Lichgates: Book One of the Grimoire Saga (an Epic Fantasy Adventure) by S.M. Boyce Read Free Book Online Page B

find cover, but one of the spikes shifted and lodged into his bone. The pain buckled his knees.
    Another patch in the ceiling crumbled. Pebbles and thick shards of painted glass showered to the floor. What yakona remained fled. Braeden grit his teeth, forced himself to his feet, and staggered to the edge of the hall.
    Two thick claws engulfed him, pulling him into the air and pressing the spikes deeper into his hands with a single, deft motion. He cried out as the throbbing agony pulsed through his arms. Shimmering green scales blotted out the sky. The red dragon appeared in the air beside them, Kara tucked away in its claws.
    The familiar weight of his father’s control returned on Braeden’s chest. Hatred coursed through his mind like a fever. He turned to the floor. Carden lay trapped beneath the rubble, a shredded look of fury consuming his gray face, and Braeden lost himself to the final ounces of his father’s remaining energy.
    Kill the dragon, he was told. Rip it apart. Return.
    He writhed, consumed by his father’s commands, but the green dragon clutched him tighter until the pain of the poisoned cuffs outweighed even his father’s will. He dangled in the dragon’s claws and watched the Stele recede from sight.
     
     

    For at least twenty minutes, the dragons soared over the Stele’s black, snowcapped forests. The trees disobeyed the wind, bending instead to follow Braeden as he passed them. Carden’s monsters sped through the forests below, sinister shadows that traced his every move.
    Whispers of his father’s orders echoed on the air. Braeden scanned the sky behind them, but nothing followed. A mountain range loomed in the distance, and his heart pounded with excitement. This was the edge of the Stele’s domain.
    The dragons reeled upward, flying over the summit. Frigid gusts of wind bit his face as they peaked and circled to a meadow on the other side, which was far enough down the slope that the snow had dissolved into slush and cold mud. The grass was brown, and only the pine trees flourished, but he still wished for solid ground much sooner than it came.
    The red dragon set Kara down in the meadow; Braeden, however, was dropped with less care. When the claws released him into the air a few feet above the sparse grass, the spikes jostled in his skin. He thudded to the ground and did not try to stand.
    Nearby, a huff of air shot past Braeden like a breath from a bull’s nose. The red dragon glared at him. It sprinted toward him so fast that he did not have time to react. It grabbed him with one claw, kicking the air from his body as they shot through the meadow. The dragon flickered and changed shape again, melting into her human form as they hurled toward the mountain. Her copper-colored skin and pale hair shimmered in the dying sunlight before she shoved him against a cliff with one hand on his chest.
    Rocks broke against his spine and tore through his tunic. The cuffs ripped open the skin they touched, sending bolts of crippling pain through his arms and back. He cursed, but choked on the pebbles and dust that rained over them. The shape-shifter threw her free arm to the side, as if pointing off into the forest, and a thin white blade slid into her palm from the depths of the air around her. She held it to his neck.
    “Stop!” Kara yelled.
    Braeden squinted back to where he’d sat only seconds before. The green dragon flickered and shifted into a man. He unbound Kara’s hands but grabbed her shoulder to stop her from running over. She fought with him, murmuring inaudibly, but he shook his head and whispered something Braeden couldn’t hear.
    The woman’s grip tightened. “Braeden Drakonin, listen closely to me. I am not fond of your father. Had you not defied him in his own court, we would have left you. But mark me, yakona. If you betray our trust, death will become a mercy before I am done with you.”
    “I get that a lot. But yes, I understand.”
    She released him. Her blade