AUREN
The tunnel spat them out into hell.
Auren hit the courtyard cobblestones at a dead run, his boots sliding on something wet and dark that he refused to look down at. The air was thick with smoke — not the clean smoke of hearth fires but the greasy, sweetish kind that came from things that used to be alive.
Above him, Nyrix screamed.
His dragon banked hard over the eastern wall, obsidian scales catching the firelight, her jaws opening to paint a line of white-hot flame across a column of mind-bound soldiers marching through the shattered gate. The bond between them roared — fury and hunger and the savage, primal joy of destruction that Nyrix wore like a second skin.
Auren didn't share it. Not today. Today the bond just made his teeth ache.
"Auren!" Irevya's voice, sharp and breathless behind him. "Auren, you come back here this instant! The tunnel leads to the stables, we can still—"
"Stay behind me, Mother."
