Flying in thin air is not as fun as Nova makes it appear.

In all honesty, it’s quite frightening.

Time slows, and I’m unsure that’s a good thing at the moment. It merely lets me contemplate how much it’s going to hurt when I hit the ground. Or maybe it won’t hurt at all because I’ll be dead on impact from over two hundred feet in the air.

The wind tugs at my fur and throws me like a rag doll, and the dragons behind me roar. I see nothing but endless land beneath me. Hundreds of feet beneath me.

The soldiers continue marching through the woods, an almost endless stream. Fire and ice battle below as Alicial tries to keep the wall from falling too soon.

A large ice ball as big as a horse obliterates a wall of fire and comes out the other side, bowling over the men until a man in a red robe lifts a hand and it stops. Great.

But another ice ball hurtles after the first. They smash together, and the many shards send the man flying.

Then a large, black tail three times my size swats me out of the air and I’m sent tumbling. Right into another dragon. This one a red.

Its eyes grow wide and it tries to snap at me, but I twist my body, and the fangs snap shut inches from my torso.

I grab a wing and the dragon screeches. This dragon has one horn on its head and eyes the size of my torso. The feathers along its neck flares, but its not quite like Nova. Its feathers are less full, more like a mohawk than a true mane. The rest is scaled and hard as a rock.

The two humans on its back stare at me with gaping mouths.

“What, never seen a wolf fall out of thin air before?” I say.

“You’re a wolf?” the man with a large goatee asks, his eyes incredulous, pulling back on his arrow.

I growl, showing my teeth.

“My bad! A monster werewolf. Ok,” he says with a shrug, shooting an arrow at me right before the dragons twists. I latch on with both hands, ducking my head as the arrow sails past. Assassin training didn’t prepare me for fighting on dragon back. This is one of the few things I don’t think they foresaw.

Another arrow thunks into the wing beside me and the dragon screeches as it levels out, twisting its head around and looking at the man with narrowed eyes and a hiss.

The one in front of the archer lifts a hand, and the dragon's eyes glaze over. It turns back around, flapping with jilted motions.

The Empire just can’t let things be free, can they?

I use my claws and go after the man. The archer hits me with two arrows, but they aren’t Wolfsbane or silver, so I pay them no mind, breaking them off at the head to prevent them from impeding my movements.

When I get to them, the archer gulps, putting up his hands in surrender.

“Sorry. So sorry. My condolences for being a monster,” he says.

I huff out a laugh. The one in front grunts and the dragon snakes its head around to bite at me. I kick it, and the force of my blow knocks its head back around and sends me tumbling. Again.

I hit the dragon's back once... twice, barely able to grasp the edge of its wing before I’m thrown free.

And I’m back to where I started.

Great.

This time I’m a little clearer on how it’s done, so I crawl faster to the humans even as the dragon twists and turns trying to throw me.

Who knew I’d be grateful for Nova’s lessons on how to stick a barrel roll hanging by the claws?

Two more arrows land in my fur before I make it to the humans.

The archer holds his hands up again, opening his mouth, but I grab the person in front of him and lay him out with a jab that breaks his jaw.

The dragon’s flight evens out a moment before the head snakes around to look at us.

The archer releases whatever was holding them to the dragon with the pull of a chord and gives me a salute when he jumps off the side, holding his companion.

They freefall for a moment, then something large shaped like a mushroom blooms from a pack in his back and slows their descent into the earth.

I need one of those!

The dragon gives a full body shake, then looks back at me.

The anger burning in its eyes is not looking good for me.

“Easy. I set you free,” I say softly, looking into its eyes and trying to connect like I did Nova.

The dragon connects, but instead of Nova’s soft and kind mind, this one hits like a ton of bricks, dropping me to my knees.

It hisses, pulling its reptilian lips back to reveal fangs the size of my forearm.

The emotions I’m getting from it are apathy and madness. It’s been in the hold of first the Shifters and then the Empire for so long... it’s just done.

