Snow’s breath hitched and her magic recoiled. Her hands dropped to her sides. The killing fire she’d summoned flickered and died, a candle snuffed out by those icy winter gales.
It shouldn’t have been possible, a wyvern speaking in her head as only her dragon could. All of Pyrembri assumed wyverns couldn’t talk at all, much less communicate mind-to-mind as their own dragons did.
And Pyrembri’s own dragons talked to no one but their chosen riders and other dragons. Here a wyvern was, speaking in her mind even though she was not the wyvern’s rider nor would she ever be.
And this wyvern spoke easier than Stormfyre did.
This wyvern spoke as easily as a person did.
Snow’s forehead wrinkled. Glittering with residual heat, her hands hovered beside her hips. Her muscles thrummed with a potent mix of caution and energy. The air alternated between frigid and whispering of spring’s warmth due to Snow’s fire, and both winter’s cleansing aroma and the invigorating scent of an early spring thunderstorm, all mayhem and new life, drifted around her.
The wyvern tipped that snakelike head to the side. Her violet eyes shimmered like the deepest waters of the Great Sea of Everatia did in the moonlight. “Thank you.” Her bell-like voice jingled in Snow’s mind. Gratitude flooded its peaks and valleys.
Snow blinked. Her inner flames sparked in her fingertips, and Stormfyre’s sulfur tingled in her mouth and nose. “Don’t thank me yet.”
That wish for more from earlier, from when she’d ridden Stormfyre for the pure joy of it, reverberated through her.
Something pushed and pulled her toward her enemies.
I must discover what. If it came to it, her dragon-rider magic and her Pyriebral magic could protect her.
Could protect her and kill them.
Probably.
With her dogs and Stormfyre a safe dragon’s length or more behind her, she stalked over the uneven crystalline carpet of shattered ice and snow toward the ebony wyvern curled around its unconscious rider on their small—and getting smaller—mound of melting snow. The ground crunched beneath her.
Crrr-rack! A nugget of ice larger than the rest split beneath her heel, the noise sharp and brittle against the melody of the prairie’s animals free in the wake of the frostnado’s destruction.
Her body tightened, ready to explode and dodge any sudden strike. Her heart hammered at her ribs as if it were a convict beating at the bars of a cell in the depths of Ashdwyn Prison.
But her world settled, and again she trekked toward them. Her exhales puffed out in mists that caught on the afternoon breeze. Her cloak stirred, its soft fur brushing her fingers. It calmed her.
A little.
I think half a dragon’s length is far enough away. I hope. Wind gusted, and she stopped. Flecks of ice from the boughs of the outermost pines of Shadowmist Woods swirled through the air. Like before, they sparkled like ground diamonds and reflected a watery rainbow.
They melted as they fell, bringing with them the cold mint of Wyndaerya. Snow squinted through their glimmering droplets.
Her jaw dropped.
The rider was fine. In many places, singe marks decorated his forest-green tunic, wood-brown pants, and silver jerkin, but there was not one hole or tear. Faint stripes of grayish ash marred that attractive, charming face, with the crinkles around the eyes and mouth that suggested a life of joy and laughter like some foreign courtiers had. No burn adorned his hands or face. Snowflakes dotted the curls of his auburn hair.
His wyvern, however, was another story.
Strong char and scorch marks streaked the wyvern’s hide, lines of angry ruby-red welts and rectangles of flaky black patches. In the wyvern’s otherwise dark blue, purple, and green scales, cracks verged on gashes. A deeper, concerning shade of garnet shone in those slashes.
Snow’s stomach clenched with unwelcome sympathy. Many times, other dragons and their riders had burned Stormfyre and her, sometimes during training.
Often not.
Her agreement with Stepmother meant she and Stormfyre suffered those blows and only minimally—weakly—defended themselves. At least things had improved after officially joining the Guard.
But her magic hadn’t wounded the wyvern like that nor had Stormfyre’s. They hadn’t pierced the protective shield of that frostnado, not enough to injure the wyvern and rider within.
