“These warriors I’m bringing you to assess—” Lincatheron’s voice carried that familiar edge of controlled intensity. “The other day made it clear there are some gaps in my knowledge. I want your opinion, but⁠—”

  “But?” The word was snatched away by wind and wings.

  “They’re a dragon squad.” His eyes met mine across the space between our mounts. “And technically, there’s no authorised female dragon squad in our ranks yet. So they don’t officially exist, and I’d need your discretion going forward.”

  I didn’t even hesitate. “Done.”

  Some secrets were worth keeping, especially ones that involved giving women the power to rain fire from the sky.

  Lincatheron’s expression shifted—surprise, maybe, or approval. “Cindrissian must be right about you. Good at keeping secrets.”

  I grinned up at Lincatheron, already feeling the edge of mischief creep onto my face. “Oh, Cindrissian’s only scratched the surface of my secret-keeping abilities. I’ve got depths of discretion he can’t even imagine.”

  “That’s what worries me,” Lincatheron called back, but there was humour threading through his words now.

  I adjusted my grip on the handles. “So tell me, how many other technically non-existent military units are you running? Do you have phantom cavalry? Invisible archers? A secret society of battle-ready bakers?”

  His laugh was caught by the wind, but I saw his shoulders shake with it. “You’re assuming I’d tell you about all of them.”

  “Fair point.” I let the wind whip through my hair, feeling gloriously, recklessly alive. “But seriously, how long has this been going on? The unauthorised dragon squad, I mean. Because watching you try to justify an all-female unit that doesn’t officially exist is going to be entertaining as hell.”

  “They’ve been training for about six months,” Lincatheron called, guiding his twilight dragon in a smooth banking turn. “Started as a request from a handful of female soldiers who wanted to try for the dragon corps. Officially, I told them we’d consider applications once we expanded the program.”

  “Unofficially?”

  “Unofficially, I’ve been working with them every few weeks. And they’re some of the most naturally gifted riders I’ve ever seen.”

  Something fierce and proud flared in my chest. “That’s what happens when you stop treating women like they’re fragile.”

  “You don’t have to convince me,” Lincatheron said, and there was steel beneath his words now. “I’ve been fighting for integration for decades. But there are... traditional elements in the command structure who need more persuasion.”

  “Traditional,” I repeated, letting all my disdain bleed into the word. “Is that what we’re calling stubborn male bullshit now?”

  Kaelen rumbled with amusement beneath me. “Females have been bonding with dragons since before his precious military structure decided they were suitable for combat roles.”

  I patted his neck affectionately. “Not everyone can be as enlightened as dragons, apparently.”

  “I can hear you talking to him, you know,” Lincatheron said, though there was the faintest trace of amusement in his voice now.

  “Good. He agrees with me. You’re outnumbered.” I grinned at him across the space between our mounts. “Does Fenric know you’ve been organising rebellious female dragon squads?”

  “Isara.”

  “What? I’m just enjoying learning the secrets of the stoic military commander.” I adjusted my grip on Kaelen’s neck, letting the wind whip through my hair as I savoured the way Lincatheron’s jaw went tight. “I promised to keep the secret, not that I wouldn’t mock you.”

  Lincatheron’s dragon banked sharply to the left, and I caught the way his knuckles went white where they gripped the reins. “Can we focus on the mission instead of my personal⁠—”

  “Oh, this is perfect,” I called across the space between us. “The great Lincatheron, terror of battlefields, reduced to a blushing mess by one pretty male. Does he make you nervous, Commander? Does your heart race when he calls you sir?”

  “I’m going to throw you off your dragon myself,” Lincatheron growled, but the threat lacked heat. He was too busy looking mortified.

  “This is highly entertaining,” Kaelen purred in my mind. “Please continue tormenting the uptight commander.”

  “You’d have to catch me first, and something tells me you’re too busy thinking about catching Fenric instead.”

  That’s when the screaming started.

