a hand on his shoulder.
“One last chance,” Falka said, stroking a too gentle hand over Sparrow’s hair. “Tell me where Leyra is, or the boy hangs with you.”
Tauran felt cold, then hot all over. Who would he rather doom? Leyra or Sparrow? A choked sound left him and he hung his head. Damn Falka. Damn him to the ends of the earth and back.
Falka hummed softly. “You’re staying silent? Then perhaps you should look at yourself before you call me the heartless one.” With those words, he turned and left the office with Sparrow in tow, letting the door fall shut.
Tauran stared after him, all that pent-up rage boiling inside him with nowhere to go, making his hands tremble. The guards closed in on him. They seized his arms and neck like he was a bog beast ready to strike. The steel-capped toe of a boot against the back of his right leg sent him to his knees.
* * *
Leyra called the dragons, and they listened.
Kalai had feared herding them all together would be impossible. They darted in and out of the smoke, scared and confused. When Kalai mounted Arrow, perching atop the roof of a bell tower, making Arrow call out and watching Obu try and fail to lure the wild dragons away from the mountain, the task had seemed impossible. But then Leyra landed on the roof below, breaking tiles under her claws. She filled her lungs with the toxic air and roared, and to Kalai’s surprise, one by one, the dragons came to her.
Obu landed beside Arrow on the tower, Arrow making room by hanging himself off the edge. Kalai leaned forward, gripping the front of the saddle to stay upright, one-hundred feet in the air. “It’s working!”
“Leyra is Ibi-shao’s daughter,” Jinhai said, his smile visible through the smoke. “She can guide them like her mother!”
More and more dragons gathered around them, mostly stateras, a handful of swiftwings circling the bell tower.
“Let’s go now!” Jinhai said. “I think that’s almost all of them.” He coughed into his elbow. “The rest will catch up.”
“You’re coming with?” Kalai asked, placing a gentle hand on Arrow’s neck when he twitched, eager to take flight. “What about your studies?”
“Forget my studies! If they kick me out of the temples for trying to save the dragons, then so be it!”
Below them, Leyra roared one last time, then pushed into the air.
“All right, let’s go!”
Arrow threw himself backward off the bell tower, Kalai hanging upside down before they spun and leveled out, making Kalai’s stomach flip.
“Leyra, here!” Kalai called and whistled. At his command, she turned, adjusted her course and fell in alongside him. Just as Jinhai predicted, the wild dragons left the roofs and rose into the air, following Leyra’s guiding roars. A rush of exhilaration coursed through Kalai. He had half a hundred dragons under his command.
* * *
The nest site was hardly hidden and far too close to the volcano. In the midst of greenery, a clearing opened to the view of rocks and cliff sides dotted with caves like cheese, a few large enough to house even a titan the size of Ibi-shao. The thought of her made Kalai’s stomach clench. Was Tauran already on his way back? They’d be flying into a disaster. Another part of Kalai wished he was. It would calm his racing heart considerably to have his partner beside him. Seeing Leyra alone in the air without Tauran on her back seemed suddenly wrong.
Tauran had to be on his way. He had promised to be careful, and Kalai had no reason to doubt him. Besides, he needed all the help he could get.
Even here, the air was thick with smoke. Dragons coughed all around him, and Arrow drew shallow breaths. Despite the cloth Aunt Iako had given Kalai to wrap around his mouth and nose, the back of his throat still burned. In the distance, the sky was tinted faintly pink.
A deep, earth-shaking rumble momentarily drowned out the cries and coughs of the dragons. Arrow twisted, giving Kalai a better view of the volcano, a dark triangular shadow looming through the smoke.
Leyra soared on broad, maroon wings above. Her calls were short and sharp, urging the dragons to return to her. Those who didn’t have eggs already crowded the air around them. Some of them had taken to calling their flock the way Leyra did. There was no doubt they sensed the danger and wanted to flee.
Leaning over Arrow’s side, Kalai let the harness carabiner