“Afraid you can’t keep up with a first-year cadet on your back? Too heavy and clever for the mighty dragon?”
Smoke poured from his nostrils. And then his talons loosened.
He flipped me. One claw opened, then the other caught me mid-air with a precision that was almost insulting and deposited me on the broad plane of his back between his shoulder blades.
I grabbed for purchase—a ridge of raised scales along his spine, each the size of a dinner plate and edged in gold. I hooked my foot under a scale and locked my ankle in place. The edge dug into his hide. I didn’t care. The beast was tough enough, and he could take it.
The battlefield sprawled beneath me: Spartans locked in the melee, flashes of Fae wind and mage fire, the silver blur of Aelindor’s blade, Caspian’s warrior form tearing through the horde. The heat rising from Drakken’s scales seeped through my fatigues. The kind of warmth that came from riding a furnace with wings and opinions.
The dragon dove.
His jaws snapped shut on a mutant and bit the beast clean in half. His claws raked across two more. A controlled burst of fire—short, precise—incinerated another abomination that had broken from the Spartan line without touching a single soldier.
I threw a chakram. The disc screamed through the air and found a mutant circling behind a pair of engaged Spartans. Neck. Spine severed. The chakram jerked free and returned to my hand, trailing dark green blood.
This is so much fun!
Coldiron giggled. That had never happened before. The DarkVeil Coldiron had a streak of glee that bordered on mania.
My demon passenger pressed close to my skin, watching the battle eagerly, feeding instructions in a rapid stream—bank left, throw low, that cluster is flanking, the lead abomination is coordinating with… Break it—nonstop tactical guidance.
I listened eighty-seven percent of the time. The other times, I made my own calls. If I followed every instruction without deviation, I’d be a puppet, and I was no one’s tool.
My chakrams went where they needed to go. A beast flanking Spartan Corporal Enna—dead. A mutant pinning Gordon, the Spartan who teased me about being an ice giant—dead. A pair circling the wounded mage—dead and dead. Coldiron didn’t miss.
But we were still outnumbered, and these mutants were trained. They fought in coordinated pairs, feinting to draw defenders out before the real strike came from the blind side. They adapted—scattered from Drakken’s fire, dropped low under Aelindor’s wind. They learned from every kill and adjusted.
Some of our warriors had fallen. I could see them from the dragon’s back, crumpled shapes in Spartan armor, weapons still in their hands. A man with his throat torn open. A woman whose chest had been caved in by a spike strike. Two soldiers who’d gone down together, back-to-back, surrounded by the bodies of the beasts they’d taken with them.
Through all of it, the leading mutant wolf kept tracking me on the dragon’s back, snapping its eyes skyward. Behind its eerily intelligent red eyes, deep in the manufactured madness, something else stared back. A presence that didn’t belong to the beast. Someone was watching me through those eyes, measuring me from across whatever distance separated us.
Could it be theFalse Heir?
A chill ran through me that the battle’s heat couldn’t touch.
Then the mutants stopped.
Every beast on the field froze in the same instant, mid-stride, mid-lunge, mid-kill, as if a switch had been thrown. Their heads turned south. The same yowl rose from their throats, and then they ran.
They disengaged from every fight, abandoned their dead, and bolted south at full speed, a dark wave rolling backward across the plains.
“Do not let them get away!” Aelindor shouted, leveling his longsword, dark green blood still dripping from the blade. “Don’t let them report back. Kill every one of them!”
But someone had already seen me through the lead mutant’s eyes. Whatever intel the mastermind wanted, they’d collected it in real time.
That didn’t mean we could let the rest escape.
Aelindor and Caspian led the Spartans in pursuit across the flatlands. Corporal Enna and Marco flanked wide, cutting off stragglers. Caspian’s warrior form covered ground faster than any of them, his claws finding two more beasts before the pack reached open terrain.
And the dragon beat them all. He banked hard, and I flattened myself against his scales as the wind tried to rip me loose. Below us, the retreating horde was a dark, ragged column of thirty-odd beasts.
He dove.
Golden fire swept the column from rear to front. The flame hit the ground and rolled, white-gold heat consuming everything in its path. The ones that dodged left met a second pass. The ones that dodged right met Caspian and the Spartans closing from the flank.
None made it past the ridge.
The dragon circled once, confirming the kill, then banked east toward camp, the downdraft scattering ash across the scorched earth.