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  “Dima, don’t—” Raff yelped.

  “I’ve got this, Raff!” I shook the frosty hair out of my eyes. “You just run, okay?”

  “Dima, there’s—”

  But once again, his words were cut off by a screeching demonic hiss. Two hot plumes of steam shot out of the darkness, followed by a dusky gray head the size of a full-grown hogsteed’s entire body. Black horns rose from the top of her skull and twisted back down into deadly points protecting the ear slits on the side of her head. Set between her suspicious yellow eyes, and ringed by a thick ridge of sharp scales, was an obsidian skull gem, glimmering in the sunlight.

  Tremors racked my body to the point of convulsions, rattling my sword like a child’s pitiful tin toy. The dragon’s thick, scaly lips peeled back, revealing rows of impossibly sharp teeth that parted to let her forked tongue taste the air.

  “Well?” I demanded, thrusting my sword forward. “You called?”

  Instantly, the dragon puffed out all its scales, making it appear almost twice its original size. Her pupils contracted into razor-thin slits and her irises clouded over a bright, bloody red. Her head pulled back on her long serpentine neck, and cold air rushed past me from behind as she sucked the wind into her lungs.

  “Dima! That’s not your dragon!” Raff screamed.

  A cloud of fire erupted from the dragon’s mouth, and a shallow wave of water swept over my boots and poured off the edge of the landing. The dragon stepped forward onto the dark black rock, now void of ice or snow, and unfurled two black wings, tall enough and wide enough to completely seal the cave.

  Chapter Six

  “Raff!” I screamed, but if he answered, it was lost behind the gray dragon’s black wings.

  The dragon reared up on her hind legs, flexing the four long black claws on each of her gnarled front feet. Her belly—as wide as my hut back home—was double-plated with thick scales my puny sword could never hope to penetrate.

  My eyes flashed to the monster’s right wing. As large as it was, the dark, taut skin bore no protective scales. If I could just make it past the snapping jaws, I could slice my way through to Raff.

  The dragon lifted her head and bellowed, blowing three distinct puffs of hot steam toward the crest of Drakken Peak. Smoke signals. Uh-oh.

  I answered with my pale imitation of her bellow and charged forward, grateful now that she—or, he, I noticed with no small amount of horror as I drew closer—had cleared the landing. My soaked boots weighed me down, but even so, I managed to reach his wing before he lowered his massive jaws. I swung my sword over my shoulder, prepared to slash a hole in his wing—

  Four clawed toes wrapped around my middle, yanking me into the air. The sword clattered to the ground and grew tinier and tinier as the second dragon lifted me higher and higher over Drakken Peak.

  And Raff!

  “Put me down,” I screamed, kicking wildly and beating my fists against the brown toes, where the scales were thinner, like those on a rookster’s feet.

  “Now?” The familiar voice appeared inside my head, and the claws loosened their grip.

  “No!” I shrieked, clamping my elbows down on the toe pressed against my heart. “Not now!”

  The dragon tightened her hold. “You fool. Why did you bring a sword?”

  “Because you took my friend!” I punched her toe again. “We have to go back for him!”

  “Impossible. We’re already late.”

  Rage exploded in my chest, clouding out reason. I ducked my head and sank my teeth into the joint of the dragon’s toe. On the outside, the dragon made a choppy huffing sound, but inside my head she… chuckled.

  “Very well.”

  And with that, she banked to the left, finally giving me a glimpse of her dark purple wing. The sky whirled around me, dumping my stomach into my throat. I scrunched my eyes shut before vertigo could knock me out. Cold air whizzed by my face as the dragon sped back toward—hopefully—the Peak.

  “I’ll take care of Huskell. You have sixty-seven seconds to retrieve your friend from my nest.”

  Her foot opened with a quick flick and dumped me face first into a snow bank. Rolling over and shaking the snow out of my eyes, my breath caught in my lungs. The dragon—my dragon?—was half the size of the big gray, but what she lacked in size she made up for with speed. Her lithe brown body sailed under the larger dragon’s snapping jaws, slapping him across the nose with the four short horns protruding from the tip of her graceful tail.