Even if they had, her rider magic wasn’t concentrated enough to leave deep wounds in the shapes of rectangles and lines, like a side swipe of a gale of pure flame. Stormfyre had never been close enough to the wyvern to do so, and Snow hadn’t loosed her Pyriebral fire on the wyvern, not yet.
Only one other force in all the kingdoms could inflict such damage.
The Beloved Breath.
A chill unrelated to winter’s bite raced down her spine. It radiated out to her bare fingers and booted toes.
That couldn’t be true. It couldn’t. Wyverns and their riders couldn’t cross the Breath. That was known, established, carved in stone and inked in the blood of centuries of war and more solid than the earth beneath her feet. The magical barrier’s fiery gusts could claim the lives of even the fire-breathing Pyrembri dragons and their fire-magic-wielding riders such that the Royal Dragon Guard of the Crown of Pyrembri typically entered Wyndaerya through the perilous Shadowmist Woods far beneath the Breath. The journey took several days and sometimes a week due to the dragons’ size, the tight-packed trees of the treacherous forest, and the magical creatures who haunted the dark twisting paths through the bewitched woodland.
Those creatures did not embrace strangers.
Nevertheless, crossing Shadowmist risked less than traversing the Breath, even with traversing the Breath taking only an hour or so and not several full days.
Yet the proof seared the wyvern’s scales. Aside from a direct hit of the hottest dragon fire—or possibly of her own outlawed sun-hot forbidden flames—only assaults from the Breath left flesh looking like cracked, flaking leather.
Somehow, the wyvern and her rider had crossed the Breath.
For the good of Pyrembri, Snow needed to discover how.
Her magic boiling in her fingertips and her head cocked, Snow crept closer to the pair. She eased each boot onto the old snow and ice fragments such that they didn’t so much as groan or creak or grumble.
Of course, the wyvern studied her every step, so perhaps striving for stealth was useless. Still, she avoided startling the beast. The icy mint of Wyndaerya flowed through the air closest to them, along with the burnt ozone of lightning strikes, a lingering hint of the fiery perfume of her and Stormfyre’s magic, and that same strange fresh earthy smell from earlier.
A breeze murmuring of spring, snowmelt, and endless hope rustled through the purplish grass around her boots and calves. Somehow, it pushed her toward them.
Despite everything, the corners of her mouth tipped down with concern for the wyvern.
That concern—and the unwanted desire to help and to heal—pushed her toward them too.
The wyvern bore more than those brutal burns. Lacerations crisscrossed her inky scales like a map of suffering. Many wept crimson blood. Her chest rose and fell in shallow breaths. The wing that wasn’t folded over her back hung off to one side at an unnatural angle. Or at least at an angle that would be unnatural for a dragon. On that side, the wyvern’s leg trembled, likely with pain.
Something about that leg appeared off too. It wasn’t quite at the right angle, or it wouldn’t be for a dragon.
Memories of patching up wounded dragons in The Seven Flames Infirmary during the years following Father’s death flickered through Snow’s mind. Assuming wyvern anatomy and physiology resembled those of dragons, the wyvern’s wing that doubled as an arm was broken. And maybe that leg too.
Were the wyvern a dragon, she might be as unconscious as her rider right now.
How had they created that mighty frostnado, with the wyvern so injured and her rider unconscious?
Unless the rider feigned being oblivious to the world. Wyndaerians loved their dirty little tricks.
As if he heard Snow’s thought, the Wyndaerian rider shifted, and a curly lock of hair the color of autumn leaves kissed by the flames tumbled over his forehead and into his closed eyes.
Her nerves sparked, and goose bumps that had nothing to do with winter prickled over her arms and legs.
The afternoon sunlight, weakening by the minute, shone over him like a tired spotlight. Faint freckles dotted that slightly crooked, mostly straight nose and dusted his high cheekbones, almost a memory of summer. Reddish brown stubble edged his square jaw. Again, those creases around his mouth and eyes shouted of a life thoroughly enjoyed, thoroughly lived, even while he slumbered.
