was so little space getting out that Gretchen felt the burning slice of the torn metal against her skin, raking her arm raw, and she bit back a cry, not wanting Cooper to worry about her. She knew he’d probably gotten cut too.
As soon as she could, she fought through the pain enough to swing up onto his back, feeling like the move justified every chin-up she’d ever struggled through in her entire life. Hot blood was racing down her arm, steaming in the cold, and the pain was dizzying.
But none of that mattered. They were free.
Not that she had any time to enjoy it. They might have been free, but they weren’t safe. Another rippling jet of fire was shooting towards them now, and for the first time, she saw that it was coming from a huge, crimson-colored dragon with thick, leathery, bat-like wings.
Phil? She didn’t know who else it could be, unless some dragon back in Ambergris had decided they posed some kind of threat.
Either way, she could save the identification process for later. Right now, all that mattered was that this dragon was fast.
Gretchen didn’t need another sign from Cooper to know to hold on. She clung to him as they raced and spun through the sky, plunging and dodging the fire. It was coming close enough to leave behind the smell of singed hair, and neither of them had much of that to spare.
She’d never been in more danger than right now—but at the same time, there was something wonderful about the clarity of it. She knew exactly why she was risking her life, and she wouldn’t do a single thing differently.
She was riding a griffin, being chased by a dragon, and they were fighting their way up a mountaintop for a confrontation that would set Cooper free.
The clear air and the heat of the fire had burned off the last of her insecurities and uncertainties. She didn’t know that any basilisk would be able to prey on her right now. All her feelings of being muddled were gone.
No one was going to manipulate her now. Not even her.
She could tell that Cooper was steering them towards a crevice in the mountainside. It was too narrow for a dragon to enter it and too deep for the dragonfire to follow them all the way to the rear. It could help them force a one-on-one confrontation.
Correction: a two-on-one confrontation. She was going to have Coop’s back whether he liked it or not.
She didn’t want to risk taking one of her hands away from his shoulders, but she rolled her hip just enough to feel that the comfortable weight of her sidearm was still there. She thought she would probably need it just as much as she would need her handcuffs.
They were almost to the opening of the crevice when the dragon behind them must have put on one last desperate burst of speed.
In another few seconds, they would have been safe. In another few minutes, the dragon wouldn’t even have been able to breathe fire—the flames had become so weak and sputtering that Gretchen could tell it was running on fumes. They were so close to safety and the fair fight Cooper deserved. Close enough that it hurt.
But this last breath of flame fell against Cooper’s hindquarters like a lash, making the whole back half of his body sag down. It threw his center of gravity off, making his wings falter and his flight turn choppy. That single instant of delay was all the dragon needed to dart in and claw at him savagely, opening up his griffin’s broad lion back, just an inch from where Gretchen was seated.
Cooper let out a harsh, cawing cry, and tumbled out of the sky.
If his talons hadn’t hooked deep into the rock, splintering it just to make a foothold, the two of them would have fallen down the side of the mountain.
Gretchen was shaking, but she managed to dig her fingers into his sides, stroking him, urging him up. She couldn’t even imagine the strength it was taking for him to cling to the mountainside—couldn’t even imagine how he was staying conscious—and she hated to ask him for more than that, but she had to.
“Come on,” she said, her mouth close to his ear. “Come on, Coop, just get us level again. Please.”
His body lurched, the muscles rippling under his tawny fur, and for a second, Gretchen could picture them sliding back into thin air. It was sickeningly easy to