We should have been at the palace by now. From the streets below, its spires had loomed like jagged black fangs against the sky. Every child in the city grew up watching them, half in awe, half in fear. But instead of heading toward safety, the Lightning Prince veered us away, carving frantic patterns through the night as if the sky itself had turned hostile.
Each dive slammed me against his shoulder. Each roll tore the breath from my chest. My stomach lurched so hard I thought I might leave it behind in the clouds.
Something cracked the air beside me. A streak of iron splits past my ear close enough to steal a lock of hair. I shrieked, the sound whipped away before it left my lips. He cursed, wings banking into a sickening plunge that made the world blur.
"Who are they?!"
"Earth Kingdom," he snapped, voice like thunder. "Stay still."
"Easy for you to say!"
His head angled back just enough for me to catch the hard gleam of his eyes. Blue fire lived there, unyielding and merciless. "If I drop you," he said, each word sharp as a blade, "don't let go."
I wanted to scream at him. Don't let go? That's your brilliant plan? But before I could spit the words, the world spun. The asshole threw me.
"ARE YOU INSANE?!" I screamed, but the words vanished, shredded by the gale.
I was weightless.
Not in the way you dream of flying, arms stretched wide, wind catching you like a friend. No. This was the nightmare version—shoved off a rooftop, no net, no miracle, just empty air waiting to swallow you whole.
The wind howled in my ears, tore my hair across my face, ripped the breath from my lungs. My arms flailed, grasping at nothing. My heart slammed against my ribs so violently it hurt.
Then the sky roared back.
He wasn't a man anymore.
A dragon erupted out of the night where the prince had been. His body uncoiled in a violent shimmer of scales darker than midnight, lightning crawling across him in living veins of fire. His wings snapped open, vast enough to blot out the moon, and with one beat he changed the air itself, bending it to his will. His eyes blazed—bright, electric, otherworldly—and when they locked on me, my chest seized with terror.
Then the dragon dove straight for me.
I hit the ridge of his neck with a jolt that rattled my bones. Pain shot through my shoulder, but instinct shoved my hands forward, clawing for safety. My fingers found grooves between scales, shallow ridges carved by battle and time. The scales burned against my skin, hot and alive, thrumming with a storm that seemed to live beneath them.
The wind tore at me, every gust trying to pry me loose. My cloak snapped and lashed, yanking me backward. My bound wrists screamed in protest. But I clung.
Every movement of his wings threatened to fling me off. When he banked left, the world turned sideways, and I dangled with half my body hanging into open air. My legs kicked, desperate to find something, anything. My knuckles whitened, nails scraping until they bent and split. The scales cut my palms raw. I could feel warm blood slicking my grip, threatening to betray me.
"Hold on," I begged myself through clenched teeth. Not to him. To me. To the girl who had survived alleys and hunger and nights colder than this. Don't let go. Don't you dare let go.
The sky itself was war.
Bolts screamed upward, carving white-hot scars through the night. Siege engines below thundered, their launches rattling even through the clouds. The air stank of pitch and burning oil. Down there, thousands of soldiers moved like a single beast, armor flashing like fish scales in torchlight, all of it aimed at us.
A bolt grazed his flank. The dragon roared, and the sound wasn't just heard—it inhabited me. It shook my bones, rattled my teeth, made my heart stutter. Lightning answered, leaping from his body in jagged branches that split the sky. Engines below shattered. Men fell screaming. For a moment, I believed he could shatter them all.
But there were too many.
A shadow moved. A spear—long as a tree trunk—launched upward with a sound like thunder cracking.
Too fast.
Too close.
I tried to press myself flat to his neck, nails biting into scale. But I wasn't fast enough.
The spear edge tore through my shoulder.
Pain unlike anything I'd ever known exploded through me. Not pain you could grit your teeth against. Not pain you could endure. This was hollowing pain, burning pain, the kind that makes you nothing but nerve and fire. My vision went white. Blood poured hot down my arm, made my grip slippery. My hand slipped an inch, then another.
