Author note at the end.
Leaving the Vale… well, leaving the Eyrie, I suppose.
I still had a few hundred miles of mountains before I would even see the Bloody Gate.
Still, getting out of the castle itself had been surprisingly easy.
No heavy emotional baggage left behind, and none taken with me either.
I would miss Jessamyn, sure but in the same way you miss the friend you only ever see at your grandfather’s house during the occasional holiday.
And the unlikable truth is vacations end, and real responsibilities pull you somewhere else.
“I liked her, Tessa,” I said aloud, more to myself than to the dragon.
“I mean, the beauty certainly didn’t hurt, but think about it.”
Tessarion gave a short, dismissive snort.
I smirked, scratched the ridge of her head, and leaned forward to give her neck a brief hug.
“She lost her father young. Fought and clawed for her own inheritance. Held the claim against her own kin and crushed rebellions for it. I like Jeyne’s perseverance better, if I’m being honest.”
The blue dragon rolled one large eye in my direction with what could only be described as pure judgment.
“Girl, I do not like your attitude lately. You’re getting sassier by the day.”
She shook her entire body side to side in answer, nearly unseating me.
“Hey! Hey! I said drop the attitude, not me!”
Tessarion answered by banking hard to the right.
I stumbled against the riding straps with a sharp curse.
“Bitch, if I die up here you are going to miss me more than you think!”
The tantrum faded as quickly as it had started.
She leveled out into a smoother glide, wings cutting steady through the cold air.
“Yeah,” I panted, tightening my grip on the reins.
“Let’s not do that shit again.”
She rumbled what I chose to interpret as agreement.
Then my eyes widened.
I yanked the reins hard left just in time to avoid a set of massive jaws that snapped shut where my head had been a second earlier.
The underbite was enormous.
“Motherfucker!”
My gaze shot upward.
A vast wing beat once above the cloud layer, the shadow of it momentarily blotting out the sun.
Tessarion roared in pure rage.
I twisted in the saddle, scanning every direction at once.
“Higher! Higher!” I shouted, panic sharpening every word.
That was when I heard it again, closer this time.
“GRAAAAAAAAH!”
I twisted hard in the saddle and looked back.
A massive shape of grey and black tore free of the cloud bank, wings beating with violent force.
The dragon’s head snapped side to side as it fixed on us, then opened its jaws and released another bone-shaking roar that rolled across the sky.
I felt my stomach drop.
“It’s the fucking sheep guzzler.” I muttered under my breath.
Tessarion climbed hard into the cloud bank under my commands.
The blue layers and white clouds swallowed us whole within seconds.
Moisture beaded across my face and soaked into the riding leathers.
The view narrowed to the sound of her labored wingbeats and the muffled roar of wind and somewhere below and behind us, the heavier, angrier sound of another set of wings tore through the sky.
I could feel her anxiety through, a tight vibrating tension that ran from the base of her neck all the way into the muscles of her wings.
But it was me who brought her here, I had to make sure she was fine.
I leaned forward until my chest pressed against the warm scales of her neck and spoke low, almost into her hide.
“I’m here,” I told her.
“I’m here for you, we’re in this together, we get through it the same way we get through everything else, I’ve got you girl and you’ve got me.”
A low, uncertain rumble answered me.
I scratched the familiar ridge just behind her jaw and kept my voice steady even as my own pulse hammered in my ears.
“We’re fine. Just stay with me.”
The clouds around us suddenly brightened for half a second as a massive dark shape blotted out the thin sunlight above.
Sheepstealer had followed us into the grey.
The wild dragon’s roar rolled through the vapor like distant thunder.
Tessarion flinched and banked hard left on instinct.
I corrected with the reins, keeping her from diving too early.
“Not yet,” I muttered.
“Wait for it.”
We broke out of the far side of the cloud bank into open air.
The Mountains of the Moon stretched beneath us in jagged white and grey.
For a brief, dangerous moment the sky felt too large and too empty.
‘Has he left?’
Then the grey-and-black bulk of Sheepstealer exploded from the clouds behind us, jaws already open, underbite gleaming.
Tessarion put on speed.
The blue dragon was quicker in a straight line when she had room, but Sheepstealer had mass and raw power on its side.
Every few wingbeats the gap narrowed.
I could hear the deeper, wetter sound of the wild dragon’s breathing now.
