“Let me go through first. There is not a lot of room on the overlook.”

  “The over…look?” Valan huffed. “We’re… How?

  “The where is the shelf at the top of the tower. You’ve seen it from the city walls.”

  Valan didn’t need to ask how the dragon knew. He was just a little disturbed at how long he’d been under observation and hadn’t known it.

  “As to the how, you were with me when we did it,” the dragon told him. “Now, wait. I will call you when it is time to mount.”

  “You want me to what?” Valan asked.

  The dragon chuckled.

  “Don’t take the privilege for granted,” he admonished, pulling open a door on the landing’s edge.

  Wind ripped through the opening, and Valan gritted his teeth. Ice gave the wind a sting that suggested winter was on its way.

  It’s still summer, he thought fiercely, as his teeth started to chatter.

  “Wh…Why us?” he asked, trying to take his mind off the fact he was about to—

  Brel’s human form gleamed a brilliant white-gold, then swirled into something much larger.

  Valan blinked against the glare. He took an involuntary step back from the door, only to be caught by the leathery tip of a very large wing.

  He froze, then let it draw him out onto the overlook.

  “Use my foreleg as a step and sit between the spines between my shoulder blades. Use the spine in front as a handhold. And forgive the intrusion, but this is the only way we will be able to speak once we are aloft.”

  “Aloft?” Valan squeaked, but he was already moving toward Brel’s foreleg, eyeing the distance from the elbow to the dragon’s shoulders.

  “We must hurry.” The dragon rumbled to emphasize his words, and Valan hurried to obey.

  Once he was settled between the spines on the dragon’s shoulders, he spoke, “I’m ready.”

  “Make sure you have a good grip,” the dragon instructed. “Launch is always tricky, and the crosswinds here lend themselves to acrobatics.”

  “Acrobatics?” Valan demanded. “I’ve got no harness!”

  “Then I will try to keep my response to the turbulence to a minimum, but you should ensure your grip is solid.”

  Valan thought briefly of plunging a dagger into the dragon’s hide and using it like a climber used a piton on the rocks.

  “Please do not,” Brel instructed. “The pain would disrupt my concentration.”

  Valan felt a brief sense of relief that such a move would not kill the dragon, not that it mattered.

  “I won’t,” he promised, making a silent vow to keep his weapons sheathed while on the Brel’s back.

  If the dragon picked that thought from his mind, he didn’t show it.

  “Ready?” he asked, and Valan felt his muscles tense.

  “Ready,” he replied, and the dragon sprang from the overlook.

  “You know to where your sister has climbed,” he stated, and Valan swallowed, hard.

  “I know,” he confirmed. “She will not let them take her.”

  “She will jump,” the dragon agreed, “And we will catch her.”

  “Why do they want us?” Valan asked. “It cannot be only because we are halfbreeds.”

  “Usually they will only kill half-breeds when they are foolish enough to trespass into White Mountain lands. They do not hunt them beyond their borders.”

  “So, why us?” Valan asked, hurt squeezing his heart. “And why now?”

  “That is the real question,” the dragon asked. “The closest I can surmise it is that they fell out of favor with their gods, and their princess must now undertake some form of purification in order for them to return to it.”

  “Their princess?” Valan asked, “But I thought she met our fathers.”

  “She did,” the dragon told him. “Elves live a long time…and it has come time for her to rule.”

  “And their deities have cursed them because of…what…youthful misdeeds?” Valan snorted in disbelief.

  “In the princess’s case, it was youthful rebellion…and a desire for change. She saw half-breeds as people, something her own people—and their deities forbid.”

  Valan surveyed the campfires below, and the gleaming orbs of light moving with patrols along the streets below.

  “This is a race war?”

  “No, it is a war brought by one people’s need to find the rejects hidden among another people, by a princess who tried to find another path.”

  “But the gods…”

  “Their gods are powerful, but could be swayed to her side, if the right sacrifices could be made.”

  “Us?”

  “Not if they are to change their minds. What you are seeing now, is the result of the faction who wants no change, rising to power. To them, the princess’s life is forfeit and another will take the throne.”

  “So, why the ritual of purification?”

  “An example to the tribe of what becomes of those who try to sway the gods to change.”

  Valan had nothing to say to that. Instead, he slitted his eyes against the wind and tightened his grip on the spine in front of him, before leaning forward and slightly out in an attempt to see his sister.

  He knew where she’d gone, had known it from the moment the dragon had said ‘she can climb no higher,’ but that didn’t make it any easier to find her on the spire.