It snaps at me, but I’m ready and leap on its head. Something black shoots out of the sky and catches the dragon like an eagle would a fish.

The dragon writhes in the talons, and I leap from its head to Nova’s leg before it throws me off.

Nova roars, then bites at the back of its neck, crunching through scale and bone in a moment. It goes still, and Nova drops it, using its weight to push off into the sky.

I cling to her leg and connect with her, feeling her weakening but her warmth and welcome that I'm alright.

She needs to ground, but she came for me first.

Awww, the dragon actually likes you.

Shut. Up.

Nova’s exhausted with little left to give. Her black scales are streaked with a shimmering substance and as I climb on her back, multiple gouges out of her hide. I wince. She’s covered in her own blood.

I sit a hand on her neck, and it comes away bloody. “Easy, girl. It’s time to ground.”

She roars into the sky, then turns her wings toward ground.

“Gray!”

My ears swivel at the sound. My lips turn up in a snarl. “Yellow.”

He straddles an albino dragon, the red eyes glaring at Nova. The human in front of him darts his eyes at us, then back at the Shifter. He says something I cannot hear and the albino comes closer, snarling, but not attacking.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” I ask blandly, squeezing my hands into fists, drawing blood from my palms. I need to end this. Now. But I would love nothing more than to stick a knife through his throat.

“Come back, Gray. Come back. All this can be left behind us. Videlia will be spared.”

“Why do you want me?” I ask.

He growls, his eyes growing desperate. “We are your family.”

“You killed my father.”

“Your father lives!” he yells, his voice strangled. “Come with me, let me show you where your true allegiance should lay.” He holds out his hand, as if I will come.

I almost scoff in his face, and yet I know the games his kind play. It is better to show no outward emotion lest they use it against you.

“Why?” I ask, as if unruffled. But inside, his words bring questions to mind. Questions I had wondered of before and yet cannot give power to. The truth may destroy me.

“We will spare your people and your creatures,” he spits with distaste.

“You will spare Videlia? You will spare all my people for one rogue Shifter returning?”

“Black allowed you to find yourself. He knew you had need of a few years.”

I raise a brow. “You knew where I was?”

He grins, his eyes amused even as the dragons flap to keep still beneath us, the rest circling around, most ignoring us as leonoavis dive bomb the humans. “You truly believe it would be so hard to track you, a rogue Shifter, in the Empire?” He uses my own words, spitting them back at me.

Why did Black let me go? More than that... why did he have mercy on my family? Why all this to bring me to my knees and force me back?

If they spare Videlia, I will be indebted. It would take years before I could pay such a thing. A lifetime. Black seeks to sink his claws back into me, but the question truly is why?

What makes me so important?

Yellow growls. “Come now, this is the all-beautiful peace you seek? Hundreds dead. And for what? You to stake yourself as king?” He scoffs. “Brother, you know better. You are no king. But you are a ruler. Of Darkness. Come home, rule in the shadows where you were meant to be. Put all this death behind us, let the innocents live out their lives in peace.”

I look down, unable to let the words wash from my soul as they should. The cries of the dead and dying reach my ears as dragons pick at the wall and the streets of Videlia run red with blood. Just as I feared. Is he right? Am I in the wrong here?

“Surely you can see the folly, brother. Let us end this before more lives must be lost.”

Wait, comes that still voice.

But what if I am wrong? What if this is all for nothing? What if—

Nova roars, and deep within she reaches and plucks from me the memory of seeing Shasha strung up to die. The memory of Shifters, humans, and dragons bound to fight… and to die.

If no one stands for them, if no one stands against it… they will never be free. Good men must stand or evil will reign. Pa believed that… died for that. I will not give in now. I will not let his memory be in vain.

His offer is tempting. Within my hands is Videlia’s salvation… or her doom. But it is certain to be the death of me and anyone the guild sentences to death. That is a life I cannot return to. Not again.

I stay silent.

Yellow’s eyes grow cold. “I did not mean for your human to die. Hold that not against me. Nor against the Guild.”

