Page 72 of Phixmery

She stretches her long, muscular leg out and uses her long head to gesture to her back.

“Nero?” I squeak.

He flies onto my shoulder, pride streaming through him. “I’m right here. Go on, I’ll follow. Imagine that! I get to take to the skies with my fae.” He pauses and then adds, “Don’t lose my eyeball. It’s my first one!”

A nervous chuckle escapes me as I slowly climb up Vasari’s leg, up onto the soft spot between her shoulder blades, gripping one of the thick spikes along her spine.

“Are you ready?” she asks.

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I reply, shocked at the turn of events that today has taken.

She lets out a deafening roar, along with the hundreds of dragons surrounding us. The mountain shakes with the force of it. She takes a running leap off the platform and her wings catch her as she glides to the opening, running through the tunnels in a fraction of the time it took me to walk it. She leaps again and this time she doesn’t touch the ground, her massive powerful wings carrying us up towards the opening at the top of the mountain.

Nero flies excitedly around me as I scream my lungs out.

“You should close your mouth unless you’re planning on catching bugs,” he teases. “Although, they are a great source of protein.”

“The feathered rat is correct,” Vasari states as she breaks through the peak, and I barely hear Nero’s complaint over the sight. It’s exhilarating and terrifying. Absolutely breathtaking.

My knuckles are white as I grip her spike, my thighs straining from the pressure of staying on. That’s when I notice she’s heading straight to Phixmery where most of year one is waiting post-trials with their new factions and bonded beasts.

Shit. I’m riding a fates-damned purple dragon and the implications of what this means for the realm of Damorleia hits me.

Fuck.

“Relax Lost One, I know what I’m doing. It’s about time we are made known again,” Visari growls as she beats her powerful wings.

Other dragons are pouring out from the castle behind us, landing around the Phixmery War Academy for fates know what. Visari keeps her leisurely pace and I’m not sure if it’s so I don’t fall off and die, or if she’s making a statement.

She chuffs and it vibrates through my body. “Why can’t it be both?” she asks as she lands on top of the battlement wall, which cracks under her enormous presence.

“Well I’m glad you’re not trying to kill us with flying…” I mutter as I peer over her back, staring down into the courtyard below where everyone who made it through The Choosing is staring wide-eyed at me. Even the Lords’ jaws are slightly slacked. Something tells me escaping is going to be a bit harder than I expected.

A terrifying roar sounds and my head snaps up, diverting my gaze from the training yard below to the skies in front of me where a massive white dragon soars towards us with unfathomable speed, with a rider perched on his back. I know it’s him because this beast is the exact one from my dreams—there’s no mistaking it.

My dream dragon is real.

And then everything goes to shit.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

EVISDOR RIDES HARD AS WE head to Phixmery, his sleek white scales glistening in the sun as I urge him to go faster. It’s been years since I left my home, this being the second time in recent months, but to get to her, to save her from a certain fate, I just hope I get there in time.

I told her to make sure she came to me, and she didn’t. She didn’t heed my warnings, and if the realm finds out that she’s back, it will be a mess. They’re not ready to know. She’ll be targeted because of her bloodline, because of who her mother is. My sources have told me that the Lords of the three outer provinces will be making an appearance, and if they get to her before I do, if they do anything… then I’ll raze the land, damn the consequences.

My dragon’s voice, like silk, drifts down our bond, the bond I’ve shared with him ever since I found him in the Elskan Mountain’s when he was just a hatchling. To this day we still have no idea how he got there. “We will make it. Have faith in me, Aemon. I’m the fastest flier in Damorleia.”

I lean forward, deeper into his saddle, as he speeds, straight and true. A trip on dragonback that should have taken me four days on a regular beast, takes only a fraction of the time. Having left early this morning, hours before dawn, I should make it there in just a few more hours.

Fates fucking damn it, why does she have to be so stubborn?

Maybe the message would have been better received if I was in my human form, instead of displaying my dreamself as my dragon. But after years of trying to find her, knowing deep in my heart she wasn’t dead, that the plan her mother set forth had worked, I didn’t give up when the others did. Although they didn’t know what I knew. The Queen trusted the secret with my own mother who shared the knowledge with me after the kingdom fell; the plan to get their only daughter out alive. I suspect she was hiding from me, from us, when she was supposed to come to Vathia when it was safe, many years later. But it never happened.

So I stayed in my dragon form so she wouldn’t hide from me any longer, even if she didn’t know who I was. Or maybe she suspected.

I had hoped it meant that wherever she was, she was safe. But the past year, her dreams have been nothing but torment. I was shocked all those years ago, when I was pulled into a dream—a nightmare—with her. The gruesome dream had shaken me to my core, so I created our dreamscape of our favorite place in the mountains, a place where she could rest easily. So imagine my surprise when our dreams switched from lying there peacefully in each other’s silence, to plans of running, to her speaking with me. And when she mentioned Phixmery, I did some digging to find out where she had been all these years through my spies getting their hands on Phixmery documents. I went to Shalo, and pieced together some of what was done to her. The village has since been razed to the ground. Only the females and children were allowed to flee, but somehow, that slimy village leader escaped. And when I find him, he’s going to wish he died with all the others.

For now, I’ll just have to be content with getting her. It’s risky, something I shouldn’t even be doing. But if she goes down, I’m going with her. I swore I would keep her safe.

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