Daybreak (24 page)

He felt it in his toes when the earth began to shake again. It seemed to quiver, moaning, until it finally gave way to a hum. The song was so low that Kael more felt than heard it — an utterance that rattled his chest and made the vein in his neck trill like bowstring. It pressed down upon him, put strain on his knees. Just when he thought he could bear the weight no longer, the song fell silent.

“What are you waiting for?” Ulric screamed, his voice crackling above them. “Kill him! Kill him now!”

The clang of a giant’s sword rent the air and a glowing red line carved its way across the closest bit of shadow. It crackled like flame and screeched until Kael thought his ears might burst. Then quite suddenly, it stopped.

Two fires roared to life before him — two molten cores of flame. They burned with such a piercing yellow light that Kael felt their heat stabbing in the backs of his eyes. He looked at their middles, trying to find relief from the light.

Instead, he found something that stopped his breath.
 

Black crevices opened up in the middle of each eye — bottomless cracks hemmed on either side by dancing flame. They shone like the surface of a quiet pond: Kael saw himself gaping back in their reflection. The cracks narrowed to cut out his fists, his shoulders, until only his face and chest remained …

Oh, no.

Oh,
no
.

Even when the cloud of ash parted around its curved horns and smoldering muzzle, even when its entire scaly head slid forward to within an arm’s reach of his face, Kael couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t quite grasp it.

Somehow, a monstrous black dragon stood before him.

Then he saw the glowing collar around its neck and knew, with a realization that made ice crust along the tips of his fingers, what this meant — what it meant for this battle, for the wildmen …

What it meant for the Kingdom.

“Kill him!”

Kael wasn’t afraid of the dragon’s flame: he’d once reached inside Kyleigh’s fires and never felt the heat. He knew the dragonscale armor could protect him. So he planted his feet and prepared himself as the dragon’s jaw cracked open.
 

A molten red tongue whipped lazily between teeth the size of pike blades, but no fire blossomed behind it. Kael’s hair stood on end as the dragon’s breath pressed against him and he realized that its mouth was coming closer: not to burn, but to feast — to crush, devour, or swallow entirely whole. Kael didn’t know which it would be, but it didn’t matter.

If he wanted to live, he had to move.

Kael threw himself to the ground, gasping when the dragon’s chin scraped across him. The pointed scales at its base dragged down his back. A large chunk of his armor broke away, peeled aside by something stronger.
 

He tried not to panic. He scrambled away on hand and knee until he could pull himself back to his feet, all of his concentration bent on repairing his armor.

The dragon’s head rose behind him. Its shadow eclipsed his boots even after Kael tried to dart away. It was simply too massive, its reach too great.

“Kill him!
Kill him
!”

Ulric’s voice grew frenzied as the dragon’s head snapped down. Kael felt the air hiss away from its chin, felt the pressure of its breath upon the back of his neck. He threw himself again, made one final, desperate lunge —

The screech of steel, an earth-rattling roar and the dragon’s shadow jerked away. Kael flipped over in time to see the monster arch its neck towards the sky. An enraged hum made the pebbles on the earth beside him bounce in panic. The dragon hummed again and this time, a white bolt fell from the sky in answer — knocking its great head aside with a roar that made Kael’s heart pound in answer. 

It was Kyleigh.

You dare to strike me, she-dragon
?
You dare to fight
?

The scales across Kyleigh’s back bunched together tightly at the power in his voice. She’d been stuck inside that cave for what seemed like an eternity, waiting for the black dragon to appear.
 

Her ears still rang with the memories of Silas’s yowling threats. He’d roared at her until he went hoarse, slapped her scales until he bruised his paws. But her plan had worked: Gwen had been troubled enough by Silas’s disappearance that she’d readied the wildmen for battle.

Now they beat against Midlan with a fury unmatched by anything she’d ever seen. The wildmen in the Cleft were so maddened by the fight that they didn’t seem to notice the enormous black dragon crouched behind them.

But the warriors in Thanehold had certainly noticed.