  “Why here?” the dragon asked, banking in a tight turn as he examined the steep upthrust of rock that adorned the city’s center.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “It was our refuge,” Sam replied. “A place the other children wouldn’t follow…and the adults couldn’t.”

  He eyed the towering rock spike, noting the adult-sized figures working their way along the stone ledges toward the top.

  “Until now,” the dragon concluded, abruptly changing direction. “The White Mountains grew up in terrain far more difficult than that.”

  “Is that why it calls us, do you think?” Valan asked. “Because it’s the closest thing to our homeland in the city?”

  “You, perhaps,” the dragon answered, backwinging and changing direction. “Hang on. They have noticed our presence.”

  “You’re a bit hard to miss.” The thought was out before Valan could stop it.

  The dragon tilted, angling himself so Valan had a better view of the spike.

  “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you just called me fat.”

  Valan blushed. “I’m just saying you’re big.”

  He stopped, letting the words trail off when he realized there was nothing he could say to make it better.

  “There she is,” the dragon said, directing his mind to where he needed to look.

  Valan’s gaze followed, and his body reacted before his mind could stop it. He rose from his seat, gripping the spine in front of him for balance.

  “Sit!” The dragon’s command rolled through his head. “You’ll need to be stable if you’re going to make the grab.”

  Valan didn’t need to ask what grab. He could see his sister standing balanced in the branches of the tallest tree at the top of the spike.

  She was watching the edges of the small plateau, and occasionally glancing down to make sure none of her pursuers were climbing up.

  Valan’s breath caught as one of the White Mountains hauled themselves over the plateau’s edge and stalked forward. Valan didn’t catch what he shouted as he stood eyeing his sister in the tree, but her reply was instantaneous. She dropped to one of the lower branches and walked toward the end.

  The elf was not pleased. He spat something into the wind, and bolted forward.

  Doreia grinned, danced the last few steps to the branch’s tip, and threw herself into the air.

  The dragon rumbled an oath, and dived.

  Valan had no choice but to wrap his arms around the spine in front.

  How in all the Eight Hundred Hells am I supposed to catch her? he wondered.

  “I will catch her,” the dragon told him. “You need to hold on.”

  He flipped himself into a roll that forced Valan to cling with both legs and arms to prevent being thrown off.

  “Don’t let go,” the dragon instructed.

  Valan wanted to answer the absurdity of that order, but the blood rushed to his head as the dragon rolled under his sister’s plummeting form. Valan’s legs threatened to lose their grip, and it was all he could do to get them to retain their grip on the dragon’s scaly hide. The idea of using his daggers to retain his position lost its appeal when he realized he’d have to let go in order to draw them.

  Pulling himself close to the dragon’s spine he hung on for dear life.

  If I get out of this alive… he thought fiercely.

  “Hold. Tight,” the dragon instructed, its mental voice strained.

  Again, Valan didn’t dignify that with a reply. He squeezed his eyes tight shut, pressing his cheek against the dragon’s spine and praying he could do exactly that. The gods only knew what his sister would do if he fell just when she was rescued…and not just to the dragon.

  He felt the great beast shift and dug in harder with his knees and heels. The dragon didn’t utter a word of complaint. It felt like an eternity as the dragon glided upside down over the city center, timing his drop so he came beneath the falling girl in time for her to slam against his chest.

  “Grip!” the dragon ordered, and before Valan had time to wonder why it would give him such a useless instruction, it flipped upright again.

  Without the warning Valan might have lost his grip and been flung from the dragon’s back, and he didn’t let go, even when he was upright once more. A faint, frustrated keening came to him on the wind. It sounded like cursing, but he couldn’t be sure.

  “My sister?” he asked.

  “Has a very good grip on the Common vernacular of sailors, street rats, and soldiers…and very solid knowledge of the more vulgar side of elvish,” the dragon replied. “It’s most unbecoming for a princess.”

  Valan couldn’t tell whether Brel was amused or annoyed.

  “I truly hope she doesn’t intend to try and carry out her threats,” the dragon told him. “I do not see myself as steaks of any kind…or corroborating with succubi on that level.”

  Valan flushed.

  “The orphanage hires us out to any who will pay,” he said. “Doreia’s last assignment was at the docks…and before that she worked in the barracks of one of the local mercenary companies. She said if she cussed them out, the mercs and sailors were more likely to listen to what she had to say.”

  “And they gave her weapons lessons because?” Brel prodded.

