Page 47 of The Dragonrider and the Void
“That’s the signal for a dragonrider sighting,” she said, already moving toward the tent entrance.
Lark felt it in the same moment, a ripple through her bond with White Eye as his senses tinged with recognition. They rushed outside into the fading daylight.
A shadow passed overhead. Wings spread against the setting sun. Quinthara’s midnight scales gleamed as the last golden rays warmed her side. She circled the clearing once before making her descent. Seated on her back, Hardin’s silhouette was unmistakable, but something else rode with him. Lark spotted a smaller form cradled carefully between his saddle handles and his chest.
White Eye rose to his full height, his throat rumbling with a sound Lark had never heard before. Not a growl of warning, but a sound more primal and instinctive.
Quinthara landed in a rush of shifting air, her wings creating a temporary windstorm that sent loose tent poles andtarps scattering across the camp. Hardin slid from the saddle, clutching a bundle wrapped in his cloak. His face was drawn with exhaustion, but his eyes burned with a fierce determination that hadn’t been there when Lark last saw him.
“Hardin,” Venrick called, stepping forward. “Where in ash have you been?”
“Carbella,” Hardin replied, his voice sounding harsh like he’d been in a shouting match. “I went home, as I promised, I returned to free them from the curse that’s been plaguing them.”
Cheyanne pushed through the growing crowd. “You left without authorization.”
“I had to return and help them. You weren’t letting me go, so yes, I left on my own terms,” Hardin argued.
“Who helped you sneak out, Sasja?” Cheyanne accused, searching the crowd as the Northern girl pushed her way through to stand before them.
“Sasja had nothing to do with it. I told her there was something I needed to do and to respect the promise I made to my hometown, but she wasn’t a part of this plan,” Hardin said, glancing past them toward the blue-eyed blonde as she emerged from a group of rebels. Lark saw the subtle wink he gave Sasja before she came to stand at his side in support. Hardin continued, “When I first left Doran, it was with the understanding that I would return with a hero. Well, no one volunteered and seeing as Quin and I are capable now, I elected myself to fill the role.”
“You’ve hardly had any training. Your bond with your dragon is so new you can hardly control your magic,” Cheyanne said, taking a moment to force herself to calm slightly. “Hardin, you risked everything we’ve been working for. You could’ve been captured and been forced to give us all up.”.
“If I hadn’t gone home when I did, my family would’ve been taken by the dark power there. The rimeshade’s influence hadtaken hold of them, of the whole town; they were barely hanging on.”
“A rimeshade in Doran? And to think you left without a word?—”
“There wasn’t time,” Hardin cut her off, shifting the bundle in his arms. “They were harvesting magic from the townspeople, feeding it to something buried beneath the town.” His eyes found Lark’s. “It was massive, swollen with the amount of power it was consuming.”
A murmur ran through the assembled rebels.
“Another dragon like the one in Haven’s Edge,” Venrick said.
“Not a dragon, a dragon egg,” Hardin said. “It was alive but wrapped in a dark web of corrupt magic. They were using my entire hometown’s population to feed it with energy.”
“They were trying to get it to hatch prematurely,” Lark realized.
“What happened to the dragon egg?” Cheyanne asked.
He carefully unwrapped the bundle. Nestled in the folds of his cloak was a creature the size of a large dog, its scales a dull white and green. The dragon hatchling blinked sleepily, then raised its head to survey the crowd with cream-white eyes rimmed in gold… eyes identical to Lark’s dragon’s.
A collective gasp rippled through the onlookers. White Eye went utterly still, his massive form frozen as if carved from stone.
“I found him deep within the sacred caves outside of Carbella,” Hardin explained. “Our town was cursed by Thorgan, the Warlock King. He’s not really a king, that’s just what they call him. My sister explained how he’d recently allied with a rimeshade who’d helped them create runes to syphon their life energy and funnel it to the egg.” He looked down at the hatchling. “I think they were trying to create a weapon, but thecorruption made the egg brittle. When I picked it up to release it from the dark tendrils of corruption, the shell cracked.”
Lark stepped closer, drawn by an inexplicable pull. The hatchling watched her approach, its unusual eyes tracking her movement with an intelligence that belied its apparent age.
“Its eyes,” she whispered.
“Like White Eye’s,” Venrick confirmed, moving to her side.
White Eye finally broke his statuesque stillness and lowered his massive head toward the hatchling. For a tense moment, Lark thought he might strike. Instead, he released a soft rumble that vibrated through the air like distant thunder. The hatchling responded with a higher-pitched trill, stretching toward the larger dragon.
“They recognize each other,” Sasja said. “But how?”
“The rimeshade corruption,” Lark said as it dawned on her. She turned to White Eye, placing her hand on his scaled neck. “You’ve encountered it before, haven’t you? When you were still in your shell.”
In response, she received impressions: mountains capped with ice, a sense of loss, and beneath it all, a thread of dread so primal it had no beginning.