She turned her back on the black dragon, sailing in a wide arc along the path of the wind. As she prepared to fall, she saw that the warriors had abandoned the ramparts and rushed inside the keep. She wagered they would return in a few moments — armed with their dragonsbane weapons.

She had to move quickly.

A part of her cringed as she plummeted from the clouds. It begged her not to fight the black dragon, screamed that she would be crushed in an instant if she struck him again. His eyes were already fixed upon her — she didn’t have to fight him.

But Kyleigh didn’t listen.

Her wings folded tightly at her sides as she plunged towards the earth. The sky screamed past her; the wind shrieked inside her ears. Though the black dragon grew larger every second, she hardly glanced at him: all the power of her eyes was locked upon that stubborn man from the mountains.

Kael was all right. He was covered in gore from battle and ash from his dive, but he wasn’t wounded. The slits in his helmet were turned towards her. She strained to hear the words he shouted, tried to etch his every detail into her mind.

In the second before she struck, Kyleigh’s gaze shot to the black dragon. She had to move quickly — not because she feared the wildmen would kill him … but because she wanted to kill him, herself.

Her claws snapped open; she aimed for his head. And as she struck, a furious song burst from her throat:
Harm my mate, and you answer to me
!

The black dragon growled as her claws glanced his face.
 

Kyleigh swore. Her wings burst open and she beat them for the clouds. A ringing pain ran from the tips of her claws and through the bones of her hands. She felt as if she’d just slung her fist into a castle wall.

It all came back to her in a rush. The black dragon’s scales were far too thick: he was built for war, armored enough to be able to defend his lands against other males. The teeth and claws he wielded were powerful enough to rip through anything.
 

That’s what her dragon half had been screaming about. It wasn’t that he didn’t deserve to be beaten — it was that she
couldn’t
beat him.

“Stop her, beast! Stop the Dragongirl!”

Kyleigh couldn’t even pause to grin at Ulric’s panicked screams. Spells burst upwards into the clouds: she heard them whistling towards her and dodged them with ease. But the one thing she couldn’t dodge was that great, black beast of a dragon. And in half a moment, he’d burst through the clouds.

Her scales bunched again as he spewed flame across her. His breath was a final warning: a promise that if she didn’t turn away now, he would slaughter her. She waited until the bright yellow had raged across her vision before she fired back.

Flames burst from her lungs and roared up her throat. They spilled past her tongue and directly into his burning eyes. It was a good shot — and she knew by how he roared that it would cost her dearly.

So she flew for the mountains. 

The jagged peaks were difficult to navigate even on clearer days. With the clouds hanging so low across their tops, she hoped the black dragon would have a difficult time catching her. If she was lucky, he might even strike a cliff face and end this whole mess of a fight.

She wove in and out of the peaks, his breath boiling on her tail. His great wings turned him slowly, but he was clever: he seemed able to sense which peak she would go around next, seemed to know which path she would take to reach it. Soon his great head had eclipsed her tail and she knew it was only a matter of time before he clamped down. In a panic, she headed straight for a crack between the peaks.

Its walls were so narrow that she nearly got stuck between them. She folded her wings tightly and scrambled across the last hundred paces of wall before she plunged out of the other side and into the air beyond —

A darkened flash, a searing pain, a force so strong it knocked her off her wings. Kyleigh tumbled from the sky, bouncing and crashing along the gushing vein of a waterfall — blinded by a mix of frosted water and her own fiery blood. She opened her wings and landed clumsily in the shallow edge of an icy pool. The clouds were gray and silent above her, but she knew the black dragon was coming.
 

Her face stung badly. She didn’t know how much of it was left, but she didn’t have time to worry.

A ledge protruded from beneath the spray of the falls. She dragged herself into her human form and stumbled towards it on two legs — through the frozen wet and into the dark relief of a shallow cave. 

Though the waters roared inside her ears, she still breathed too loudly. Harbinger’s song was hushed as she drew him from his sheath. He sat firmly in her grip and his smooth weight calmed her. Blood slid down her nose and off her chin as she waited. It struck the frozen water on the floor and disappeared into a cloud of steam, hissing as it cooled. 

