Avian (The Dragonrider Chronicles) (42 page)

“They’re following us,” I said as lifted my good eye to the ceiling of the vine-tunnel. I could feel them there, beyond the barrier I had created. They moved so quickly, flying through the twisted arms of the trees with more speed and agility than a dragon could ever dream of.

“How many?” Jace demanded.

“Four on the outside.” I answered. “They’re looking for a way in. Two are already in the tunnel, chasing us. They’re too wary of me to come closer, but not for much longer.” My body was starting to fail me in more ways than one. My legs were completely numb, and I was beginning to have trouble breathing. It reminded me of that horrible coma-like state I had been put in when I’d healed Sile’s wife. That must have come from pushing myself too far.

Jace cursed, and we kept running. I held on for as long as I could, but about a half a mile from the end of the tunnel, I couldn’t take another step. I crumpled to the ground, bringing Felix down with me. My ears were ringing so loudly that everything else was muffled. The fire suddenly snuffed out leaving me limp, drained, and completely useless. I couldn’t move at all.

Felix hooked his arms around my chest and tried to drag me. It didn’t work. The ground wasn’t flat and smooth. It was the jungle, after all. The soil was wet and spongy, riddled with all kinds of snags and roots. He only made it a few feet before he tripped and fell, almost landing on top of me.

“I won’t leave him!” I heard Felix roar in frustration.

“There’s no choice!” Jace bellowed back.

From down the tunnel, I heard the screeching of the shrikes coming closer now. I couldn’t defend my friends anymore. Bits of bark and wood started falling from the ceiling of the tunnel, raining down upon us. The shrikes on the outside were using their venom-laced teeth to gnaw through the vine tunnel.

We were out of time. And I was out of miracles.

I was busy making peace with my demise when I felt something prick at my mind. Even in my paralyzed state, something familiar reached me through the numbness and exhaustion. It was a presence I knew all too well, and the last one in the world I thought would ever find me here. It was a presence so great, so old and powerful, not even the canopy of the jungle could keep it from reaching me.

There was an explosion from overhead. Felix, Lyon, and Jace dove for cover. I still couldn’t move my body, so I kept lying there, staring up into the dark with my one uncovered eye, and hoping someone would remember to drag me out of the way before I got crushed or eaten.

I needed to make a noise. They were looking for us, and when my power was snuffed out so suddenly, they had lost track of me. But I knew that this was our last hope. They had to find us, or it was all over.

I called upon all the power I had left. Even if it killed me, I knew it might save my friends. It took every ounce of my will to call out with my thoughts,
Here. I’m here
.

His answer was a roar like the eruption of a volcano.

Icarus dropped through the canopy like a boiling inferno, bathing the forest in his dragon fire and smashing the trees with his giant wings. He was big enough to crush his way down, making a path through the foliage and a hole in my vine tunnel. Sunlight poured down over us.

Icarus’s show didn’t last. He couldn’t stay on the ground, and just as violently as he arrived, he started wriggling free of the branches and bursting back up into the air. The shrikes emerged from the forest again, four in all, and started to attack us.

I fought with all my might to get up, but I couldn’t even wiggle a finger. A shrike made a vicious lunge at me. I couldn’t move to fight, let alone flee. I thought I was dead for sure until an arrow caught it in the head…right between the eyes.. It dropped dead immediately.

Everyone was still getting up. Felix had his sword in his hand. Jace was scrambling to get his bow ready. Even Lyon was running toward me, sword in hand, shouting my name. He skidded to a stop right beside me, crouching down and taking up a defensive stance like he was going to protect me while the others fought.

But only one person was doing any real fighting.

From up in the trees, arrows rained down with deadly accuracy. Two caught another shrike in the back of the skull, killing it just as instantly as the first. I caught of glimpse of her stepping along the tree branches like a phantom. I couldn’t see her face since she was wearing a helmet, but I knew it was her. Beckah was fighting with us.

And she was starting to make us look bad.

