which she delivers…right before she shifts in a colorful shimmer of light. Flint follows suit only a few seconds later.
Dragon riding absolutely solves the problem of crossing the divide, but it leaves the area where we’re standing right now really, really crowded. I’m currently uncomfortably close to the edge, and that discomfort is growing exponentially, considering the added weight of the dragons is cracking the ground beneath our feet and making the edges crumble into oblivion.
Then again, that’s probably the point.
“Who’s riding which dragon?” I ask even as I inch toward Eden. Not that I mind riding with Flint, but one fall from this height above the craggy floor will mean certain death, and he’s a bit too much of a daredevil for my current liking.
Before anyone else can pick their ride, we all turn as one just to the right of the island as we hear a high-pitched howling that chills my bones. The noise gets only louder until a huge gust of wind races across the cavern and knocks me back a few steps. Macy stumbles, too, and teeters next to the edge.
My heart jumps into my throat as I dive for her, but Xavier gets there first, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her forward, away from the edge, in a yank-and-swoop move for the record books. All that’s missing is the backward dip and kiss, but judging from the looks on both their faces, it isn’t far behind.
“What the hell was that?” Mekhi demands, looking at the ravine like it’s suddenly been possessed.
“Wyvern wind,” Jaxon and Hudson answer at exactly the same time.
I start to ask what that means, but the truth is I’m not sure I want to know. Especially since it comes again about forty seconds later, clearly circling the island, just as Jaxon is helping me up onto Eden’s back. It slams into me, has me grabbing on to Eden’s neck in a desperate effort not to fall off.
“There’s no way we’re going to make it before the next gust of wind,” Xavier says, looking out across the chasm.
Flint snorts like Xavier’s personally insulted him.
“I’m just saying, man, it’s a long effing way.”
Flint snorts again, and this time it’s obvious he is very insulted.
“I think they’ve got it,” I say, wrapping my arms tight around Eden’s neck as Jaxon climbs up behind me, followed by Mekhi. “We’ve just got to time it right.”
“Exactly,” Macy agrees as she settles in behind Xavier on Flint. “We can go the second the next blast hits.”
“We will,” Jaxon says. “But I’ve got a backup plan, too. Just in case.”
“Oh yeah?” Xavier says. “Want to let the rest of us in on it?”
Before he can answer, another gust of wyvern wind comes howling around the island and straight at us.
“Too late,” Macy shouts as she grabs on tight to Flint.
I hold on tight, too, because the second the wind sweeps across us, Flint and Eden launch themselves straight into the air.
It’s abrupt and fast and scary as fuck, so scary that Macy screams for the first ten seconds straight. Which I totally get. If my vocal cords weren’t paralyzed, I’d be screaming, too.
Of every terrible and bizarre thing that’s happened to me since I got to Katmere Academy, this is one of the most terrifying. Especially as we come up on thirty seconds and the cavern continues to stretch endlessly in front of us. There’s no way we’ll get to the island in less than ten.
Flint and Eden must have reached the same conclusion, because I can feel them bracing themselves even as they rocket forward faster and faster.
My vocal cords unfreeze themselves just long enough for me to let out one wild yell, and then the wind is screaming straight toward us. Flint and Eden barrel-roll away from the wind while still going close to what has to be a hundred miles an hour.
Macy’s back to screaming, and so is Xavier, but the wind misses us. Which means we have forty more seconds to get to the other side. Eden puts her head down and races forward, and I squeeze my eyes shut as tightly as I can, even as I count to forty. No way do I want to see what happens next.
Sure enough, I can hear the wyvern wind whistling as it races toward us. But this time, when Eden tries to evade it with another side roll, it doesn’t work. The first edge of the wind clips her left wing as it