Page 68 of Connor and the Dragons

But they were mine, and someone had hurt them.

As I reached the bottom of the stair, the claw returned and took the floor. He didn’t puncture it this time, just ripped up the thing, beams and joists and two hundred years of nails, peeled up in one piece, the way a kid tears the paper off a present he knows is going to be good.

I stumbled back towards the mirror, throwing my arms over my face, and when I looked back up, I could see sky. They were destroying the house, and there was wreckage everywhere. A staircase going up to nothing.

“They’re after the artifacts!” Harrowgate’s voice, somewhere above and to the right, cracked down the middle. “Don’t let the Harrowgate legacy become some dragon’s hoard!”

Men crowded the edge of the hole with spears and swords, and I ducked behind a crate, and started throwing everything I could reach onto the pile.

Then the air went cold and Kessrin dropped through the hole.

He was so much bigger when you had him indoors. He filled the ruin of the room, white and blue and enormous, his wings tucked hard against his sides to fit, and there was a scrap of blue silk and a silver chain still hanging around his neck where the cloak had been, absurd on him now, small enough that I could have folded it into a pocket.

He put his head down on the stone in front of me and waited.

I got on. I did not remember deciding to. I threw a knee over his neck and settled into a groove right above his shoulders, thankful that the ridges on his upper spine were spiky and shaped a bit like handles as I gripped them tightly.

Above us Oallian was screaming.

He wheeled over the broken roof with his mouth open and firelight running down his belly, and the sound kept pouring out of him and did not stop.

Kess unfolded his wings and stretched them as wide as he could, then reached with a claw for my hoard pile.

“Leave it,” I said. “Kess. The mirror doesn’t matter. Only you two.”

He took it anyway.

He reached out and closed one claw around the whole pile, mirror and paintings and chandelier and all. Then he hauled himself up through the hole with the house falling away underneath us and my stomach somewhere near my boots.

“Is he all right?” I shouted. “Kessrin. Is Oallian all right? Did Vyranthos take him over?”

He couldn’t answer me. He was a dragon.

He swerved hard to the left and I lost my grip with my legs and got it back and locked my arms and my knees around his neck and pressed my face down against him and made myself keep my eyes open.

He would not let me die. Hopefully. Once I felt relatively well-seated, I looked back. The house was already distant and small, smoking with Oallian’s fire. And Oallian rose out of the smoke with his claws full. He was trailing coins the whole way, a thin bright line of them falling away behind him over the lawns, and there were archers on the wall now and they fired a barrage of arrows which seemed to bounce off of his scales.

He swung his head around and blew a small gust of fire, which was surprisingly non-murderous given the circumstances. More as if he was trying to coax the men to duck for cover.

That must have been my imagination.

Then a bolt of light shot from the terrace and struck him under the wing.

Oallian bellowed and slewed sideways and one whole clawful of jewels rained down over the drive, and then he banked around in a tight, furious circle, and his head reared back, and he opened his jaws. This time, the fire was a little more vicious.

“Turn around,” I said. “Kess, turn around, we have to go back. Oallian’s been hit.”

A gust of wind hit us from the left and I got a faceful of smoke, and when it cleared he was right there, wingtip to wingtip, matching us. There was fire in the dragon’s eyes, and I feared that meant Vyranthos was in control and Kessrin and I were in just as much danger as the men down below.

Then the dragon tilted his head, and gave me an expression no dragon had any business being able to make, cheeky as hell.

And he winked.

CHAPTER 22: CONNOR

“Sit down,” I said.

“I’m holding on.” Sky leaned over the side of the basket as if we were on a scenic hot air balloon ride and not being carried by dragons away from a violent battle.