A Shard of Sun by Jess E. Owen Read Free Book Online Page A

Shard and Hikaru rolling away. Shard grabbed at Hikaru’s legs, curving his wings to shield the dragon.
    “Jump jump jump !” Shard lunged into the air, wings beating hard. Hikaru followed, liquid fire lashing at his heels. Lulled by heat, the wyrms slumbering on the ground shifted and growled but didn’t stir. Poisoned air rolled toward them. Where the crystal form had rested, now glowed a long crack of roiling lava. Shard gulped for the cleaner air above the wyrms. His wings, at first stretching and working with joy and relief, threatened to cramp. Hikaru bobbed beside him, staring at the mess below.
    The crack in the earth engorged with fire and sulfur.
    “Follow me!” Shard commanded. “Don’t panic.” He circled Hikaru once as the young dragon struggled first against the dead air of the cave, then the strange currents of heat created by the fire below. “Work your wings smoothly, pretend it’s a spring day—” Shard gagged against the noxious fumes of the earthfire. The hole of sunlight in the mountain seemed leagues and leagues away. With a glance over he saw that Hikaru was managing to figure out his wings and a good rhythm to undulate his long body, and looked as if he could swim through the air. “Don’t look down. Only the sky…”
    “The sky,” Hikaru gasped, but he did look down, his gaze raking over the Winderost wyrms. Shard banked, turning a long arc to look down also, and a knot twisted his chest. Hikaru beat his wings hard, looking up to meet Shard’s gaze, and Shard knew they had the same thought. The wyrms couldn’t die like this. No creature deserved that.
    “We’ll warn them,” he called to Hikaru, his voice pitched in attempt only to carry to the young dragon. “But let’s get a little higher—”
    “Yes,” Hikaru agreed, and flapped up to follow Shard.
    They were halfway to the top and escape and Shard glanced back again to see smoke pluming and fire splitting from the earth.
    “Hikaru, now!” Shard loosed an eagle cry that echoed around the cavern and Hikaru dipped below Shard, and his deepening voice boomed.
    “Cousins! Wake up! Wake up or die!”
    A wyrm stirred, blinking up at them in confusion. Then a splattering of earthfire splashed his wings. His roar shook the cavern. He looked up again, saw Shard and Hikaru, and screamed his rage. The others woke in a daze, panicked by the liquid fire around them, and lumbered to their feet. Enormous, leathery wings flared and flapped and the wyrms rose in a furious swarm.
    “There,” Shard panted to Hikaru. “They’re awake. They’ve got a chance. Fly. Now. ”
    “Yes,” Hikaru gasped, and they turned together. The hole gleamed closer, a circle of sunlight.
    Below, the writhing mass of wyrms split toward the tunnel halfway up the cave wall, and others, toward Shard, Hikaru, and the sunlight at the top of the cavern.
    “Faster!” Shard shouted, as the wyrms with their powerful wings lunged higher, closing the deep gap.
    Hikaru shrieked with the terror and thrill of it and shot up and ahead, wings pumping fast and deep like a swan.
    Shard gave his wings a mighty stroke—but claws snapped shut around his tail and yanked him down. Long days and nights of fighting practice made him relax his body rather than struggle. He let himself fall with a battle scream onto the face of the dragon who’d grabbed him.
    Hikaru wheeled in a circle. “Shard!”
    “Fly!” Shard commanded, raking talons against the leathery paw that gripped him. A heavy, sour scent washed him. Then, odd familiarity. Shard’s gaze locked on the wyrm’s, then flicked down the length of her. Dark brown hide. A dead, baleful stare.
    Stigr, cut down by a lashing spade tail.
    “You,” Shard hissed. His feathers stood on end in fury and he sank every talon and hind claw and the razor edge of his beak into the stone-hard hide.
    Her angry roar sang in Shard’s bones.
    A wild, higher, musical shriek followed it. In a daze, overcome by the stench of death in