  The giant dragon, Huskell she’d called him, lunged at the female’s nearest purple wing, but she tilted sideways and zoomed away. Huskell dropped onto all fours, drawing his wings against his body as he lumbered farther out onto the landing.

  “Dima, go!”

  Shivering and soaked, I lunged to my feet, wet boots skidding on the landing that was already icing over. Huskell’s tail—as long as four cindragons—swept across the ground toward me, but I vaulted over it, landing hard on my side and rolling into the cave.

  “Dima!” Raff shouted. “Over here!”

  I ran blindly in the direction of his voice, my boots crunching something on the floor with every step.

  “Down here!” Raff called.

  My eyes began adjusting to the dim light, and I could just make out a ring of smooth boulders in front of me—a dragon’s nest! I raced over and leapt, sliding right back off the boulder’s slick, wet top.

  “There’s some sort of slime…” Raff said, his voice queasy.

  I leaned against the gross rock, furiously blinking my eyes. From this direction, the cave mouth wasn’t dark, but blindingly white. The gray dragon had vanished.

  “Hold on,” I said in the most reassuring voice I could muster.

  There! Over to the right, a large, stripped clean rib cage leaned against the nest. A hogsteed probably. Hopefully not one of Devin’s that I depended on to get Raff home after all this. I clambered up the ribs and flung my body onto the closest boulder just as the skeleton collapsed into a pile of bones. I lay there, draped over the slimy rock, recovering from having all the wind knocked out of me in my landing.

  “Dima!” Raff shouted, his voice tinged with wonder and joy.

  I opened my eyes to see his grinning face tilted up at me. The dragon’s nest was about four feet deeper on the inside than it was on the outside, and a carpet of bone shards lay under Raff’s feet. Blood smudge his forehead, just beneath his black hair that stood straight up where he’d obviously been anxiously running his hands through it.

  “Grab my hand!” I said, reaching down to him. How many of my sixty-seven seconds were left?

  Raff jumped and missed. “It’s too high!”

  “Wait,” I grunted, wiggling out of the satchel that had miraculously remained around my neck and shoulder during my flight. I swung it down to him, looping the strap once around my wrist.

  This time when he jumped, he caught the bag.

  “Hold on tight,” I ordered.

  I pushed myself backward, letting gravity and slime do the rest. The weight of my body sliding to the ground yanked Raff onto the top of the boulder. One more yank and he tumbled down in a heap of bony limbs and actual bones.

  Gripping his elbow, I tugged him onto his feet. For a second we just stood there, staring each other, both of us streaked with pale green dragon slime. Then we threw our arms around each other, laughing hysterically because sometimes that’s all you can when your life is so absurdly in danger.

  “You did it,” he whispered.

  “Hey, I wasn’t writing Pali that letter.”

  He pushed me away. “I mean, you did it. You climbed Drakken Peak, Dima. That’s—”

  “Really neat,” I said, grabbing his hand. “Time to go.”

  But when we skidded out onto the landing, our ride was nowhere to be seen. Gruesome images filled my mind of the big gray dragon’s jaws closing around my dragon’s purple wing, flinging her to the ground like that poor boy’s foot.

  I squinted at the sky in all
directions. Empty.

  It had been way more than sixty-seven seconds.

  “Dima, let’s just go down the steps,” Raff said, pulling on my hand.

  “Don’t!” the voice boomed inside my head.

  The brown dragon shot up from below the landing and sailed over our heads, landing on all four feet behind us. We whirled to face her, and my dragon and I locked eyes for the first time.

  Hers were yellow like the gray one’s had been at first, and I had to wonder if they had the same ability to turn blood red. But they were set farther apart on the sides of her elegant head, giving her a less predatory look even if that wasn’t true. No horns graced her skull, only two curving lines of upright scales extending from just above her eyes to the base of her neck. In the center of her forehead, there was an indentation where her skull gem ought to be...but wasn’t.

  “You’re hurt,” I said.

  The dragon cocked her head and blinked her big yellow eyes. I touched my forehead and then pointed at hers.