  The sound ripped through the sky. It came from ahead of us, from the direction of the camp that should have been a controlled military operation.

  Lincatheron’s dragon snapped into a steep dive without warning, and Kaelen followed suit, both of us suddenly focused on the horizon with single-minded intensity.

  “What the fuck?”

  Then the camp came into view, and the words died in my throat.

  Dragons filled the sky like a plague of locusts, their scales black as midnight, eyes burning with sickly green fire. Below them, the camp was chaos incarnate. Tents burned, soldiers scattering like ants from a kicked hill, the bright flash of magic crackling through smoke-thick air.

  But these weren’t Lincatheron’s dragons. These weren’t anyone’s dragons that should have been there.

  “Fuck,” Lincatheron’s voice cracked across the wind, every syllable dripping with rage that could level mountains. “Those are Nyxarian war beasts. The entire camp is under attack.”

  “Wildfire.” Kaelen’s entire body tensed. “Hold tight. We’re going to war.”

  The sky became a battlefield of wings and fire and death.

  Kaelen threw us into the chaos without hesitation, his emerald form cutting through the air like a living weapon. Shadow dragons wheeled around us. Massive, wrong things with scales that seemed to drink light. They moved with terrifying coordination.

  I tried to loose the black fire, tried to be the weapon I’d been training for, but everything was moving too fucking fast. The wind tore at my hair, my eyes watered, and every time I thought I had a target, Kaelen would swerve to avoid claws or teeth or streams of that sickly green flame.

  “Easy, there.” His voice rumbled through my mind as I nearly slid sideways off his back during a particularly violent roll. “You’re not ready for aerial combat.”

  “I can handle it!” I snarled back, but even as the words left my mouth, I knew they were a lie. I was clinging to his neck like a terrified child while dragons who’d been born to this dance of death and sky moved around us with lethal grace.

  A shadow beast dove at us from above, claws extended like obsidian spears. Kaelen twisted away at the last second, the motion so sudden and violent that I lost my grip entirely. For one heart-stopping moment I was sliding down his flank, my fingers scrabbling desperately for purchase on his scales.

  “I’ve got you.” But the words were strained as he levelled out, giving me just enough stability to haul myself back into position.

  Below us, I caught a flash of twilight purple as Lincatheron’s dragon spiralled down toward the burning camp in a dive. Even from this distance, I could see the way Lincatheron sat his mount like he’d been born for this.

  He landed in the middle of the chaos and was off his dragon’s back in one fluid motion, steel singing as he drew his blade. Lincatheron carved through Nyxarian soldiers like they were made of paper, rallying the scattered defenders with bellowed commands that carried over the din of battle.

  That’s what a real warrior looked like. Not some half-trained girl clinging to a dragon’s neck like deadweight.

  “Kaelen.” I had to shout to be heard over the wind and screaming. “Take me down. I need to be on the ground.”

  “Absolutely not. You’re safer up here.”

  “I’m fucking useless up here.” The admission tore out of me. “I can’t fight like this—I can’t even stay on your back properly. On the ground I can actually help.”

  “On the ground you can actually die.”

  “I’m going to die anyway if I can’t contribute to this fight.” I could see more shadow dragons closing in, could see our allies being overwhelmed. “Please, Kaelen.”

  He was quiet for a long moment, banking away from a stream of poisonous flame that came too close for comfort.

  “You’re going to be the death of me.”

  “Not today,” I promised, already preparing myself for the controlled fall that would get me to the battlefield. “Not if I can help it.”

  “I’m staying close,” he warned as he began his dive. “The moment things go sideways—and they will go sideways—I’m pulling you out of there whether you like it or not.”

  The fierce protectiveness in his voice made something warm and desperate unfurl in my chest. “Please do,” I said, meaning every word. “I’m not ready to lose you either.”

  Kaelen hit the ground like a meteor wrapped in emerald scales, his claws carving furrows in the blood-soaked earth as he skidded to a halt. The impact rattled through every bone in my body, but I was already rolling, already moving before we’d fully stopped.

