Dragon necks lowered like dominoes in the sky.

Roughly a third of Kael’s force submitted.

The rest kept flying.

Kael stood on the back of one of his own dragons, arms crossed, watching his formation fracture with an expression that held zero surprise and moderate inconvenience.

His iron eyes found Maddox’s gold across three hundred yards of open sky, and the smirk that crossed his face said everything: he’d anticipated this move, planned around it, and was still mildly annoyed it worked as well as it did.

"Thirty percent, little brother." His voice carried across the distance, amplified by the draconic register. "I expected better from you. Or worse from them. Depending on perspective." 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

Maddox’s response was the smile Ryker called the murder smile. The one his dragon did when the math tilted in his favor and the other side had yet to notice.

Because thirty percent of Kael’s army had just obeyed him. In the middle of Kael’s formation. While flying Kael’s banner. While surrounded by Kael’s mages and Kael’s fae and whatever dark infrastructure Kael had spent months building.

Kael read the smile. His smirk thinned by a fraction.

Then a voice hit the mindlink.

Ryker: Need a hand?

Maddox felt them before he saw them. Three hundred dragons rising from the south, their formation tight and fast and led by a red dragon at the tip of the V who had apparently decided direct orders from his king were more suggestion than mandate.

Maddox: You are supposed to be in Drakencrest.

Ryker: I was in Drakencrest. Lovely place. Then I thought to myself, you know what would make this evening better? Flagrant insubordination.

Maddox: I gave you a direct command.

Ryker: You did. And I weighed it against my conscience.

The specific exhaustion of commanding Ryker Stormvale was a chronic condition with no known cure.

At that moment, Kael raised his hand. The dark fae on the flanking dragons mirrored the motion in unison. The dragons who had responded to Maddox’s command began to move.

Jerky. Mechanical. Stiff, puppet-like motion of bodies no longer theirs.

Their eyes bled black.

Maddox watched them rise. The fury that detonated inside his chest was the specific fury of a king watching his people be used as weapons.

Then her pain hit him like a fist to the chest. Five hundred yards below, the first seizure bowed her spine off Sterling’s scales. For two seconds Maddox could not tell if the seizing body was hers or his.

Sterling: Commander, she is seizing.

Sterling adjusted his pitch to keep her centered. The heat pouring off her was blistering his scales.

Maddox dove.

Black flame cut across his path before he made it halfway.

More streaked through after, hitting a dragon square in the chest. It roared in agony, before his eyes flooded black. Another hit the dragon next to him. Its eyes turned black, and movements jerky, joining the others.

Maddox: ALL WINGS FALL BACK FROM THE BLACK FLAME. Do not let it touch you. Defensive pair formation. No wing flies uncovered. Execute.

Half of the dragons across the Drakencrest line shifted in unison, landing on the dragon next to them, palms out.

Flame intercepted flame, while the dragons under them banked and dove.

Maddox: Ryker. Gwen is on Sterling.

Ryker: On it. Moving to retrieve.

Before he could get there, a second convulsion ripped through Guinevere. Harder. Foam gathered at the corners of her mouth, while pained grunts escaped her throat.

Sterling: Phoenix actual, send medic to High Commander immediately. Priority one casualty. Converge now.

Ryker: Copy, Jaxon and our mages are on their way. T minus forty.

Sterling: Get me a goddamn healer now.

The third seizure was the worst. It came with strangled breaths and a sob. Sterling felt her convulsing on his spine, the heat intensifying, and a scorched handprint burn into his scales.

Blood whooshed in Maddox’s ears, but he was currently the only thing standing between Sterling and black flame.

Maddox: Sterling. Talk to me.

Sterling: It’s bad, commander.

It only took one. A black arrow caught Sterling through his left wing. The effect was instant. His eyes flooded black, corner to corner, and his body stopped being his.

But instead of jerking like the others, his dragon went to war with itself, fighting for control. His jaw snapped open then closed and it bucked. One buck sent Guinevere six feet off on his back.

Maddox’s dive broke the sound barrier, something only very powerful dragons could do.

Maddox: I’m coming, Sterling. Fight it.

Gold pulsed through Sterling’s scales. A single ripple, starting from the spot where Guinevere was lying, spreading outward through his dorsal line and into his wing joints. His flight steadied.

Maddox reached Sterling just as the black in his eyes surged to gold. He didn’t have time to process it.

Three columns of dark fire converged on Sterling’s position simultaneously, angled to triangulate, to cage the black dragon in a box of black flame with no exit. Maddox threw himself in between.

Maddox: Sterling move. Take her out of here.

Kael’s voice carried across the sky, encoded into the draconic register, twisted through whatever magic the fae had threaded into his vocal cords.

"Rise up. Isolate. Herd them."

On Sterling’s back, Gwen’s eyes snapped open. Gold. The green was gone, replaced by the color of molten Drakencrest flame.

Sterling felt the blistering heat of her body shift, then sit up.

Sterling: Guinevere. Lay down on me. Do not move.

No answer.

Sterling: If you are upset with me about the mountain, you have every right to be. I will read one of Blair’s romance novels aloud in the war chamber. Full voices. I will do the female parts.

She crawled across his scales in fast, twitching movements that bypassed every law of anatomy. Every instinct Sterling had fired at once.

Sterling: Gwen?

Kael’s iron eyes locked onto her and his mouth curved. The dragon he was riding folded its wings and dove, shielded from the black fire and other dragons.

Ryker: Guinevere. Lay flat on Sterling. I am coming.

No answer.

Sterling: Gwen. Confirm you can hear us or we act on assumption.

She pushed herself to stand on Sterling’s back.

Ryker: Commander, there’s something wrong with your wife.

Before he finished the mindlink, she had launched towards Kael’s dive trajectory. A distance that should have been impossible, even for her, let alone a woman who had been seizing ninety seconds ago.

Kael’s arm hooked around her waist, pulling her against him. The gold fire from her skin poured into him the moment they touched, the Drakencrest flame inside her finding his blood and rushing towards it.

It felt good. Too good. The problem was the gold and the dark didn’t coexist well, and the more of her fire he absorbed, the less dark magic he could channel. An inconvenient trade at any time. A catastrophic one in the middle of an aerial battle.

He shifted his grip on her, then caught the blank stare behind her eyes.

"Wolf girl. Respond."

He snapped his fingers in front of her face.

"Blink, threaten me, or make one of those clever little comments about my recruitment standards."

Her expression did not change. He pressed the back of his wrist against her cheek. The heat that met his skin would be considered a fever even for a dragon. The kind that cooked organs.

Maddox’s roar tore across the sky, rapidly closing the distance.

Kael didn’t move his wrist away from her cheek, or spare him a glance. His voice lifted into a draconic register that carried to every dragon.

"This wolf is a bonfire with a pulse, little brother. I specifically said keep her alive. And you catastrophically failed at that."

Maddox: GET YOUR HANDS OFF OF HER.

"Does your second in command know that his mate took the Drakencrest flame?"

Kael looked up just in time to see Ryker, who was also racing towards him, falter.

Maddox’s blood went cold.