  “No, it’s fine,” she said inside my mind, while on the outside she sighed heavily. “Get on.”

  She lowered her long graceful neck and folded her powerful wings.

  “Bareback?” I gulped, eyeing her rough scales.

  The dragon made a show of swinging her large head from side to side. “Have you brought a saddle?”

  “Well, no…”

  She snorted two bursts of steam from her nostrils. “Then yes, bareback. Get on.”

  “Um, Dima?” Raff asked, frightened eyes flicking between me and the dragon. “What’s, uh, what’s going on here?”

  My brows furrowed because it seemed pretty obvious to me, but then I realized—only I could hear her speak. To Raff, she was just the terrifying monster that had carried him into the sky and left him in a nest of bones and dragon slime—whatever that was.

  Clutching his arm, I pulled him forward. “She says we have to get on.”

  Raff and the dragon recoiled at the same time, both of them shouting “No!” in their own way. The dragon bowed her head and shook it, scratching her claws against the icy landing.

  “Only you can ride, Dima.”

  My mouth dropped. “You can’t expect me to leave him here.”

  Raff stepped back. “It’s fine, really. I’ll walk.”

  “Don’t be a baby.” I rolled my eyes at him and then pointed at the dragon. “And you don’t be a—” I bit my tongue. Probably shouldn’t call a dragon that.

  The dragon flexed her claws and swept her spiked tail across the landing. “I didn’t choose him.”

  I stepped forward until I could see the interior of the dragon’s nostrils, smoldering like hot coals. “You chose him when you used him as bait to make me climb the Peak. Now you will give him a ride home.”

  Raff laughed nervously. “Dima, even I know she can’t take me all the way to Outer Lanthe. They only leave the Range when—”

  “When they’re setting villages like ours on fire?” I glared at the dragon. “Have you ever been to a place called Pithe?”

  The dragon snorted. “Dragons are only given one choice in life. Who rides.”

  I chose to ignore her non-answer about Pithe because a slow smile was spreading across my face. “Then you admit that a dragon’s rider makes the final decisions?”

  The dragon lifted her facial scales and hissed, thumping her tail against the ground. Then, with another angry burst of steam, she turned her head away. “Get on. Both of you.”

  Grinning triumphantly, I pulled Raff forward.

  But he dug in his heels. “Dima, I don’t think I shou—”

  Fire seared my back in the same instant a furious bellow shook the Peak, dislodging several small boulders. Screaming, I shoved Raff toward my dragon as she curled her spiked tail over her back like a sandstinger. Black burn marks streaked the back of Raff’s tunic, and the stench of burnt hair filled my nostrils.

  “Get on!” my dragon ordered, baring her teeth at whatever beast lurked behind us. “Between my wings!”

  “Her back!” I shouted into Raff’s ear, both my hands on his back so he couldn’t turn around. “Between her wings!”

  Raff didn’t offer any more arguments. He leaped onto the dragon’s neck, using her lifted scales as handholds to crawl over her angled shoulder blades and into the shallow dip behind them where her wings met her back. I scrambled after him, the sharp scales cutting into my hands as the dragon swung her neck and the air filled with the sharp clack of snapping fangs.

  Raff turned around on the dragon’s back, offering me his hand. Judging from the blanched pallor of his brown face, I probably really didn’t want to know what was behind me. My fingers locked with Raff’s and he heaved me over the dragon’s undulating shoulders into that low area between her unfurling wings.

  I spun around, squeezing my eyes shut so I wouldn’t see our attacker and freeze as any sane person would. My legs struggled to straddle the dragon’s wide back, but at least there were no scales under my hands, only tough, leathery dragon skin. Raff slid in right behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist the way he had held Pali on the cindragon, but I could tell his death grip was for his benefit and not mine.

  “Just like a cindragon!” I shouted over the screeching and hissing of the dragons.

  “Just like!” Raff groaned, burying his face between my shoulder blades.

  My dragon stumbled backward, squealing in pain, rocking Raff and me in our precarious seat. My eyes flew open, needing to search for something to hold onto.