When she ran out of arrows, she dropped from the trees into a crouch and drew a pair of long, slender scimitars from a sheath on her back. Her body was completely covered in sleek black battle armor that was painted with six sets of golden angel wings on the helmet, chest, back, forearms, legs, and feet. Her face was completely covered. To look at her, no one ever would have known it was a girl under all that armor. She’d grown so much she really just looked like a small, skinny guy.

Beckah may have looked like a knight, but she fought like a demon. Her strikes were so fast, I knew I wouldn’t have been able to keep up with them. She never missed. She never hesitated. And she killed all the shrikes who attacked her in less than five minutes, making it look like child’s play.

Everything was quiet except for the crackle of burning dragon venom still smoldering on a few of the trees. Beckah stood over her last kill with her blades dripping with blood. Slowly, she turned to look at us through her helmet’s small eye slits.

Jace, Felix, and Lyon were speechless. They hadn’t even moved, or tried to help her fight at all. It was over before they could find their weapons and figure out what was going on.

“W-who are you?” Lyon stammered in awe.

“Seraph,” she answered in a deep, hoarse tone. She must have been trying to make her voice sound like a man’s.

Just as she was turning away, placing her blades back on the sheath across her back, something rustled behind us. I couldn’t move or look to see what it was. But I saw Beckah whip around suddenly, ripping her scimitars back out again.

There was a gory, crunching sound.

Someone let out a garbled scream, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lyon crumple to the ground. There was a shrike on him, digging its teeth into the back of his neck.

Beckah sprang back into action before anyone else. She moved out of sight like a black shadow, but I could still hear the sounds of combat and the dying screech of the shrike. It must have been slinking around in the dark, waiting for the perfect time to attack. With my body drained of all its strength and power, I couldn’t even sense the shrike let alone warn any of them.

The others started shouting in panic. I couldn’t see Lyon. I couldn’t tell if he was still alive. All my abilities had completely fizzled out, so I couldn’t even try to sense if he was there or not. Pure panic coursed through my body as I lay helpless because of how much of my power I had already used. With all that remained of my physical strength, I was able to turn my head enough to see where Lyon was lying only a few feet away.

They were trying to stop the bleeding. Jace was pumping on his chest and breathing into his mouth. But Lyon already had a distant expression on his face. His eyes were glazed over, and his skin looked pale.

Lyon was dead.

Everyone was complaining about the rain. Sitting in the dining hall, I listened to the chatter of my peers as they enjoyed their dinner. It was our last meal together before graduation. Tomorrow, at first light, we were going to be sent off to the royal city of Halfax to officially be sworn into the king’s service. What would follow would be a grand celebration, and then we would learn where our next assignment would take us. But everyone was worried that the rain might slow us down.

Felix sat right beside me. He hadn’t left me alone for days except to attend Lyon’s funeral. Of course, I hadn’t been invited. It was only for nobles and close friends. But I wrote a long letter of apology to Lyon to be burned on his funeral pyre. Felix agreed to take it, even though I still hadn’t spoken to him. I hadn’t really spoken to anyone, though. There was a lot I needed to sort out before I felt like talking about it.

First of all, it was still sinking in that I wasn’t about to be shipped off to a prison camp or locked in a dungeon. The instructors and avians from the battle scenario hadn’t spoken a word about anything I had done on the island. They all acted like nothing bizarre had happened at all, apart from things going awry when a few animals went crazy. They had blamed it all—including Thrane’s death—on the jungle coming alive and attacking us. Commander Rayken wasn’t even suspicious of me.

After a few days of hanging in suspense, waiting for the doors to burst open and elite guards to slap shackles on my wrists, I started to wonder if it had all just been a nightmare. I was thinking that again, hoping that somehow it had been another one of my horrible dreams. Then I glanced to my other side where Lyon usually sat, and that stupid hope came crashing down around my ears. His seat was empty. Lyon was gone, and he wasn’t coming back. He was dead because I hadn’t been strong enough to keep my own power under control.

I knew Felix would be furious if he knew I was thinking those kinds of things. I couldn’t help it. I was the only one who could have healed his injuries. I could have saved him. Instead I made a stupid tunnel out of vines that had nearly put me into another coma. It had taken days for me to be able to move normally again, and in that time, I could only lie there while everyone else grieved and mourned for my friend.