  “Because she wouldn’t take no for an answer?” Valan tried.

  “Now, that I can believe,” the dragon answered.

  He brought his wings down in a single powerful sweep, and the staccato keening became a wail.

  “Now, she thinks I’m going to eat her,” the dragon said in disgust.

  “You wait until she sees you in human form,” Valan warned him.

  “Why?”

  “All I can say is I hope you wear some kind of protection,” Valan said, “Because she kicks like a mule.”

  “I have people waiting,” the dragon replied. “Perhaps they, or you, can speak to her before I release her from my claws.”

  “Your claws?” Valan’s mental pitch rose in alarm.

  “I am being very careful,” the dragon assured him.

  There was nothing to say to that, and nothing he could do to set things right, so Valan changed the subject.

  “They’ll leave, now, won’t they?” he asked. “The Oshalans and the White Mountains?”

  “I’ll see to it,” the dragon replied grimly.

  They swept over the city walls and out over the bay. Brel dropped close to the waves.

  The wail became a shriek of anger, and Valan was sure he heard a splash.

  “What did you do?” he asked.

  “I thought she needed to cool off.”

  “You just want to see what she’s like when she’s really mad.”

  “I am not that foolish…truly.”

  That’s not what it sounded like to Valan. In fact, if he didn’t know better, he’d have said the dragon was finding it funny.

  “We’re in the middle of a war zone, here!” he grumbled. “The least you could do would be to act like that mattered.”

  “Really?” the dragon asked, “Because I don’t see an army out here?”

  Valan looked around, a chill flowing through him when he found what he was looking for.

  “I bet you wondered how the Oshalan’s reached us without the alarm being raised in the mountains.”

  “It had crossed my mind,” Brel responded.

  “They have a navy.”

  “Whe—” The dragon’s reply ended in a series of curses, and he flicked himself abruptly up.

  The scream of a cannonball passing beneath them elicited another squawk from the dragon’s claws. It was followed by a flare of scarlet lightning that leapt back along the cannonball’s trail and set the ship’s sails alight.

  The dragon chuckled and winged higher, banking away from the half-dozen ships heading toward the city.

  “That is something to have them wondering,” he said. “Now there will be talk of a dragon with a wizard’s magic.”

  “But will they leave the city?” Valan wanted to know. “Now that Doreia and I are no longer there.”

  “That depends on human greed,” the dragon conceded. “Your city’s masters have not yet come to the city’s defense. It is yet to be seen as to whether they will.”

  Valan glanced back at the ships. Two had lost sail to aid their stricken fleet mate, but the other three continued toward the docks.

  The dragon ground out several words and abruptly gained height. Valan was glad he hadn’t relinquished his grip on the spine in front. It was all that kept him from sliding from the dragon’s shoulders as it surged starward. He dug in his heels and gripped with his thighs, and that was all that stopped him from falling as the dragon threw itself into a backward loop.

  Another bolt of lightning tore into the sky, and the dragon roared.

  “We let them LIVE!” the dragon roared, its angry bellow deafening as its shout rocked Valan’s head.

  “I don’t know why you’re shouting at me,” Valan protested.

  “Because she won’t hear me,” the dragon gritted back.

  “She…won’t?”

  “I do not know who taught her, or why they thought she needed to know it, but she has the know-how and the power to block a dragon’s mental link.”

  Valan bit back a laugh at how the offended he sounded.

  “It’s not funny. I can’t tell her who I am, or why I’m here, or what my intentions are, and you are well aware that she can be difficult at the best of times.”

  Valan was but…

  “How do you know that?”

  “While it took me some time to learn why the White Mountains had sent spies to my city, I put a watch on you as soon as I did.”

  “How long ago did you know they intended to invade?”

  “Two days,” the dragon replied shortly. “And that only because we found the Oshalan vanguard.”

  “You didn’t send spies to see who’d sent the White Mountains?”

  “We sent them,” the dragon replied gravely. “They have not returned.”

  He flew high enough the air grew chill.

  “We are out of their sight,” the dragon told him. “I apologize for the cold, but I must reach our destination undetected and they cannot know which way we flew.”

  “Cold.” Valan replied, his teeth chattering. He pressed his face to the dragon’s spine and closed his eyes as the cold bit deeper. Maybe ice would form and hold him in place when he lost consciousness.

  “It won’t come to that,” the dragon informed him.

  “Sure…” Valan thought sleepily. “At least Doreia won’t cause you any more trouble.”