  The head, neck, and shoulders of the black-horned brute Huskell loomed over the edge of the landing, dragon blood dripping from his mouth full of razor-sharp fangs. Raw flesh glistened on the side of my dragon’s neck as she continued backing up, making room for the monster to claw its way onto the ledge.

  “Grab the straps,” my dragon said, sounding pained even inside my head.

  Looking down, I saw two thick leather straps had been sewn onto the dragon’s flesh, one behind each shoulder. The Legionnaires were always pictured riding their dragons with elaborate armored saddles, but these must have been installed for bareback emergencies. Like this. I pushed my concerns about what must have happened to this dragon’s previous rider out of my mind. For now.

  “Fly!” I screamed, gripping the straps.

  The dragon’s great wings flapped downward, lifting us off the landing with a stomach-flipping lurch. Huskell lunged upward, snapping his jaws at my dragon’s exposed belly but she soared over his head. A sickening crunch came from behind us, and my head snapped over my shoulder to see what damage he had done now.

  Thick black dragon blood oozed from what had been his left eye, and he flailed his head from side to side, emitting an agonized mixture of wailing and hissing. My dragon flicked her tail, as though shaking the gore from her spikes.

  Facing forward again, my breath left my lungs—in the best possible way.

  Stars glistened on the eastern horizon while the sun hovered to the west, painting the vast expanse of sky in between in brilliant shadows of orange, pink, purple, and blue. Below us lay the endless fog, but also the craggy points of dozens, maybe hundreds of smaller mountains in the Drakken Range.

  “Raff! Open your eyes!” I shouted, nudging my elbow into his ribs.

  “Am I going to regret it?”

  “Never!” I whooped, daring to rise off the dragon’s back just a little for a better view.

  She flew with her injured neck straight, head held low. Her scales lay tight against her skin, except for the ridges curving over her skull, which I could now see extended the length of her neck and onto her shoulder blades where they ended in two sharp, horn-like points. Her dark purple wings glittered with iridescence up close, and a hook claw protruded from the center joint on each side.

  Raff’s face eased off my back, and a moment later, he sucked in a sharp breath. Grinning, I turned to see his face. The wind ruffled his black hair, and his brown eyes shone with wonder. His grip on
my waist loosened and he leaned back, tilting his face toward the colorful canvas stretched over our heads.

  A smile spread across his face, filling out his hollow cheeks. When he lowered his head, tears tracked through the grime around his nose. “Pali would love this.”

  My heart stuttered at the very idea of my sister trying to keep her balance on the back of a beast like this while it soared a thousand feet above the ground. But at the same time, if I could give her any gift in the world that wasn’t just another dose of medicine, I would love to give her this.

  “I know,” I said, and his grin grew even wider.

  “You know this changes everything?” he shouted over the wind whipping at our bodies.

  I looked forward, at the dragon’s magnificent head bobbing gently on the air current. This was impossible. Not just one, but two peasants, sitting on a back that had only ever been ridden by the strongest, richest Nobles? That had to mean something.

  Something big.

  Something more than just training to be a soldier in the Empire’s endless wars.

  Chapter Seven

  Wispy clouds floated across a moon as yellow as the dragon’s eyes. I had no idea how far we had traveled from the Peak, but I did know we had slowly been descending for quite some time. If I craned my neck, I could see the dragon’s shadow gliding across the white fog that covered everything just below us.

  Raff’s head kept bumping my shoulder as he nodded off. Each time I nudged him awake, he promised to stay that way so I wouldn’t have to worry about him slipping, but it had happened with such increasing frequency that I finally forced him to squeeze into the loop of my satchel’s strap with me, just in case.

  Frankly, I found his inability to keep his eyes open a little annoying since he had spent the day sitting in a dragon’s nest while I climbed the highest mountain in all the land. But he was two years younger, I reminded myself, still technically a kid. When we dropped him off in Pithe, I intended to tell him he could move out of the Burn and into my family’s hut, as long as he promised to stay on my sleeping mat. He had more than earned his share of the gemlinks I’d be able to send home once I reached the Legion Academy.