My other worry was about Beckah. I hadn’t seen or heard from her since she had appeared to save us on the island. The other riders were talking about her plenty, though. They didn’t know it was a girl under that helmet, but everyone was very impressed with a knight who had been able to take control of Icarus and could fight so well without ever setting foot in the academy. Rumors were flying about the mystery knight’s real identity, and some people were even suggesting it might be the King of Maldobar himself.

“Nah, the king is way too old for that. You should have seen this guy. He had to be young to be that fast. He called himself Seraph,” Felix explained.

He was telling the story again to a table full of our peers. When he glanced my way, our eyes met, and I knew he was keeping the rumor going on purpose. He knew who was really under that armor, thanks to me. I’d already told him about Beckah being chosen as a dragonrider, and I knew he wasn’t stupid enough to believe it was anyone except her.

I waited until after dinner to finally ask the question that was driving me crazy. “Why are you keeping her secret?”

Felix closed the door to our dorm room and sat down on the edge of his bed. Behind him, Lyon’s bed was still empty and untouched—exactly the way he had left it before the battle scenario.

“Because there may come a time when we need her help again.” He sighed and rubbed his forehead. “So you’ve decided to talk now?”

I sat down on my bed across from him. “I’m trying to understand what happened… and why no one has arrested me yet.”

Felix snorted like that was a bad joke. “No one is going to say a word about it, Jae. You saved us. Monster or maniac, those guys don’t care what you are as long as you’re on our side. And you proved that a hundred times over. No one would have made it off that island if you hadn’t intervened. They know that. I know it. You just aren’t ready to admit it, yet.”

“I’m a halfbreed. They used to care a lot about that,” I reminded him coldly.

“Things change. Sometimes even people change, too. Since you came here last year, you’ve made everyone second guess what they thought about halfbreeds.” He sighed and shook his head. “As much as I hate to admit it, you were right about Lyon. He was able to change, and I didn’t want to let myself see it. Now it’s too late and I’ll feel like a jerk forever.”

“Not forever,” I said.

Felix shook his head. “I wasn’t going to tell you about this. I wasn’t even close friends with him like you were, but hearing it made me sick. When I went to his funeral, I saw his father and grandfather standing in their old dragonrider armor. I went up to talk to them, since they were both pretty famous before they retired, and as soon as I got close enough to hear them talking… it all started to make sense.”

“What made sense?” I stared at him.

“Why Lyon ran that night at the prison camp. Why he was so mean to you, and why he seemed to hate me so much before. His dad and grandfather were talking about how Lyon was such a disappointment to them. I couldn’t believe it,” he said, and as he spoke, his voice started to shake with emotion. I saw rage filling his eyes. “At first, I thought I was imagining it, or that maybe they were talking about someone else. But they were standing there, over his funeral pyre, talking about how he’d never been cut out to be a dragonrider. They said they never understood before why he didn’t want to go to the academy in the first place. Now, they said they saw it was because he couldn’t handle it. They called him weak for not trying harder, and said it was better that he never stepped foot on the battle field.”

Felix had to stop and calm down. He was so furious he was clenching his fists so hard that his knuckles turned white. “For me it was the opposite, you know. I wanted this so badly, even though my parents didn’t approve. Lyon didn’t want to be a dragonrider. He must’ve been terrified the whole time. I’m sure knocking you around when you were little probably made him feel like he actually belonged here. It probably made him feel braver and stronger.”

“Probably,” I agreed.

“I wanted to punch them both in the neck for talking about him like that,” Felix snarled. He was clenching his teeth. “But I stood there and realized I was just as guilty as they were. I hated him, Jae. I wanted an excuse to beat him up all the time. And I’m not saying what he did to you was right, but…”

“It’s okay. I understand.” I started rubbing at my face. My fingers traced over the stitches on my forehead and cheek. The medic had done the best he could fixing my face from where the shrike had scratched me, but he said it would definitely leave a scar. A memory etched into my skin.