyrx sigh as he leapt from his steed to fight beside her. His unending need to protect those most vulnerable had likely drawn him to my wife’s sister.
She was not a trained warrior and lacked the polished precision to fight a beast of this caliber, but she was a raw, chaotic fury in her own right. Her white curls had broken free from their usual tight bun, their tips stained crimson with blood as she shouted more obscenities at the wyverns above.
“Fire breathing bastard!” she hissed, volleying a spray of dirt and stone directly into the wyvern’s glowing eyes. It roared in response, turning its attention toward her at last. She stumbled backward under the full weight of its stare.
Eryx stepped in front of her to take the brunt of the fight, not that Noerwyn understood she was so outmatched.
The bridge eventually blocked them from my view, and I pressed on, climbing higher and higher, my sights set on the largest wyvern.
His scales shivered, pale embers burning just beneath them as he circled Nevara.
The creature’s eyes were wide with hunger, his scales glowing with iridescent mana that didn’t belong to him. Fury ignited inmy veins as I realized he was already siphoning it from her, already draining her of the power she needed to fight back.
As soon as I was overhead, I vaulted from my saddle, the wind howling past as I hurtled through open air. Frost seared between my palms, ice knitting together in ragged shards until a jagged spear formed between them.
I roared and drove it down through the wyvern’s neck. The impact cracked like shattering glaciers, the spear exploding into splinters that doused the fire guttering in its throat. The wyvern shrieked, flames sputtering to smoke as it writhed, its massive wings thrashing with enough force to shake the air itself.
The jolt nearly flung me into the open sky, but I hooked my hand into a ridge of bone-hard scales, clinging as it bucked upward in a surge of fury. Smoke gushed from its jaws, scorching my face with heat. My frost hissed against the flames, ice pouring down its throat in sharpened fragments.
The wyvern rolled violently, its wings snapping like sails in a storm. I felt the world spin with it, the sky and ground blurring into a dizzy whirl. Its claws lashed back, talons the length of scythes catching my arm and raking deep through my leather armor.
Blood spattered across its scales, steaming where it struck the heat still burning inside its chest.
Pain sharpened my focus. I slammed my other hand against its throat, forcing raw mana outward. Ice blossomed like a living thing, crawling across its scales, hardening, choking off its next burst of blue-fire. The wyvern cried again, snapping at me with jaws wide enough to shear me in half.
Finally, I could be precise enough to icewalk. One heartbeat I was clinging to its neck, the next I was gone, reappearing above its skull. Frost condensed at my feet, forming a spiky platform that shattered as I launched myself down. A fresh spear of iceburst into being, crystalline and brutal, its length trailing mist like a comet.
And I rammed it through the wyvern’s serpentine eye.
Its wings faltered as it convulsed. We plummeted together, a tumbling mass of ice, blood, and fire. Its tail whipped against me, spines tearing through leather and skin, but I held fast, driving the frost deeper until the beast’s scream broke into a wet, choking gurgle.
The ground rushed up. At the last second, I wrenched myself free, icewalking to a jagged outcrop as the wyvern slammed into the valley floor. The impact thundered through the earth, bones snapping, fire dying in a hiss of smoke and blood.
I stood above the wreckage, my chest heaving as frost steamed from my skin. My arm burned where its claws had bit into my skin, blood dripping hot against the ice beneath my boots.
But the beast did not rise again.
It was a hollow victory, when another shriek reached my ears right away…sounding in symphony with a rare, panicked scream from my Visionary.
Draven
Another streamof blue fire tore through the dark, streaking straight toward the raven-haired male. I flung up a shield above him, the blue-flames hissing as they poured against the ice, buying Soren just enough time to duck aside.
Nevara’s shriek cut off, replaced by a burst of raw mana that split the air. Shards of fractured starlight spiraled outward like a thousand burning constellations.
“See? No need to panic,” Soren grunted, rolling away from the wyvern’s open maw.
“Spoken like someone who didn’t just see his own death several times over,” she shot back.
He surged to his feet beside her, shoulders squared, his palms ablaze. Crimson fire poured from his fists in molten arcs. Her mana twined with his, star-fire threads weaving through the inferno.
Their combined assault hammered one of the beasts higher, its wings faltering under the onslaught of flame and light.
Which left the second wyvern for me. It plunged lower, jaws gaping, angling for Eryx and Noerwyn. And I went to meet it.
A glint of gleaming black steel caught my attention. Purple sparks erupted from my wife’s dagger as her sister wielded it above her head.
Noerwyn was half sprawled across the rocks like she’d been thrown backward with a gust of wind. She got to her feet, wielding the dagger in one hand and gathering mana in the other. Dirt and debris gathered around her like a chaotic storm, just before she sent it flying into the sky.
