It started to spin with one wing out and the other pulled in to cradle its gut, which was spewing a streamer of red blood into the sky. The scent of charred flesh on the air was nauseating.
Samael kept his head angled to watch his back as he dropped away. The dying dragon’s partner roared and followed him. A glittering stream of incandescent white flame reached with fiery claws for Samael, but he was falling too fast, and white dragons, while built for distance, were not built for speed.
Confident he wouldn’t be caught, Samael turned and finished his dive below the clouds. Then back up, except this time as he arrowed back into the clouds, twice he had to jerk out of the way of falling bodies. Bodies of black dragons. Dragons aflame, like firebombs thrown from a volcano.
The clouds flashed violently now—with lightning, dragon fire, and those plummeting forms flaming out and disintegrating to ash. Each flash illuminated the numbers they were up against. All Samael could see were his people facing two or three and sometimes more. He pulled closer to the mountain, only to find its icy crags teeming with green dragons.
They’d come up at his men from the bottom, climbing up from under the clouds where he’d just been. How had he missed them?
We’re losing this battle.
Rage—over everything, his mate, his people, this war—shook up inside him, building like the pressure of a volcano about to erupt. Samael channeled that rage into his dragon.
Forget himself. To give Meira a chance at what she needed to do, to be, he had to die anyway. Right? “For my king. For my clan. For my mate.”
Shooting like a comet, inevitable and unstoppable, he flew straight at the mountain. Focusing in, the world narrowed to his view of the rocks in front of him and the dragons in his immediate path. At the last minute, he tipped his wings. Flying sideways, belly to the mountain, he hugged the jutting stone peaks and crevices. Sliding to the side, he blasted flame at a pale-green fucker, distracting him long enough for the silver dragon above to clobber him with his tail.
Then he maneuvered up the mountain in time to slam into a buttery-white dragon with his talons, pick him up, and drop him between two of his own. Another white dragon came at him out of the fog. Without missing a beat, Samael flipped up and over the longer creature. Unable to turn in time, it ran into the mountain, a thunder of boulders raining down from its impact.
Samael kept going. Skirting dangerously close to the rock face, avoiding his own dragons and the outcropping of jagged rock alike, he took out four more.
“On your tail, Captain,” one of his men warned.
A quick glance showed two green dragons, both the color of new spring leaves, behind him and closing in fast. Time for a maneuver he usually didn’t dare use so close to solid ground. If he timed it wrong, he’d slam into the mountain. But he knew this mountain, had grown up on it, had fought on it and trained on it. Which gave him an advantage.
Slowing just enough that they’d think they were gaining, Samael drew the other dragons in closer. On purpose, he dropped nearer to the mountainside at the same time.
Then, swirling clouds still obscuring much of his view—nothing he could do about that—he shot a ball of fire from his maw into the air directly in front of him, then pulled his wings in and slung his tail to one side, which whipped his body around, sliding backward through the black flames. Then flared his wings wide.
Unable to see him through the blast of his flame, both green dragons flew through at full speed. One struck first, right into Samael’s talons, which he sank deep into his chest. The momentum gave his razor-sharp claws extra impact, and the thing went limp in his grasp, long neck dangling.
The other dragon had managed to scoot out of his way, right into the vicious outcropping where one of Samael’s men lurked, waiting like a spider for its prey. With a roar that sent smaller rocks cascading down the mountain, Samael tossed the dead dragon away.
Then he paused and took stock of his people. Hard to see through the clouds, but what he could see along the mountain was a fucking mess. They continued to fight a losing battle. One after another he watched as his men went down under a swarm of claws and flame and fury. More than came out on top of any encounter. His run had done fuck all to carve a swath through their enemies.
No matter what he did, or how his men fought, they were outnumbered.
They couldn’t let their enemies take the mountain. No matter what. “Close the hangar—”
A voice cut off his order, cutting through his thoughts.
“We’re here.” Ladon Ormarr’s dark growl reverberated in his head. “Sitting at altitude above the clouds, coming from the west. What do you need?”
Thank the gods.
Meira must’ve contacted her sister. Having experienced Skylar’s own particular brand of teleportation, he knew exactly how Ladon and his people had arrived. Via the strangest mode of long-distance teleportation he’d ever experienced.
Samael held his position, despite a wish to join the blue king. He’d have time for relief later.
“Come to us,” he relayed back. Then sent the thought out to his people. “Regroup on the mountain. We have reinforcements.”
A crack of lightning splintered the rock in front of him, close enough that electricity hit his body, shocking his system into paralysis, sending debris straight at him and drowning out any shouts of triumph his men might have sounded. Or perhaps he’d lost his hearing altogether, thanks to the deafening, sizzling boom of immediate
