We’re high enough now that I can’t breathe, and one of my swords is digging into my right wing hard enough to make me wince.“You can let me go.”
He doesn’t.
“I have wings, remember?”
My people are all going to die.
Apparently, we’re doing this here.A million and one miles in the sky, while I’m held in his claw like a tasty squirrel.Sideways.
“I can’t breathe up here.”I slap his foot as hard as I can.
His head curls around, one enormous eye meeting mine.In no way does he acknowledge me or my discomfort, but he does wheel downward slowly.Now?
“I...”I swallow.I’m not sure how to start this.“I lied before,” I blurt.
Clearly, I’m amazing at this sort of thing.
“I didn’t trust you,” I hurry to explain.“The Axel I knew was gone, and...I thought knowing what I knew might be the only defense I had to keep my siblings safe.”My breath catches, even as we go lower.Thinking about how Hyperion threatened to chuck them into the volcano still makes me sick.
You care about them a great deal.
“I do.”
You love them?
“Yes,” I say without thinking.“Very, very much.”
More than anything else?
I’m not sure I can answer that, not with the painful ache in my heart around Azar.“But when I was in that volcano, I met someone.Her name was Freya.”
The blessed oracle?
“She was human, or at least, she looked human to me.”I shrug, or at least, I try.It’s hard to shrug when bands that are stronger than steel are binding your shoulder blades together and holding you at a forced sixty-degree angle.I slap his foot again.“Can we please land on the ground?This is really uncomfortable.”
When he snorts, tiny flames shoot out, but he heads down in a tight spiral, and then he nosedives.I forgot how much of a punk he was before our bond strengthened and he started feeling what I felt.It almost gives me hope, recalling how much he changed, but not really.Most of our breakthroughs came when he was in human form—a form he can no longer take.
“I made a mistake.”
He slams into the ground, the rocks underneath his feet compressing with a terrible groaning screech.Most of this island’s just a pile of lava rock in some stage of breakdown.We’ve clearly found a more-rock-than-dirt area.Explain.
“When I slammed into the volcano, Freya appeared and fished me out to talk.Meanwhile, you, Gordon, and Rufus stayed trapped.Those creatures—the horned ones—wereeatingyou.”
Azar frowns.
“Can you shift to Axel?”I know it’s stupid for me to ask.
You prefer him?His expression’s strange.Guarded, maybe?
“It’s not that I prefer him.You’re the same—I do know that.I don’t much care what color your scales are, but you’re sobigas Azar that I can’t see your face well from down here.”I can’t help my half-smile.“I really miss human-sized Axel.”
I was neverthatsmall.
“Oh, but you were,” I say.“When you first came to Earth—when you bonded me, in fact, you were in human form.”
He blinks.
“As an earth dragon, you could and did shift.Often.”