I could smell it too, a rot of old meat.
“Come on, girl,” I whispered.
“Show him what you can do.”
I waited until the shadow of those massive wings fell across us, until I could almost feel the heat of Sheepstealer’s next breath.
Then I yanked the reins hard right and down at the same time.
Tessarion tucked one wing and rolled.
The world inverted.
Cloud, mountain, sky, cloud again.
My stomach tried to climb out through my throat as the riding straps bit hard into my thighs.
For a split second I was staring straight down into Sheepstealer’s surprised yellow eye as we flipped up and over the larger dragon’s back.
Tessarion completed the barrel roll with a violent snap of her wings and came out above and slightly behind the wild dragon.
Sheepstealer’s head whipped around in confusion, searching for a target that was no longer in front of it.
“That’s my girl,” I breathed.
We had the angle now.
We had the high ground..
or high air I guess.
I almost believed we might end it cleanly.
Then the wild dragon did something no trained mount would have risked.
It folded its wings mid-turn and dropped like a stone, twisting its entire body in a savage, uncoordinated lunge.
Tessarion tried to climb clear but she was a fraction too slow.
Sheepstealer’s jaws closed on her right hind leg.
The sound that tore out of Tessa was pure pain.
A high, cracking roar that vibrated through every bone in my body.
I felt the impact as if the teeth had closed on my own leg.
Blood, bright and hot, sprayed across the air in a brief red arc.
The command ripped out of me raw.
“Dracarys!”
Tessarion’s head snapped around even while the larger dragon still had her leg.
Blue fire erupted from her jaws in a tight, concentrated stream and slammed directly into Sheepstealer’s face.
The wild dragon’s roar turned into a scream of pure agony.
The blue flames washed over its eyes and snout, clinging longer than ordinary fire, eating into scale and softer tissue beneath.
Sheepstealer released the leg at once, thrashing its head side to side in blind pain.
My Queen did not give it time to recover.
Even wounded, she twisted with savage precision.
Her claws raked across the membrane of Sheepstealer’s left wing, then her jaws found the joint where the wing met shoulder and bit down hard.
There was a wet, tearing sound.
A ragged hole opened in the wing.
Blood and torn membranes fluttered in the wind like ruined banners.
Sheepstealer’s scream this time was different, it was deeper, full of the sudden pain.
The damaged wing refused to catch air properly.
The wild dragon tried to level out, failed, tried again, and began to spiral.
Each incomplete wingbeat only made the spin worse.
Gravity took over.
I watched the grey-and-black shape tumble downward, roaring in anguish, growing smaller against the white peaks below.
Whether it hit the mountainside dead or merely broken, I could not tell.
I did not dive after it to find out.
Tessarion was still screaming.
I pulled her into the shallowest glide I could manage and kept one hand locked in the reins while the other stroked the trembling scales of her neck.
“I’ve got you. I’ve got you. It’s over. You’re all right. You’re all right.”
She wasn’t.
Blood ran freely from the deep punctures in her hind leg, dripping in dark spatters toward the distant ground.
Every attempt to put full weight on the wing-beat made her entire body shudder but she was still in the air, still flying, still listening to my voice.
I kept talking, the words were half comfort and half prayer, while I scanned for any sign of a second attack that never came, my hands trembled with my chest every time I did.
Everything that happened was slowly registering into my mind.
The sky behind us remained empty and Sheepstealer did not follow again.
“Just a little farther,” I told her.
“We find somewhere flat and we land. I will take care of the leg, you must rest.”
Tessarion gave a low, pained rumble that might have been agreement.
Her breathing was still too fast, but the sharp edge of panic had begun to ease.
I leaned forward until my forehead rested against the warm scales just behind her horns and closed my eyes for a single heartbeat.
We had survived.
Fucking hell, that was terrifying.
I opened my eyes again, tightened my grip on the reins, and guided my wounded blue queen toward the nearest stretch of high meadow I could see between the peaks.
“Do not leave me please.” I muttered.
“I got nothing else.”
The mountains watched in silence as the smaller blue dragon limped across the sky, leaving a thin trail of blood and the tears streaming down my face.
A/N: Ok, I’m sorry I didn’t upload for the past two days or is it three?
No idea, anyway here is the first dance.
And 1-0 for now.
Our Queen flies still.