Page 66 of A Reign of Roses
Guiltwas what punched through my gut.
All this time I’d fought to protect Arwen. But she was stronger than I’d given her credit for. She’d fought through an entire kingsguard to get to me. She’d freed us both. And I’d almost caged the bird I loved—had nearly clipped her wings. If we made it free from these mercenaries alive, I’d apologize for that.
I’d apologize for a lot of things.
Though I didn’t think I’d get the chance. At least a dozen creatureshad taken to the night sky behind us—harpies, manticores, sphinxes—scales and beaks and forked tongues lashing and whipping through the ether, high above the plumes of smog that covered the walled city.
A wretched, raging ball of fire whizzed past my hind leg, and though it missed, the heat still singed my talons.
My full-blooded Fae dragon form was every bit as powerful as I’d hoped, with a lengthier wingspan and sharper claws, and I was almost certain the incendiary ability to breathe fire. I could taste ash and flame in my lungs as if they were forged from my esophagus…
And when a foul, ghoulish rooster with long, scaled dragon legs—a cockatrice—squawked past and dove for Arwen, I reared my head back and gave my new lungs a try.
White-hot fire erupted from between my fangs. The cockatrice had no chance of retaliation. Its feathered crest and fierce beak sizzled in an instant, devoured by flames and reduced to cinders that rained down on the vast city below us. Arwen held tight to my ridged spine as I blazed another two creatures intent on torpedoing us downward.
Free of the closest assailants, I wound us lower, but not quick enough. The impact of one fireball cut through me like a knife in butter. I roared with the blow. Molten heat lit the membranes of my wing, and agony tore through and shuddered the limb.
Lower, and lower still I swept, fangs bared against the pain.
I couldn’t fly back to Evendell like this. The channel was safest when partially flown—a journey I’d made only once before and just narrowly survived. There wasn’t a world in which I didn’t fall from the sky in exhaustion.
We’d have to lose these last few somehow.
Another rush of fiery hail sent me even lower, diving through the thick gray clouds of filth and curving my ravaged wings up to cradleArwen on my back. Her hand on the membranous fibers was both calming and invigorating at once.
Beneath me, through the pitch-black night, I could just barely make out the sentries and their fires atop the walls that protected Solaris from the rest of Lumera. Or, protected Lazarus from the atrocities he inflicted beyond his treasured capital.
Soon only barren land sprawled beneath us.
The harpy that led the remaining pack drew nearer. A maliciously beautiful Fae with the body of a hawk. Snarling, her claws cut through the thick air so violently I could hear the wind howl. Could feel the gusts carried by her feathered wings cast over us as she soared closer. That wind—awash with the promise of death.
In the distance, Aurora loomed.
The slum nearest Solaris. Bordered by the Dreaded Vale.
This would have to work.
Weaving through thick plumes of grimy fog, I plummeted, wrapping my wings around myself and Arwen like a tightly coiled bud yet to bloom. I sank down through the foggy sky, gaining speed, tumbling, until there was only the scent of ash in the air, the deafening, thrashing wind, and the heat from Arwen’s body, held against my scales.
Shifting back into my human form, I landed with Arwen still gripped securely in my arms atop some kind of awning.
Pain radiated across my shoulders, and Arwen groaned. Whatever stand we’d sank through toppled under our weight. Potatoes and turnips spilled out into the quiet night street.
That harpy shrieked from the sky.
Quick, quick—
I righted myself to stand among splintered wood and shredded canvas and smushed, pale vegetables.
“Hurry,” I urged.
It was only then I got a good look at her—
The paleness of her face, the tears at the corners of her eyes…and the deep red that had seeped into her thin gold gown, clutched between her fingers.
“Kane—”
No, no, no—
