Page 3 of Silver Claws, Crimson Tears
In response, the ground groans under our assault like a wounded beast.
“I don’t give a fuck if it resists,” I snarl. “She’s in there.”
With each section we clear, the mountain seems to grow more solid, more defiant. But I won’t yield. I have to find her. She’s one of us.
She’s mine. No one else’s.
“Deeper,” I command, sending another powerful gust to blow away debris. “Wedon’t stop until we find her.”
Logical pathways form. We have to find the tunnel the man took. There has to be one.
Rhealyn, I’m coming. I won’t abandon you. Not to a mountain. Not to a stranger from its depths. Not to anything in this world or beyond it.
Thethud, thudof wings comes from above, then a deafening roar full of pain and desperation splits the sky.
Zephyros is here.
2
Zephyros
The scent of harpy blood still clings to Zephyros’s scales as he sweeps through the pine canopy, silver wings cutting through branches like blades. The Screechclaw battle has left him hollow with hunger. He searched beyond the massacre and the monsters’ putrid flesh, unsuitable even for a starving dragon. Below, the Flametop Mountains stretch endlessly, hiding prey in their rocky crevices.
Where are you, little morsels?
A flash of brown catches his ancient eyes. Elk. Three of them picking their way through a meadow, oblivious to the death circling overhead. His stomach clenches with need.
He folds his wings and dives.
The lead elk lifts its head just as Zephyros strikes. Antlers scrape uselessly against his hide before obsidian talons find their mark. The creature’s cry echoes across the peaks, then cuts short.
I got you.
But even as he feeds, unease still crawls beneath his scaleslike ice through winter stone. Rhealyn’s distress pulses through their bond, discordant notes that make his jaw clench around warm flesh. The Stormsong whelp discovered she is responsible for the Neutro’s death, and he may confront her soon. Zephyros knows she’s worried. He must make haste and return to her.
Zephyros is still eating when terror explodes through the bond like lightning through his skull. Not fear. Not worry. But undiluted panic that sends every scale along his spine rigid with alarm.
Rhealyn!
He abandons the carcass without a second glance, powerful haunches launching him skyward. Wind screams past his scarred face as he climbs, then banks hard toward the source of her distress. Five millennia of flight, and he’s never pushed himself this hard. Pine needles blur beneath him as he rockets through the mountain passes.
—Little one, I’m coming. Hold on.
Silence answers him. The bond remains open, flooding him with her terror, but she doesn’t respond. She seems closed off when she needs him most. His talons flex involuntarily as he imagines himself tearing to ribbons whatever threatens her.
—Rhealyn, answer me.
Still nothing. Her panic intensifies, washing over him in waves that make his ancient heart hammer against his ribs. Something is definitely wrong. Deeply, catastrophically wrong. In all their time together, she’s never blocked him during distress. Never turned away when danger struck. Why would she do that now?
He pours more speed into his flight, muscles burning as he cuts through cloud cover. The Flametop peaks rush past in a blur, but not fast enough. Her terror spikes again, so sharp it nearly sends him tumbling from the sky.
—What’s happening to you?
The bond pulses with something worse than fear now. Desperation. The kind that comes when escape becomes impossible and hope dies. His vision goes red around the edges, like heat in the entrails of a volcano. Someone is hurting his little one. Someone will pay.
He crests the final ridge and spots the Skyriders below, their dragons circling like carrion birds over a corpse. But where is Rhealyn? Where is her voice calling through the bond?
I should have stayed with her. Should never have left her alone.
