Winston snorted as he dipped into a sharp dive. We swooped over them, and Winston let out a long, steady stream of fire, scoring a long line of flame into the earth in front of them, blocking off their retreat. Then he climbed again and dropped into another dive-bomb, blowing more fire into the path behind them. He went high again, and this time circled twice before lining himself up parallel to the column full of screaming men and made for them, his mouth closed this time as he dived low enough that he could touch the tops of their heads with his claws but not cause damage.
“Enough.” I beat on his shoulder as I searched the group of soldiers, looking for a green young woman among them. The flames had forced all of the soldiers to clump together as the snow crackled and hissed around them. If she was with the soldiers, we’d have seen her when they huddled together.
She wasn’t there, though. There was no dark brown hair, no green skin. No sign that my best friend had ever been with them, which meant she hadn’t been taken prisoner. “Winston, enough.”
He roared angrily as he jerked himself back up, still beating his wings in a furious display.
“She’s not here. Mercedes isn’t here,” I yelled. Which meant, while we were harassing my aunt’s troops, our friend was still out there, possibly still fighting her way out of that fire.
“They didn’t take her prisoner. Forget about my aunt’s soldiers for now—we have to find Mercedes. Let’s go back to the forest and search toward Neris. If she wasn’t captured, she’d have tried to get herself back to the forest road. That’s the fastest way for her to get help. Settlements, people who would take her in.”
Winston snorted and then turned left, back toward Neris, gliding as close as he could to the trees without the two of us getting burned. Once we reached the now-burning clearing where Darinda and the rest of the dryads had been, he looped north for the city.
I craned forward, looking over his shoulder as he dropped closer to the road, staying just above the flames. I scanned the surrounding forest, searching for my best friend. I couldn’t imagine that she would risk the forest fire when the road was mostly clear, but maybe she was trying to hide from any soldiers that might still be in the forest.
But, for whatever reason, Mercedes wasn’t on the road. Or in the flaming forest. There was nothing there —no dryad, no spot where she could have gone to ground, no funny bit of residual magic floating in the breeze that told us if she’d managed to find a portal tree or whether or not she’d had the chance to use it before the fire had reached her. All I could see was smoldering trees, smoke, and an empty road.
My heart started to pound, and my palms were covered in sweat. My best friend was inside a forest fire, and there was nothing I could do to save her. Queen of a stupid country and all I could do was fly around on a dragon’s back, trying to play the dryad version of Where’s Waldo. The problem was my Waldo was refusing to be found. It was like she wasn’t really…
“Where is she?” I asked as I looked around. “Where did she go?”
I tightened my grip on Winston’s scales in rage. When I got back, I was going to raise an army so big that it would fill the horizon, enough dragons to block out the sun, and then I was going to take them across the border to teach my aunt a lesson. I was going to burn her country to the ground all the way from the White Mountains to the Palace of Night. And when I got there? When I got there, I was going to cram that peace treaty we just signed down her throat so she knew never to hurt one of my friends ever again.
“If anything’s happened to Mercedes…” My hands started to tremble. I swallowed and had to fight to keep from vomiting as my stomach clenched at the idea of my best friend lying somewhere in the woods below, staring at the burning trees with empty eyes.
No, I couldn’t think like that. She had found a way out. She had to have found a way out. She wouldn’t have stayed and tried to save the forest. She was a smart girl, and Darinda had told her to run for help, which meant as soon as she could, she would have found a rune portal and used it to get back to the palace. Wouldn’t she?
We broke free of the burning forest, and I watched as the land around us turned to empty fields, stripped of their crops for the winter. I tried to scan the flat ground beneath us, looking to my left and my right, desperate to see some smudge of movement along the landscape, but there was nothing—just cheery green fields and tidy, white stone cottages and little bits of smoke rising into the air from people’s chimneys.
The plains below turned to more trees as the royal forest came into view, and I dug my heels into Winston’s sides again, silently urging him to move faster. She had to be here. I knew it in my bones. Mercedes had to be somewhere down there.
Winston dropped low, scanning the trees, and I kept my eyes peeled, too, looking from side to side for some signs of life. To my right I watched as a tree began to shake back and forth, as though it had been struck my something very, very big.
I leaned down, prepared to point out the shaking tree to Winston, but there was an earsplitting roar and then all the trees near the one I’d noticed began to shake, as well. Winston curved to the side in a tight turn and started toward the rustling trees, smoke curling out of his nostrils as he prepared to dive.
“Win!” I watched as a short, female figure broke from the trees, running as fast as her green legs could move while two ogres chased her. “Mercedes. There she is!”
I felt him growl underneath me, and the smoke that had been curling was now joined by tiny licks of flame along the side of his mouth. He shifted his weight, and his entire body vibrated with tension as he peeled away from Mercedes and started to climb toward the sun.
“Winston, what are you doing?” I yelped just as his wings faltered, and he let himself tip forward, his snout falling as his wings and tail canted higher into the air. Then I knew exactly what he was doing the minute he started to drop like a very large, very heavy stone.
“Please don’t crash,” I said as we continued to fall, perfectly angled to collide with the larger of the two monsters chasing Mercedes and swinging a club. “Pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasedon’tletuscrash!”
Winston’s neck began to tense, and he lifted his head—pulling his body upright but still falling—and like a gigantic reptilian seesaw, his claws came down and slammed into the ogre’s back, knocking him forward into an undignified heap. Winston snapped one of his wings out, and I watched, stunned, as the other ogre ran into it, moving too fast to stop at the last minute even though it meant he’d ended up with a face full of very tough dragon wing.
“Mercedes!” I held my arm out toward her as Winston dropped close beside her, gliding now and letting his claws skim across the ground. “Take my hand.”
“Gladly.” She grabbed for me as Winston slid to a stop, and I clasped my fingers around her wrist, grateful for the knowledge that besides being scared out of her mind, she was safe.
“Come on.” I tried to pull as she scrabbled onto Winston’s back. When she’d gotten halfway on—one leg and one arm were up along his back and the rest of her body dangled off the side—I let go of her hand, grabbed her knee and her elbow, and hauled her up behind me onto Win’s back.
“Those guys were going to eat me for lunch,” she said as Winston started to flap his wings again, picking up speed as he flew us toward the castle.
“I know.” I wrapped my arms around her neck and clung to her, relieved that she was alive—and whole— inside my arms.
“I was coming to tell you that the Forest of Ananth is on fire. Bavasama’s army—”
“I know. We saw them in the mountains trying to escape.”
“What about Darinda and the rest of the Order? What happened to them? Did you see them?”
I pulled her closer and didn’t meet her eyes. I didn’t want to think about that right now. She was safe, and that was all that mattered. We’d deal with the rest of it when we got back to the palace.
“Allie, where’s Darinda?” Mercedes whispered. “I can’t hear her in my mind anymore.”
Chapter Five
“Allie?” Mercedes asked as Winston began to circle the top of my palace, bringing himself down slowly so that he could land without jarring us.
