*＊✿❀Tacenda❀✿＊* DISCONTINUED

19

A dark shape flies at us from the left, sweeping Cat and me into a spinning tangle of limbs and propelling us backward. I grab onto her in the chaos, forcing her body in front of mine as we come to a skidding halt, knowing the shelter of facing my back to Solas won't be enough but trying anyway.

She has to live. She's third in line to the throne of Poromiel. If she dies in Tyrrendor, Cordyn will hunt Xaden down and execute him...if he survives my death.

Survive. Survive. Survive. I push the demand down every mental bond I have just in case we aren't out of range. Xaden's too far, but Glacies will hear it, and Khione—gods, Glacies has to get here in time to save her.

Kiralair and Sloane fly into us next, swept in by an unseen force, pushing Sloane and me backward, toward Solas, but my back hits a hard, rough surface as the cave walls illuminate with the eerie glow of impending fire a heartbeat before we're overtaken by darkness.

"Take a breath!"  Khione demands. "Don't argue!"

Not darkness. Wings. It's her belly at my back and she's wrapped her wings around us.

"Breathe in and hold it!" I shout, then fill my lungs with sulfur-scented air.

Heat blasts, roaring past us in a stream that shakes Khione's wings, and the temperature soars. I force my eyes closed to keep them from cooking as my skin burns as though we've been thrown into an oven. How can she survive this?

"She's fireproof,"  Glacies reminds me, but the panic in his voice doesn't do much to soothe the terror clamping down on my heart.

"Do not breathe!"  Khione demands, and I know it's because I'll singe my lungs if I do, if any of us do. I count my heartbeats. One. Two. Three.

The blast feels like it goes on forever, like it's become my eternity, like my soul has done exactly what Sloane asked in the first part of the year and gone straight to the depths of hell without being commended to Malek. Eight. Nine.

On ten, it ends, and Khione wings fall away. Air rushes in, and I wait until I feel its cool brush across my cheek before I drag in a breath, hearing the others do the same.

I open my eyes and see Cat lunge in the torchlight across the small space, using her gloved hands to put out the burning tips of the feathers along Kira's far wing. It must have been exposed to the flames. Sloane races to help as Khione gains her feet, and I narrowly avoid her tail as she faces down Solas.

"No! He's nearly twice as big as you are!" I lift my hands and throw the floodgates open on Tairn's power, letting it burn through me as Solas's blast failed to do, until I'm pure fire. But I can't wield in here, not when there's every chance I could hit one of us.

Andarna's roar fills the cave, and my heart stops when she goes for Solas's throat. He bats her away like she's nothing but a nuisance, and I muffle a cry as she slides into the wall, right over the charred remains of Visia's bones.

"I'm fine." Khione shakes it off as Solas sizes me up.

"Three minutes,"  Glacies tells me. "You will not die today!"

Three minutes. We can make it three minutes. But time isn't our issue. Glacies can't fit through the opening of the cave. He'll have to find whatever entrance Solas used.

"How the fuck do you kill a dragon?"

"Let me go!" Cat shouts. "You're...you're draining my power!"

What the fuck? I chance a look backward, but all I see is Cat disengaging from Sloane's panicked grip.

"Go for his other eye."