"No," I gasped. "Not—"
I fought for it. My fingers clawed at his scales, digging desperately for a hold. The ridges cut deeper into my skin. My arms shook, muscles tearing with the strain. My body was screaming, every part of me stretched too thin.
Memories surged. The first time I slipped from a roof as a child, dangling by my fingertips until my nails cracked. The nights I'd clung to life itself when hunger gnawed at me harder than any blade. Someone's hand once, holding mine so tightly I thought they'd never let go. I don't let go. I don't.
But blood betrayed me. My grip slid another inch. My shoulder throbbed, useless. My strength faltered.
And then—I fell.
The air ripped at me, cold and merciless. My stomach plummeted. My wound burned like fire spreading from within. But worse, the pain didn't stay in my shoulder. It crawled through me, vicious and alive, until every part of me felt like it was breaking.
Bones cracked—not breaking, but reshaping. Skin split. Muscles tore and reknit themselves wrong. My chest seized, lungs refusing to work. I couldn't breathe. Couldn't scream. Could only burn.
Flashes flooded my mind. Oceans boiling under storm. Mountains cracking to reveal rivers of fire. Roots tearing stone apart. A rush of air over endless skies. Voices—dozens, hundreds—speaking languages I didn't know, yet somehow I understood. And one word above them all, not spoken but roared through my marrow: Awaken.
I thought I was dying.
Maybe I was.
Then—wings.
White. Vast. Blinding in the moonlight.
The scream in my throat twisted into a roar. A dragon's roar. It shook the heavens, rattled the earth, and when it ended I wasn't human anymore. The wind no longer shredded me—it lifted me. The storm no longer hunted me—it embraced me.
I wasn't falling.
I was flying.
The battlefield froze. Soldiers gaped, their torches flickering in the shadow of my wings. Siege crews dropped their ropes, staring as if the world had just rewritten itself. A second dragon had entered the war.
I beat my wings, once, and the air obeyed. My body moved with instinct I shouldn't have had, every muscle knowing exactly how to rise, how to tilt, how to carve the sky. And gods—it felt intoxicating.
The world was too much. I could taste iron from weapons. Smell fear pouring from men. Hear heartbeats stuttering in their chests. Even the molten rivers threading the city glowed like veins of fire in my sight, calling to me.
It was overwhelming. Too loud. Too sharp. Too strong.
The pressure in me demanded release. My chest heaved, and before I knew what I was doing, my jaws opened—my jaws, vast and alien.
Violet fire ripped from me.
It struck the ground in a line of molten ruin, burning stone into glass. Soldiers scattered like insects under a torch. Another gout of flame followed, uncontrollable, wild. The power roared inside me, too big to cage.
Stop, I begged silently. Please—stop!
But the fire didn't listen.
It poured from me again, scorching the night, leaving nothing but ruin in its wake. My wings faltered under the strain. My whole body shook. And for one fractured heartbeat, I felt other elements stirring too—air churning at my wingtips, the heavy weight of stone answering below, the pull of water in the air. Too much. Too many. Too soon.
Pain stabbed deep, this time from within. Power tearing through a body too small to hold it. My vision blurred, the battlefield swimming in violet light and smoke.
Then a voice slid through the storm in my skull. Not young, not kind. Ancient. Timeless. It vibrated in my bones like the echo of mountains cracking apart.
"Calm now, child."
My body didn't know how to obey. My blood was too loud, my wings too wild, my fire too hungry. I tried to listen, tried to seize the thread of control that voice offered, but it slipped through me like water through broken hands.
The pressure inside me reached a breaking point. My chest convulsed, and violet fire erupted again, roaring across the battlefield.
Soldiers screamed. The ground itself blackened and split under the heat. Stone melted, rivers of molten glass carving through earth and steel alike.
I couldn't stop.
I couldn't even try.
And as the night burned with my flames, I realized the truth—
I wasn't in control at all.