his dragon. And she will try to save herself.
She will try.
* * *
Sparrow jumps out of the boat just before they hit the black rocks of the shore. She guides their small vessel into a small, sheltered cove as icy water sloshes around her like ink, the moonlight’s illumination now a threat as the clouds continue to break apart and dissipate. She motions urgently for Effrey to be quiet as she helps the child out of the boat and Effrey conceals the pearl-skinned dragon beneath his cloak.
The sound of boot heels scuffing up sand freezes Sparrow in her crouch behind boulders.
“Stop right there!” a hard, masculine voice yells, just past the large rock to their right.
Trembling, Sparrow dares a look between boulders as she and Effrey cower in the night’s shadows.
There’s a young Urisk woman on her knees on the sand, blue hands raised in surrender, head down, body shaking.
In one fearful sweep of her gaze, Sparrow takes in the three male Mages that surround the woman—two young Level Three soldiers and one older, black-bearded Level Four with a lantern in hand. All pointing their wands at the young woman’s head, movable bars of lantern light strafing her cowed figure.
“Papers?” the Level Four Mage demands.
The woman doesn’t move.
The bearded Mage huffs out a sound of contempt and murmurs a spell. Sparrow flinches as black vines shoot out of his wand to collide with the woman’s body. She gives a brief, strangled cry as the vine netting wraps around her mouth and then her entire form, wrenching her down onto the wet beach.
Outrage bolts through Sparrow as well as the desire to launch herself at the Mages as they drag the woman away, but she knows there’s no winning. Not against three Mages with wand power. And Sparrow has never actually wielded a knife.
Lit up by a feral desire to survive and remain free, Sparrow grabs Effrey by the arm and they bolt in the opposite direction, the men’s throaty laughs and the woman’s muffled cries kindling Sparrow’s panic as they run through the beach grass, ignoring their bone-deep cold.
Eventually, they spot what looks like an abandoned structure atop a small bluff.
Sparrow and Effrey scramble up the bluff and make for what turns out to be a ramshackle stable, Sparrow’s heart picking up speed as men yell to each other down on the beach.
They round the weathered Ironwood structure, duck into the darkened, deserted stable, then run through it into the last stall and slide the stall’s door closed.
Sparrow meets Effrey’s fearful eyes in the darkness, a shaft of moonlight spearing in from a nearby window that’s visible through the door’s wooden slats.
The door to the barn creaks open then slams, and Sparrow’s throat constricts. She hugs Effrey tight, the two of them crouching against the walls in the stall’s farthest shadowy corner, the dragon still hidden beneath Effrey’s wet cloak.
A tremor kicks up inside Sparrow as footsteps stalk toward them, lamplight arcing chaotically over the walls.
A young Gardnerian man with severe, elegant features and soldier’s garb comes into view through the iron bars, moving in with a vengeance, the rage trailing off him a palpable thing. Breathing heavily, his jaw set tight, he roughly sets his lantern on the window’s sill. There’s a luminescent deep-green rune stamped on his neck and black unsealed fastlines marking his hands. He snags a crimson glass bottle from behind a hay bale, hoists it, unstoppers it, and takes an angry swig. Sparrow can smell the medicinal stink clear through the stall.
Spirits.
Her fear notches higher. Sparrow knows what happens when these Mages drink spirits and find themselves alone with Urisk women.
She holds her breath as Effrey’s small frame trembles against her.
Don’t find us. Don’t find us.
The desperate plea slams out with every beat of Sparrow’s heart. Her sweat-dampened hand slowly moves under her skirt’s hem to find the hilt of her knife as she readies herself to sink her blade straight through the white bird marking the Crow’s chest, even though he has a wand sheathed at his side and Level Five Mage stripes marking his uniform’s sleeves.
The young man sets down the bottle and angrily yanks off his tunic.
Alarm bolts through Sparrow as his body is scandalously exposed, hard muscles flexing, his Gardnerian skin glimmering deep green in the lantern light.
Breathing heavily, the angry young man pauses to peer down at the military tunic fisted in his hand, seeming like he would murder the uniform with his blazing green eyes if he could. Then