Page 126 of Wrath of the Fae Queen
“We can help,” Caitlin cries. “What if they come for you? What if an animal attacks? You are so defenseless here.”
“Aldrin needs you,” I plead. “Ineed you, not here, but in the fight. I can still protect myself from attacks by vermin.” I pause, then ask the question I have been dreading the answerto.“Where is Aldrin?” It is a surprise that he would send someone else to rescue me, instead of coming himself.
My father and sister give each other a significant look, but say nothing.
“Whereis Aldrin?” I repeat, fear rising within me.
“He…got bogged down in the battle on the way here,” my father says cautiously, but he doesn’t look me in the eye.
“Father. Tell me the full truth.” My voice is stern, but I shake like a leaf in the wind as horror seeps into me, chilling me down to the bone.
“His dragon was shot down on our flight to you. A bolt that I am sure didn’t hit him,” my sister says. “He was adamant on coming here himself.”
“Caitlin! She has enough to worry about!”
They bicker between themselves, but I can no longer hear what they say.
A loud thump reverberates as the entire wall shakes and pebbles of mortar rain down from it. A massive steel bolt protrudes from the wall just above my cage, narrowly missing my father’s dragon. Both creatures flap their wings and ripple their muscles, and from the looks on my father and Caitlin’s faces, the dragons are screeching in their heads to retreat. Another bolt arches rapidly toward us, but flies wide.
Then I spot where they are coming from.
A tower with anti-dragon missile launchers on its rooftop.
“You need to leave! You’re only going to get us all killed,” Drake yells, his cage swinging violently. “Even this motion could get us impaled on these spikes.”
My father’s face pales.
“Go,” I whisper. “You must! Those dragons are ready to drop you.”
He squeezes my shoulder through the bars and stares into my eyes. Something dies within his. “Remember that I love you. That I will always fight for you, no matter the battle.”
With those last words, he and my sister leap onto their dragons’ backs, two more bolts narrowly missing them as they swoop away.
Iam falling, falling, falling.
The air rushes by, tossing my hair up into my face. My stomach lurches. We are spiraling through the sky, and it is sheer blind luck that we haven’t hit a building or platform yet. The bolt through Ezekiel’s back narrowly missed me, but he is out cold, wings flailing uselessly.
Edmund and Caitlin left us behind after Ezekiel took the first bolt, when he was forced to turn back from our mad flight to the palace. When we could still do so safely and I could leap on the back of another dragon.
They didn’t see the second and third strike.
All I can hope is that they were able to get Keira out of that damned golden cage.
I throw out my magic, trying to weave ropes of air to anchor us or send forth thick vines to catch our fall, but they keep snapping under the force of our descent. My heart races frantically.
I refuse to die here.
There is still so much left undone.
Keira—oh gods, Keira is still within the clutches of my greatest enemy.
The air is forced out of my chest as a great weight slams into us from the side. At first I think we have met the ground, but then another equal impact hits us from the other side. We are very suddenly no longer falling, but rising upward instead.
To my left, Bartholomew’s massive form props up his father. Red blood spills from Ezekiel’s wounds, trickling in rivulets from his gold-and-white scales onto the midnight galaxy of his son’s. On the other side, a red dragon shoulders the rest of her king’s weight.
The flight is awkward. We lurch violently downward multiple times; Ezekiel’s blood-soaked form is slick and difficult for the other dragons to hold on to, but we finally reach the rooftop garden of my secret base and land with a rough thud.
I immediately leap from Ezekiel’s back as the dragons converge on him. More land around us, making the ground shake. They roll their king so the bolts piercing him are accessible. Wisps of light matching the color of each dragon float from their forms into Ezekiel as they transfer their essence to him, but it isn’t enough.
