The Hunter and the Mage (The Raven and the Dove #2) - Kaitlyn Davis Page 0,37

before Captain even finished speaking, sending a blast of light into the sky. Nothing. Again, and nothing. A prickle in the air raised the hairs at the back of his neck. The dragon wasn't gone—it was hiding. And it watched them through the mist.

Rafe pulled his hand from his stomach, shirt sticking to his skin from the blood, and staggered to his feet, keeping one arm around the mast for balance while the other gripped his blade. The sword was as useless as his magic, but he felt better with that worn leather hilt between his fingers. The wound no longer bled, but it still hurt. Beneath his skin, his magic worked to fix the damage.

"There!" Pyro called, sensing the fire before it struck and once more using her magic to halt the blaze.

Jolt raised her fist into the sky as purple sparks danced around her fingers. Bolts of lightning cut through the fog and fractured out into a web. Invisible to his eyes, the dragon shrieked. Another blast of flames lit the endless gray, only to be held back by Pyro again. Brighty shot concentrated beams of light into the mist, searching for ebony scales, but the beast retreated again. Compared to the agility of wings, the ship was cumbersome, leaving its crew exposed as the dragon circled unseen.

I should have let it go, Rafe thought, watching all this from above, apart from the scene despite having created it. I should have let it fly away.

Even as he thought it, the beast came roaring back, diving from above. Archer released another arrow, and it struck true. Before the dragon could pull it free, he wrapped the loose chain around its stomach, trying to tie down its wings. Shadow released her saturated darkness, wrapping the ebony folds around the beast's head, shrouding its eyes as Archer worked a new set of chains, this time tightening the metal bands around its neck to cut off air.

Rafe, a creature of the sky, recognized the subtle shift in the dragon's wings before anyone else. "No!"

Captain, seeing what he saw, shot a gust of wind across the sea, but it was too late. The dragon closed its wings tightly to its body and dropped out of the sky, slamming into the ship with the weight of a falling star. Wood crunched. Sails caught fire. Someone screamed, though in the chaos there was no way to know who. Rafe hugged the mast to keep from falling as the floor jerked. Gray skies quickly turned charcoal with smoke, and the acrid smell of char burned his nose. He’d never thought he'd long for the sight of uninterrupted fog, but in that moment, he did.

The dragon's tail whipped to the side, slamming into Archer and sending him overboard. The chains fell to the deck with a heavy thud. Red sparks glittered as Pyro worked to control the flames burning across the ship, but so distracted, she didn’t notice the beast was freed. Spout was too busy searching for Archer in the water. Brighty sent a beam of pure energy into the dragon's hide. The beast spun on her, rearing back its head. Her eyes lifted and those strange milky irises found Rafe's across the distance, filled with a pleading he'd never seen from her before. In that moment, he remembered he had more than just his healing magic.

Even without wings, he was still a raven.

He was still a fighter.

Rafe released his godly cry.

Within the crackling flames and crashing waves, everything stopped. The dragon paused. The crew stood still. His shriek filled their ears and mulled their brains, and no one moved except Rafe. He watched the attack as though in a dream, as though his spirit were floating above the fray, and it wasn't his legs that pushed off the edge of the platform or his body that arched across the air or his feet that landed on the dragon's skull, boots melting on impact. Distantly, he knew his toes were burning, but all he could focus on was the blade in his hands. Twice he'd faced a dragon, and twice he'd lost. But this time was different. There was no whisper of Vesevios in the back of his mind. The dragon hadn't been sent by a vengeful god, controlled by a force greater than any mortal could ever understand. Rafe had summoned it. And there was a comfort in knowing the creature beneath him was just an animal led by pure instinct, not a mythical beast