  The battlefield was chaos. Soldiers screamed, steel clashed on steel. The acrid stench of burning canvas and spilled blood thick enough to taste. I hit the dirt hard and came up running, moonsilver daggers singing as they cleared their sheaths.

  That’s when I saw him.

  Lincatheron had his back to me, locked in combat with two Nyxarian soldiers whose armour drank light like hungry mouths. His blade moved like liquid lightning, but he was focused entirely on the enemies in front of him, completely unaware of the third soldier creeping up behind him with a wicked curved blade raised high.

  Time crystallised.

  The blade was already descending toward the vulnerable space between his shoulder blades. Lincatheron’s death was written in the arc of that strike, inevitable as gravity.

  I threw myself forward without thinking, without hesitation, without any regard for my own mortality. My boots found purchase on the churned mud and ash, every muscle in my body coiling like a spring as I launched myself between them.

  The blade met my crossed daggers with a shriek of metal that carried over the battlefield din. The impact drove me to my knees, moonsilver humming as it held against the darker steel, sparks cascading around us like falling stars.

  The Nyxarian soldier’s eyes widened behind his helm.

  “Behind you.” I snarled at Lincatheron through gritted teeth, my arms trembling with the effort of holding the larger weapon at bay.

  Lincatheron spun with the fluid grace of a predator, taking in the tableau in one quick glance. His glaive found the would-be killer’s throat before the man could recover from his surprise, opening him from ear to ear in one devastating cut.

  Blood sprayed across my face, hot and copper-sweet.

  “You magnificent, reckless idiot,” Lincatheron breathed, but there was something fierce and grateful burning across his face as he offered me his hand.

  I took it, letting him haul me to my feet, moonsilver daggers humming with the memory of that impact. “Someone has to watch your back, Commander.”

  “Wildfire.” Kaelen’s mental roar crashed through my skull. “Move.”

  I looked up just in time to see a shadow dragon diving straight at us, claws extended and maw gaping wide enough to swallow us both whole.

  The shadow dragon’s dive became a screaming plummet as Kaelen slammed into it mid-air, emerald and obsidian scales tangling in a storm of fury and violence. They hit the ground twenty feet away in an explosion of dirt and roars that shook the earth beneath my boots.

  But there was no time to watch, three more Nyxarian soldiers had spotted us, their black armour gleaming with malevolent purpose as they closed in.

  The first soldier came at me with an overhead strike meant to cleave me in half.

  The black fire erupted from me like a geyser of pure destruction, but it came too wild, too hungry. Instead of the controlled streams I needed, it burst outward in writhing tentacles of shadow that lashed at everything within reach. I cursed and yanked it back, the effort leaving me gasping.

  The daggers sang in my palms. A harmony that resonated in my bones as the moonsilver awakened to the taste of my blood and fury. I could feel them learning me, adapting to the rhythm of my heartbeat, the cadence of my breathing, the particular brand of violence that lived in my soul.

  As they struck again—a slash aimed at my ribs—I sidestepped and let the dagger in my right hand rise to meet his descending blade, deflecting it just enough to slip inside his guard. The moonsilver found the gap between his gorget and helm, sliding home with a whisper that sounded almost like satisfaction.

  He dropped like a stone.

  The second soldier was faster, smarter. He came in low and vicious, trying to gut me before I could recover from the first kill. Golden flames lit at his fingers, but my daggers were already moving, already singing their lethal song as they wove through the air. Left hand parried, right hand struck, and suddenly his weapon was spinning away through the smoke while his lifeblood painted the ground crimson.

  The third hesitated, just for a heartbeat, just long enough to register that her companions were dead. That hesitation killed her. By the time she hit the ground, she’d been opened in four different places.

  I moved like water, like death given form, the daggers flowing through patterns I’d carved countless times.

  The daggers hummed in my hands, warm and eager and satisfied.

  “Behind you.” Kaelen’s warning sliced through my mind just as I spun to face a new threat.

