Page 444 of Kingdoms of Night

He hadn’t thought it would be this bad. But apparently, they were all more doomed than he’d thought.

Tanis leapt off the bed and raced for the door before he could stop her. The flash of her body was faster than he’d thought she could move, given her state.

“Tanis!” he shouted, getting up to go after her, but pausing when his sister held out her arm to stop him.

“We have to prepare, brother.” Her eyes were dark with old wounds. “Just like old times.”

Their clan had fought with many others for years before she had been taken. But this was different. They didn’t have to fight right now. Not when there was so much for them to preserve.

Rowan shook his head in denial of what she had said. “Listen to me, Aster. She’s pregnant with what could become the last of the dragon babes. We have to keep her safe or all the dragons will be gone from this realm. Do you understand what I’m saying? There will be no one left.”

Her cheeks paled. “You think we cannot win?”

“I’ve seen the memories in the crystals. I know what they did to the dragons in Umbra, and I know there is no one who can fight them. If there are any dragons left in Umbra, they are hiding the same as we are. This is the last stand, Aster.”

“What do you say we should do, then?” She swallowed hard. “Run? Like cowards?”

“Run like the intelligent people we are. We see the future and we know that the only thing we can do right now is run so that we may fight later.” He cupped the side of her face and drew their foreheads together. “We have to protect her, Aster. Now let me go find her.”

“I’ll gather up the things we’ll need.” She shuddered in his grip, but then reached up to hold his face in her hand as well. “Meet me beyond the sapphire dragon pools. There is a pass through there that will lead us into mountains where no dragons live. The cold will be blistering as winter comes.”

“We will survive, as we always have.”

Rowan released his sister and hoped that he was right. He couldn’t lose both of them.

He couldn’t.

CHAPTEREIGHT

CHAPTER 8

Tanis ran down the steps to the shore, where she knew the others were waiting. They were so insistent upon making some grand last stand, but didn’t they know what they were risking?

She’d seen it in Rowan’s expression. He recognized what was about to happen if the dragons fought. They would be the last. Dragonkind would disappear from this realm because there would be no one left to hatch the eggs. Their children would suffer while they waited for a heat hot enough to bring them into this world, but that meant that they would never see the light of day. Not until the end of times.

Breathing hard and her lungs aching in her chest, she sprinted down to the water where all the dragons remained. Not a single one had left. Not even the gold dragons who had come from their homes deep in the sands.

“What are you doing?” she shouted, even though she knew her arguments would fall on deaf ears. “We cannot stop them!”

She skidded to a halt at the foot of a crimson dragon, sand spraying on his toes from her movement.

He looked down at her with a soft expression in his eyes. “Little Memory Keeper, you are almost unrecognizable.”

She didn’t care. So what if she looked like a mortal right now? They were all supposed to look this way as the ships approached them. They should hide just as she was so that their kind survived this attack.

And yet, here they all were. Standing on the beach and looking out at their end that approach all too quickly.

“You have to change too,” she said, shouting so that the others could hear her. “You have to at least try to hide.”

The crimson dragon lowered his head and stared at her. She saw her own reflection in his massive eye and the terror on her face paralyzed her.

“We are the last dragons,” he said. She heard his words repeated as the others prepared themselves for the ship to hit the shore. “We will not run. We will not hide. Our home needs to be protected, and though there are few of us, we will fight until our last breath.”

“They are going to kill you. I have seen what they did to our brothers and our sisters. I know what is possible and what they are bringing on those ships. If you do not run, you will all die.” She placed both her hands underneath his eye and willed him to understand her. She needed him to know how dangerous and horrible this was going to be for all of them.

He lifted his head and shook free from her touch. “Then we will die knowing we did all we could to save our home.”

That wasn’t... that wasn’t what they were doing.

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