Ambers || Jacaerys Velaryon

25. Jacaerys

Her scream echoes in his mind, growing more wounded and betrayed each time, blending with the crashing thunder in a grim symphony. His heart pounds in his throat, rain blurring his vision, mixed with something else-- something pitiful and childlike.

Miara is gone.

Desperation surges through him as he yanks on Vermax's reins, forcing his dragon into a sudden turn. Vermax pulls, resisting, but Jace's vocal commands push him into submission. Reluctantly, his mount obeys, diving into a rapid, steep descent toward where Jace believes Miara may have fallen. Jagged rocks and snapping roots from the cliffside scrape against Vermax's wings, but they don't stop. Jace won't allow them to.

"Miara!" His voice rips from his throat, and the storm devours it. Jace forces them lower, his eyes frantically scanning the treetops for any sign of her fall.

Beneath him, Vermax rumbles uneasily as they hover just above the dense canopy. Jace urges him to land, scanning the mist-covered trees, but his dragon protests, sensing the treacherous terrain below.

"Dohaerās, Vermax!"

With a frustrated snarl, Vermax barrels into the dense foliage. Branches snap under his weight, and whole trees bend as he crashes through. Jace hardly registers the passing branches slicing his own skin or the mud splattering against him as they hit the ground with a bone-jarring thud.

Vermax lands heavily, his talons sinking deep into the sodden earth. Jace wastes no time, quickly untethering himself and sliding off the saddle, stumbling as his boots sink into the mud. His legs feel heavy, the muck pulling at him with each step, but he pushes forward, squinting through the rain and the fog clinging to the trees.

"Miara!" he shouts again, desperate. The wind tears his cry apart, leaving only thunder to answer, loud and mocking.

He takes off in the direction they'd been flying, driven by pure instinct. Vermax tries to follow, but the dense undergrowth slows him, and Jace can't afford to wait. Vermax can fend for himself-- Miara is the one who needs him now.

He shouts for her again and again, though there's no answer. He tells himself she must be alive; they weren't flying high enough for the fall to kill her. It's what drives him forward. But the silence is becoming unbearable, and dread presses down upon him heavier than the downpour.

"Please..." he whispers, a half-prayer, barely audible even to himself, but hopefully heard by the Seven.

Then-- a sound. Faint, but real, carried through the storm.

"Jace!"

Relief slams into him, and he scrambles toward the weak call, slipping and stumbling up a muddy incline. His hands claw at tangled roots for support, the storm trying to drag him down, but he fights through it. He's close. He can feel it. The storm may have tried to take her, but he won't let it. He'll find her, as she always found him.

"Jace," she calls again, her voice strained.

He spots her slumped at the base of a tree, drenched and covered in mud, her face twisted with pain. Scratches line her skin, dotted with blood where the branches tore at her during the fall. A cut on her left temple sends a stream of red down her cheek as well, revealing which side of her body took the hardest hit. Jace's eyes follow the broken branches above, evidence of how the thick canopy slowed her descent. A shallow crater in the mud shows where she landed before she crawled away, struggling despite the pain.

Jace rushes to her side, dropping to his knees. Mud streams down the slope under them, but he barely notices it. "Are you hurt?" he blurts, the question escaping before he can stop it. Obvious, maybe, but he needs to hear her voice again.