as night, the air around it warmer, heavy.
She paused beside the entrance for a moment, her toes clinging to the earth, and then there was a sound like a roar, like a crowd bearing down, filling her ears, echoing through the ground.
A dragon emerged from the cave. Its head appeared first, gleaming with red scales. Its deep-set eyes were red too, like the necklace, full of hunger and vengeance and rage. Black lines ran from its eyes down to its crocodile-like nose. Each tooth was the size of Aurora’s hands. Before Aurora could react, the head snapped past her, revealing a long neck, and then a body that went on and on, red and terrible and burning with heat that would have made her flinch, if only she could move. The dragon unfurled its wings, so close that Aurora could see the webbing between the bones, delicate and strong as a spider’s web, so large that for a moment they were all she could see. Her world turned red.
It was the most terrifying and beautiful thing she had ever seen. Heat pulsed off its skin, heat that settled within her, surging with her blood. The tail flicked past her, covered in black spikes, ending in a narrow point, so thin that she could have caught it in one hand.
Nothing existed except the dragon. She could almost taste its fire. And she knew what Finnegan meant, why his careful smile turned into genuine excitement when he spoke of these creatures. They were magnificent, uncontainable, bursting from the earth itself and refusing to sleep again.
The dragon twisted. It snapped its jaws and looked at her for no longer than a heartbeat. She looked back, her mouth slightly open, unable to breathe. Then the dragon gave its wings one powerful sweep and shot off over the top of the ridge. Aurora turned to follow its progress. A trail of fire burst into the sky, and then the creature was gone.
She could see Finnegan, waiting halfway down the slope. Her heart was still pounding, her blood hot and alive, possibility surrounding her. The waste did not seem quite so haunted now.
She began to run down the slope, slipping on the stones. “You were right!” she said. “I can feel it. We have a connection. You were right!”
“Of course I was right,” he said, as though that were the only possible answer, as though he had known it all along. And for once, Aurora didn’t care that he was smug, didn’t care that he thought he knew everything and that nothing surprised him. Out here, the heat of the dragon still filling the air, anything else seemed laughable. And so she laughed. He grabbed her waist, and she twirled around him, dizzy with the thrill of it.
Lucas stood a few paces behind Finnegan. He gaped at her. “I’ve never seen anything like that,” he said. “You should be dead.”
“But I’m not,” she said. “I’m not.” Because Finnegan was right. Because of her magic. “Where can we find more?” She struggled to regain her balance. “Where are the rest? I want to see them.”
“They live in the mountain,” Lucas said, nodding toward the horizon. “But I really don’t think—”
“We’re going there,” she said. “We have to go there.” She spun on the spot, still laughing, joy swelling inside her. “I’m Princess Aurora, and I command you to take us there.”
Lucas raised his eyebrows. “I wasn’t aware I was in the presence of Alyssinian royalty.”
Something tugged at the back of her mind, insisting that she should deny it, that she should not have said that, but she felt so good. So powerful. And if seeing a dragon felt like that, how would it be to use her magic, to connect with them? “We have to find more dragons,” she said. “Go to the mountain. Right, Finnegan?”
“Right,” he said. “But maybe we should do a little preparation first. Make sure we have food? And a plan?” He rested his hands on Aurora’s shoulders, as though trying to keep her feet on the ground. He looked straight into her eyes. He wasn’t smiling. “We should get back to the palace,” he said. “Before my mother realizes anything is wrong.”
The seriousness of his expression made her pause. “All right,” she said.
But her heart still pounded as they walked away.
SIX
THE ADRENALINE LASTED THE ENTIRE WALK BACK TO the river. Finnegan and Lucas talked—about the dragon they had seen, about its reaction to Aurora, about the abandoned towns that they passed—but Aurora