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

the dragon’s jaws and the fumes from the earthfire below, Shard saw Hikaru diving.
    “Release him!” Hikaru slammed into the wyrm’s shoulder, slashing his talons through the leather hide. Dark blood welled and dripped down toward the earthfire explosions below. Her grip loosened and Shard broke free, soaring up to gain height for a dive. The wyrm swung her freed claws around to lash at Hikaru. He yelped and flapped straight up, shooting quick as a salmon through water. Claws caught his hind leg, sending a few black scales sprinkling down like rain, but he jerked free.
    Shard dove to attack, but the wyrm tore away with a sudden, surprised bark of pain.
    Shard flared to a hard stop in confusion, to hover between the wyrm and Hikaru. Blood dripped from the young dragon’s hind leg, blood that steamed even in the hot air. Shard saw with shock that blood had splashed in a crescent under one of the wyrm’s eyes, and every spot it touched now gleamed a rich, iridescent red.
    “Bright with dragon’s blood,” Shard couldn’t help but choke out the words he’d heard before.
    She dropped and wheeled away, clutching her eye as if it burned, and melded into the tumult of wyrms that blustered toward a tunnel on the far wall of the cavern.
    Shard grasped a tendril of clean air and caught himself, flapping hard. Hikaru winged in beside him.
    “Shard—”
    “I’m fine,” Shard panted. “Are you? You’re bleeding…” But it looked as if Hikaru’s wound had already closed and begun to scar.
    “I think I’m fine too.”
    Shard looked toward the fleeing wyrms at the far wall, and those wheeling in confusion around and below them. A fiber of him longed to chase down the cold she-wyrm and avenge his uncle or die trying.
    Likely the latter, he knew grimly, and Stigr would not want that.
    He turned and soared high, Hikaru close behind. “Up, up, now! The mountain!”
    Earthfire swelled and shot up in great geysers, and the air grew thick with poison. The Winderost wyrms flocked madly around the cavern, some crowding toward the top entrance with Shard and Hikaru, others for the tunnel through which they and Shard had first come.
    Hikaru’s flight was awkward but they were still smaller and swifter than the wyrms. They raced up, and up. The wyrms’ breath heated the air behind them and the poisonous earthfire swelled.
    Their escape beckoned, a gleaming crack of sky.
    For half a breath Shard feared it wouldn’t be large enough.…
    Then they burst through into cool, open air with a feather’s breadth to spare, breaking rocks loose, and the glowworms that clung to the roof of the mountain.
    The frosty air shocked Shard’s body and sunlight dazzled pain over his eyes.
    Beside him, Hikaru shrieked, blinded, thrashing, assaulted by cold and light as if he were hatching all over again.
    Shard fumbled for and grabbed the dragon’s foreleg. “Close your eyes.”
    Hikaru whimpered agreement. They wheeled together, blind, flying higher and higher in the already high, thin air. The sudden rush of clean, cold wind knocked the blackness and stench of the cavern away from them. Shard tugged Hikaru to follow the scent of trees, gliding back down. They had to fly in lower air or risk falling unconscious, for they had emerged at the very peak of the Horn of Midragur.
    They soared down along the mountain face, high enough to be safe, low enough to take great gulps of cool, clean wind. Shard’s eyes streamed but he kept them shut against the daze of sunlight on white snow.
    “I want to see it,” Hikaru panted.
    “Soon,” Shard promised, and released his grip. “Follow my voice. This way!”
    The mountain thundered behind them. They heard the wyrms of the Winderost break through the top of the mountain and scream in their own pain at the sunlight. Shard didn’t dare look back, didn’t dare open his eyes yet. The sun would stop the wyrms. Or the mountain would.
    “Don’t stop,” he called to Hikaru. “This way!”
    They turned