Page 77 of Dragon’s Ending

I love you, I told him. Because it was true, and he hadn’t yet heard me say it.

Then I laughed because he actually missed a beat of his wings and lurched, ungainly and startled, until he won his battle with gravity and turned his long neck to look at me.

His eyes were soft, even in dragon form. I love you too.

And God, I wanted to blast flame into the sky in joy and triumph. But the night wasn’t cloudy enough to risk it, so instead, I gave the most muted of bugles, and flew close enough to bump into him. It turned into a whole new game of aerial body-checking, swooping and colliding and darting away again before the other could retaliate.

Until suddenly, he was gone. Black sky where he’d been, and then in the moonlight I saw a silver-grey streak fleeing across the sky, faster than I’d ever seen him move before.

Dominic?

There was no answer, and I flung myself after him. I had no idea what had just happened, but then the wind shifted, and I heard the sound of wings. Not the easy, rhythmic beats of flight, but staccato, interrupted bursts and flurries of wing beats, as if a dragon were trying to fly but was in trouble. As if multiple dragons were in trouble.

Ice froze my heart as I chased after Dominic. The ruined silhouette of the castle loomed in front of me, and at first I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing.

Too many dragons for the amount of sky. Four of them were tangled above the broken tower, wings and claws and whipping tails. They were far too close together, spiralling and colliding in a blur of bodies that looked horrifyingly uncontrolled.

Then Dominic’s mental roar reverberated in my head, so forceful it felt like it thundered around the sky. Break away.

The dragons broke away immediately, but one of them was knocked in the process and tumbled sideways. Right into the path of another, who was halfway through a steep, diving turn with no chance of pulling clear.

Dominic saw exactly where they were about to meet. He folded one wing sharply and dropped between them with terrifying precision. He struck the falling dragon sideways with his shoulder hard enough to throw her away from the other’s claws, but it took him too low. He was too close to the ground.

I dived after him, but I couldn’t get there in time to get underneath him. Dominic hit the hillside with enough force to send loose stones skittering down the slope below the castle ruins. He’d managed to half-catch himself before colliding with the ground, but the landing was rough and wrong and far too uncontrolled.

I landed between him and the other dragons and reared up, wings outstretched to shield Dominic’s body while I bared my teeth at them. Rage poured through me so violently my vision whitened around the edges.

“Back.” My command was filled with fury, crackling hot as dragon-fire. If they so much as twitched in Dominic’s direction, I’d flame them, and I wouldn’t stop.

All four of them had landed now, and all four of them were frozen, staring at me in fear. We were caught in that moment like a stone frieze of dragons from the Middle Ages.

“Well, fuck.” Dominic’s voice, sounding weirdly amused. I spun around, to find he’d shifted and was making his way towards me, moving suspiciously like someone who was pretending a hard landing hadn’t actually hurt. And as if it never occurred to him that a dragon guarding something precious could be dangerous.

“Ben,” he said. “It’s alright.”

It wasn’t. It really wasn’t. I’d threatened to flame another dragon. Four other dragons. I’d have done it, too, if I’d thought they were threatening Dominic. And now I could see them for who they were, youngish dragons, part of Dominic’s little coterie. I’d have left them as burned flesh and charred scales. God. I’d never threatened anyone like that before. Never known I could.

Maybe that part of me had always been there. Maybe I'd simply never cared enough about anyone to find it.

“Okay, historian?” Dominic’s voice, casual but not, and I realised I was still in dragon form, smoke rising from my nostrils.

“Oh, I’m fine,” I said, shifting and glaring at him. “I’m not the one who cannonballed into a tangle of dragons mid-air.”

“Not exactly mid-air,” he said. “Wouldn’t have been a problem if they’d been a little higher.” But he was looking past me now, gaze hardening on the dragons standing behind me. I heard them shift to human form.

“No thanks to you lot,” he said. “What the fuck was that?”

I turned around to see four very shamefaced dragons looking at him.

“Dafydd?” Dominic demanded, and for the first time, I saw something of Rhodri in him.

“We, you know,” Dafydd said, and jerked his head towards me.

Dominic closed his eyes and shook his head very slowly. “I think it’s a little late now to worry about giving away the fact you were fighting.”

I spun around to stare at Dominic. “They were fighting?”

Our earlier games in the sky had been pushing the limits of what adult dragons should do. Fighting in dragon form was never allowed.