Page 136 of Realm of Wind and Vines
My heart slams against my ribs.
This won’t work if the rest of the silver dragons have reached the city. If they’re too close, like when we were fighting our way out of the Ice Palace all those months ago, we will never be able to escape without at least one of them seeing us. And as soon as one dragon knows where we are, they will sound the alarm and call all the others to them. At which point we will be overwhelmed.
Dragging in panicked breaths, I keep flicking my gazebetween Lavendera and the clouds around us. If she wakes up too early, we’re screwed. If the other silver dragons managed to get too close to the city before Draven spread out the storm clouds, we’re also screwed.
Blood pounds in my ears and my heart feels like it’s going to beat out of my chest.
A jolt shoots through me as a thick forest suddenly becomes visible below.
Draven flexes his claws around us.
My heart leaps into my throat.
Grabbing Lavendera, I pull her to me and wrap my arms firmly around her body while Draven flies down to the very bottom of the thick cloud cover. My shoulder screams in pain from the still bleeding wound in it, but I grit my teeth and hold Lavendera’s unconscious body tightly.
Then he shifts.
My stomach lurches, and I have to snap my mouth shut to stop a scream, as we plummet straight down towards the thick canopy below.
A massive dragon can’t fly down and land without anyone spotting it. But eight tiny humans can certainly fall through the air and disappear into the trees before anyone can see where we went. Since the skies are full of silver dragons, we can’t fly away from Frostfell. We need to hide until Grey realizes that we’re not coming and that we went with the backup plan and that he needs to open a portal here instead.
Branches rip at my black fighting leathers as I hit the canopy. But just like we predicted when we chose this exact part of the forest for our backup plan, the dense leaf crowns at the top of these trees break our fall as gently as a tree possibly can.
Pain still pulses through my body as I tumble down between the branches and leaves and then hit the grass below. But I keep my arms around Lavendera the entire way down. We didn’t gothrough all of this trouble just for her to land on her head and die after we escape.
Rolling over on my back, I let Lavendera’s body do the same as I release my grip on her and instead drag in a deep breath. Pain pulses through my injured shoulder as well as my back and my entire left side now. But I’m alive.
And so are my friends.
Sitting upright, I whip my gaze from face to face.
Orion brushes leaves from his fancy blue garments and puts the crown, which he was apparently holding in his hand when Draven dropped us, back on his head. Alistair blinks and shakes his head while still sitting on the ground. A few steps away, Isera simply gets to her feet silently. Galen scans the grass for Draven, who rakes a hand through his now messy black hair while getting to his feet, and Lyra simply jumps up from the grass with a wide grin on her mouth.
“Thatis what I call a job well done,” she declares with that beaming smile on her face.
“A job well done?” Orion demands. He looks furious. “Do you have any idea just how close we came to losing just now?”
“What do you?—”
Lavendera gasps awake. Scrambling to her feet, she snaps her gaze from side to side.
I jump to my feet as well, getting ready for a fight.
But she doesn’t start attacking us straight away. Instead, an awful expression of dread and panic washes over her beautiful face.
“No,” she breathes, and her voice breaks on the word. Fear pulses in her eyes as she looks around, as if searching for someone. “No. What have you done? They will think I left on my own. They will think I betrayed them. I will never get it now. I will never get it.”
I stare, horrified, as something seems to break inside her. Fearand dread and sheer utter desperation crash over her face while tiny panicked noises rip from her throat.
Then her eyes abruptly slide out of focus.
Blinking, I stare at Lavendera as she suddenly begins disassociating the way she often does. My heart beats hard as I watch her just stand there and stare unseeing at a tree a few steps away.
“Uhm,” Alistair begins, very eloquently saying what we were all no doubt thinking.
“Malachi’s fucking balls,” Orion snaps, shattering the sudden silence like an explosion. “You people are insane!” Raising his hand, he stabs it in the direction of the city we just escaped. “We were almost captured five times during this absolute shitshow of a mission!”
“It worked, didn’t it?” Draven replies with a scowl.