  But Lincatheron was already there.

  His glaive slashed through the air with deadly grace as he brought it around in a devastating arc. But it wasn’t just steel that met the Nyxarian soldier’s charge—the very air around Lincatheron rippled like the surface of deep water disturbed by something vast moving beneath.

  The scent of brine and crushing depths flooded my senses.

  The soldier’s eyes went wide as water began pouring from nowhere. It flooded from the air itself, from the ground, from the spaces between spaces. It rose around his ankles, then his knees, then his chest with impossible speed as it held its shape in a perfect column around his thrashing form.

  He tried to scream and choked instead, salt water flooding his lungs even as he stood on solid ground. His weapon fell from nerveless fingers as he clawed desperately at liquid that had no surface to break, no edge to escape.

  Lincatheron’s glaive took his head while he drowned standing up.

  The water vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, leaving only a corpse and the lingering taste of deep ocean on the wind.

  “Fucking hells,” I breathed, staring at Lincatheron with new respect. “Remind me never to piss you off near a bathtub.”

  “The ocean doesn’t forget,” he said, silver spray trailing from his blade like seafoam. “And neither do I.”

  The daggers purred in my grip, eager for more blood, more death, more of the beautiful violence they’d been forged to deliver. And gods help me, I was eager to give it to them.

  But through the chaos, I saw her.

  The woman before me was a striking vision, utterly out of place on the battlefield. She strode through the chaos with the ease of a morning walk, an unsettling confidence radiating from her every step. Her gown—a flowing, blood-red silk—fluttered behind her, the fabric cut daringly low across her shoulders. It was an absurd choice for a battlefield, and yet she moved through the carnage untouched.

  Her figure was tall, slender, poised, a predator who had long since grown accustomed to her surroundings. Her fine, straight black hair flowed around her, catching in the breeze, brushing at her waist. But it was her eyes, wholly black, cold and unblinking—that truly held my attention. There was a wild, dangerous spark in them, a calm awareness that hinted at a readiness to strike if needed. The fire and smoke swirling in the air parted for her as she moved.

  Lincatheron turned. Spotted her. And his body went rigid.

  He didn’t even look at me as he snarled just one word. “Run.”

  His glaive gleamed as he shifted into a stance I had never seen him take before, his body braced, tense.

  “Isara. Now. Run.”

  My grip tightened on my daggers. My breath came harsh but steady. “No.”

  Lincatheron swore low and rough, but there was no time for more.

  The woman’s smirk widened as she slowed. “How touching,” she mused, her voice rich and dangerous. “She doesn’t listen to you.”

  “Wildfire!” Kaelen’s roar almost drowned out all other thought, fury and terror bleeding through our bond. “Get away from her. Now.”

  Lincatheron lunged. His glaive swung with toward her, the air around it crackling with power. But the woman didn’t flinch. She moved with a fluid grace, the world slowing around her.

  She met his strike with a curved, elegant sabre. It appeared from nowhere, the gleaming blade catching the dim light of the battlefield.

  Their weapons met with a clash, steel against steel, a sound that echoed through the air. The force of the impact rippled outward. Magic writhed in the air around them, seething power that hummed.

  “Still so eager to kill me, Lincatheron?” Her lips curled, her blade twirling effortlessly in her fingers. “How precious.”

  Lincatheron growled as he swung again. She let him come to her, let him press forward. And then, with blinding speed, she lashed out.

  I didn’t catch the movement before blood splattered across the mud. Lincatheron stumbled back, a deep gash splitting across his cheek. His hand flew to his face, fingers coming away red.

  The warrior’s laughter rang out across the battlefield, a chilling sound that brushed against me like a breath I didn’t want to feel. I gripped my daggers tighter, focus darting between Lincatheron and his terrifying opponent.

  Above us, I could sense Kaelen’s desperate flight pattern, trying to break through the wall of shadow dragons that seemed determined to keep him from reaching me. The frustration and panic radiating through our bond made my chest tight.