Her breath caught inside her throat as the sky went dark for a moment. The black dragon’s mighty wings made the pines screech just outside the cave. But Kyleigh didn’t move. 

Long minutes passed when she did nothing more than stand and listen. She strained to hear above the bellowing of the falls, tried to sift through the nearly-overpowering scent of her blood to catch even the slightest hint of the dragon’s coming. He would find her — of that, she was certain. Her dragon half whispered it was only a matter of moments, now. It urged her to be brave.

So when she saw his shadow approaching a second time, she set her feet and prepared to meet him.

A man’s form slithered in behind the falls. His figure seemed to tremble as he approached — the thousands of rushing droplets that spewed from the rocks gave his head and shoulders the dancing life of flame. He towered above her, standing easily at a giant’s height. The shadow paused just outside, silent as a wraith behind the curtain of water. 

Waiting.

A red line bloomed across his throat. His collar glowed and hissed like the noise of a sword’s blade grating against stone. Then he moved.

Icy water rushed across his body in a torrent: it forced his head downward and flattened his dark crop of hair against his face. Crystal veins snaked down his bare shoulders and chest. They bumped across the lines carved into his middle — lines topped by thin ridges of blackened scales.

More scales covered his knees and the tops of his toes. She traced them upwards back to his fingers, and saw the full backs of his hands were entirely covered in a shield of shining black. Deadly spurs twisted up from his elbows.

His chin hung against his chest and a shadow cloaked his face — one that seemed to be made darker by his collar’s molten glow. His breaths were deep and practiced. They rumbled inside his chest as if he’d drawn them in for a thousand years, until the labor had worn his innards smooth.

The air between them sharpened. He was going to attack.
 

Kyleigh swung Harbinger for his middle, prepared to fight to her death. But his hand shot out and grasped her wrist in a vice. He slammed her against the wall so forcefully that Harbinger fell from her grasp. The stone behind her knuckles broke with a crack.

He was going to kill her. He was going to crush her where she stood —Kyleigh felt this warning tremble along every string of his muscle, heard it in the collar’s screech. Still, she fought.

Her fist collided with his middle. She struck him again and again, hoping to stumble him backwards — but he never so much as twitched. Even when she swung for his chin, his head never moved. She stomped on his toes.
 

Nothing.

His grip only tightened … the warning grew fiercer. Pain wracked her wound and made the insides of her ears go hot. Her fist struck him feebly, now. She doubted if he even felt it.

Then all at once, the trembling stopped. The warning grew faint.

Though the collar still glowed about his neck, the anger was gone — whooshing like air through an opened door. And in the silence it left behind, he drew a ragged breath.

“This pain the spellweavers bring upon me … it’s nearly unbearable,” he rumbled. The hand that held her wrist to the wall trembled slightly, and he leaned against her. “I bear it only because I know a much greater pain.”

His fingers snaked about her wrist. His grip wasn’t strangling. If anything, the way he held her seemed almost … desperate. It was as if he feared to let her go.
 

When he spoke again, his voice was hollow: “But had I known that to suffer in this way would bring me to your side once more, I would have suffered it sooner. I would have taken on this weaker flesh long ago. I would have borne my humiliation with pride. There’s not a shred of my soul I wouldn’t have gladly torn away to see you again, my heart.”

Kyleigh froze.

Dark memories glided behind her eyes and drifted away, their meanings hidden well within their shadowy flesh. There was a reason the black dragon seemed so familiar, why his voice made pictures flash inside her head.

A part of her had known him, once … and perhaps it’d even loved him …

Deep inside the quiet black of her memories, something stirred. It drifted from the waves and wriggled tentatively towards the shore, but Kyleigh shoved it back.
 

She didn’t care about who this dragon was, or who he might’ve been. It didn’t matter what her two souls had done before: their pasts
belonged
in the depths. No, this new life was the only thing that concerned her now. The things she’d done as
Kyleigh
were the things that deserved the light.