That’s as close to an apology as one can expect from a cold-hearted killer. My heart grows cold then hot with a deep-seated anger that burns and turns my vision red around the edges. I take a deep breath to shove it back, needing to find my calm within this storm. He's a master manipulator. He knows how to push me until I crack. Until I show what he can use against me. Nova croons softly, sending a breath of warmth through my soul that somehow combats the anger.

My shoulders relax and I meet his gaze with cold indifference. “You expected me to roll over and surrender. But freedom does not come without sacrifice, and I will not have Black’s twisted schemes tying the hands of the innocent. Better to live in freedom than die in chains.”

“So be it, brother.”

The albino roars, and Nova ducks beneath a breath of flame, even as Yellow tries to box us in and force us to dodge flame after flame as we enter the fray once more.

The dragons create traps for the leonoavis and wyverns, drawing them in and sending them plummeting to their death. Tens drop, and Nova trills, clicking deep in her throat as her blood paints the sky with raindrops of red.

“It doesn’t have to be this way, Roland,” Yellow yells.

It may be selfish. It may even be Videlia’s undoing, but I cannot leave my friends to assassins’ nonexistent mercy. It would be folly, despite his pretty words.

The dragons smell blood, surrounding Nova.

She sends me an image.

Really? She trusts me that much?

You helped her last time. Why would she not?

Maybe because I don’t trust it. But it’s helped me more and more, this day more than any other.

I throw open the door that hasn’t been guarded since Pa’s death, hoping Beast has recovered enough to do what Nova asks.

The creature within uncurls, pushing itself from the cage one lethargic tentacle at a time.

Then it stretches to its full height and releases a sound from within me that Nova returns. Something between a purr and a roar, but with a resounding rhythmic song within the depths.

Beast leaks from my pores, searching for the wounds, and cauterizes each as he finds it.

Nova drops beneath talons aimed for me, but screams into the sky, a sound that chills me to my core, and I feel her shivering beneath me. Her feathers are slicked back until they are nearly nonexistent.

I touch her neck, helpless as I cause her pain.

The pain she feels leaks through her mind and into mine, and with a thought, I pull on it. A strangled howl pulls from my lips as my body feels as if I dropped myself into an acid lake.

Nova’s flight evens out and she tucks her wings, barely avoiding a swipe of claws aimed for her wing.

An image barely penetrates through my mind, but I press my shivering body against hers as she flares her wings just in time to let a blue dragon sail beneath her. She grabs it in her talons, then twists and throws it at another dragon, both of them sent tumbling into the sky and the humans thrown from their backs. The dragons take off into the distance, freed of the humans.

Nova banks and we are finally just above the trees. A flash of light from my left and a whoop that I could place anywhere comes as Flash rides a huge ballista bolt into the sky from where Brackenridge had hidden a special few devices beneath the earth. He jumps off right as the large arrow pierces the chest of one dragon, and he jumps to the second dragon as an explosion rocks the air, blasting the dragons behind us off course and sending bits of scales and red chunks of meat into the air.

I lose sight of Flash after that, but I can’t help but think he’s insane.

And we’re any better?

Point taken.

I begin to feel hope that we might survive this as a human drops off the side of Flash’s dragon with a scream. Flash drops off a second later, catching a tree like a cat as the dragon rips the saddle and supplies from its back then takes to the sky.

I glance down. The slaves are halfway across the clearing with about thirty mangy wolves, their steps slower than most as they almost seem to shuffle instead of step, and many fall over dragons or bodies in the dirt. A few even drop into craters and the main army has to fish them out. Their steps are stilted and distinctly other.

It makes me ache. The brokenness and the fear. A memory attempts to surface. I recoil from it, coming back to the present and clenching my fist in Nova’s feather on her neck. She trills softly, and I feel her concern through our bond. She’s weakening, her neck slicked with her own blood.

It’s time to end this.

Without Yellow’s interference.

But instead with trust.