Yes, his was a charming, handsome face, one of someone who smiled easily and laughed often.
One of someone who had known joy, known friendship, known…love.
But that frostnado had been no illusion nor accident. No amount of happy lines could erase that truth. This wounded rider of Wyndaerya was dangerous beyond measure. She must take care around him, even when he was unconscious or seemingly so.
“My name is Nightsong, and we will not hurt you unless you attack us first. I vow it upon my life and that of my rider’s.” The wyvern’s voice like chimes bounced through Snow’s mind.
Sincerity filled it, without a trace of the agony the wyvern must be in.
Again, how did this wyvern speak human words so easily unlike Stormfyre and while so injured?
And how could she speak to Snow, who was not her rider and never would be, at all and without the physical contact Stormfyre and all dragons required?
Snow was nothing to this wyvern, and this wyvern was nothing to her. They were strangers, enemies, creatures of opposing kingdoms locked in eternal war.
Snow thrust her jaw out. “Why shouldn’t we attack you? You are our enemies and you have trespassed into Pyrembri.” Snow pulled upon her raging dragon-rider fire. It churned in her belly and surged into her fingertips.
The forbidden Pyriebral magic, the molten inferno deep within, stirred like a waking dragon. Tendrils of white-hot heat slid into her veins.
Not yet. She wrestled those vicious flames back down.
Wwww-whoooosh. A dragon’s length and then some behind Snow, Stormfyre shoved off the plain. Clumps of old snow exploded beneath her claws. The dragon soared into that perfect cerulean winter sky, and her wings sliced through it in tidy, defiant beats. Her scales flashed purple-blue with none of the worrying gray from earlier. No gray tinted her lighter, lavender underside either.
Once again, the dragon became death and destruction from above.
Through their bond, Stormfyre had sensed Snow’s magic rising, readying for a fight. The dragon must have recovered enough of her fire to feel able to attack again.
Although, Stormfyre was not known for caution.
It’s too soon, Snow’s dragon-rider instinct murmured. Stormfyre might think she could battle them and their ice magic again, but she couldn’t. The dragon’s inner fire needed to build more before Stormfyre could expel it safely.
Snow lifted her bare hand with her fingers splayed wide in the Guard’s signal for anyone airborne to hold their attacks. The cold nipped at her exposed skin like a curious dragon pup, and her rider magic licked at her fingertips. It heated them.
And begged to come out and play.
Above, Stormfyre orbited in slow, easy circles, a predator patrolling her territory. The instant Snow fisted her hand and dropped it, the dragon would divebomb the wounded wyvern and her wounded rider, all teeth and talons and devastating fire.
The dragon would slay their Wyndaerian enemies no matter the cost to herself.
Behind Snow, four paws scraped against and broke through brittle snow. They ripped through half-frozen mud.
It was thunder in her ears.
Excited thunder.
The rich smell of dog drowned out the ice of Wyndaerya and the fire of Pyrembri alike.
Spark, Snow’s rambunctious brindle-and-white dog whom she’d raised when Spark’s mother abandoned the puppy as the runt of the litter two months after Father’s death, bounded forward, toward Snow, all happy enthusiasm. Crushed ice sprayed out behind her.
No, the dog ran past Snow.
Toward the wyvern and her rider.
Driving all her fire down deep, deep, deep, Snow threw herself forward. Her cloak whirled out behind her, and her boots dug into that half-frozen mud.
Her cool fingers brushed against the warm velvet of Spark’s fur.
She drilled them into the dog’s haunches and slammed into the unforgiving earth. Dirt and fragmented snow and ice cascaded out around her. Pain sprang up and around one side of her ribs, but it was nothing.
The dog, the rebellious, carefree, foolish dog, wriggled out of her hold.
And sprinted toward that evil, death-dealing wyvern, the one who claimed peace but wielded ice bitter and sharp as death.
The dog, her beloved Spark, sprinted toward her doom.