Legions of Bone: Dragon Rider Book 3

Chapter 14: Bird In A Cage

Hello, lovelies, this is just a chapter I'm moving forward into the book. For those of you who might have found the book a little later, and have no idea what I"m talking about, you're in luck. : ) Here's another chapter. 

Nevaeha

The pure black of night was supposed to be a comfort, the way it blanketed over the sky, spilling slivers of moonlight over the sleeping forest below. But as a trained scout, Nevaeha only saw the places creatures could hide in. Dragons could use the layering clouds above as cover, people below could be oblivious to the things hiding behind the trees.

It made her nerves tingle in all the worst ways.

But in the sky, with Scylla and her partners beside her...

Nevaeha closed her eyes and tilted her head back, letting the wind's song comb invisible fingers through her dark hair. Letting her guard down didn't feel right, a million things could happen in a second. But Nevaeha just needed a second. A deep breath to brace against the coming storm.

A moment to believe everything was okay.

Like Fyrinia wasn't about to be destroyed.

She opened her eyes, finding Kenji watching atop his golden dragon. His face softened, his smile as warm as his honey-brown skin.

Nevaeha's heart blossomed, a smile spreading on her full lips. She felt her cheeks heat in the frigid air. It wasn't nearly as cold as the winter's in Khalier but cold enough that she pressed her fingers to Scylla's warm scales.

"Creep." She signed, fingers moving in the language only dragon riders knew.

His smile deepened and Nevaeha found her gaze lingering on his lips. Her mind sharpened, like four strings tethering together as human minds joined dragons.

"You're not doing your job," he mused, voice smooth and cool as a summer's night.

"We're almost to Second Zone," she said, wiping the frost from her goggles. "And it was just a second."

To prove her point and assure any lingering doubts within her, Nevaeha peered over her dragon's grey side, careful to avoid her flapping wings.

Darkness lay beneath her, spotted by darker blotches of the forests. She squinted searching below until the wink of steel and scale caught the moonlight. Her dragon confirmed that the soldiers were still trudging through the mossy forest and still hadn't alerted her of any dangers.

Nevaeha's relief turned to bitter annoyance. "Three months in this city and we're just now evacuating it."

"You say it like you don't want to evacuate."

Nevaeha scowled. "I'd rather we had done this when Thrawlers weren't two days away. And morons in that city are choosing to stay."

Kenji squinted his almond eyes at the forest, scanning. "They've grown up in Fyrinia, it's their home," he said. "It's all they know and they're willing to die for it."

Anger gnawed at her gut. Everyone knew that dying didn't mean you'd truly die anymore. Those idiots choosing to be slaughtered were only adding to a certain faction's armies. "None of this wouldn't be happening if the mages hadn't decided to play with dead things."

"Not every mage is the same," Kenji sighed. He'd heard this argument a hundred times. "Like not every dragon rider wants to protect. How many mages have we helped evacuate now? Sixty? A hundred? How many of them were nice and how many commoners were asses? Not everyone is the same just like not every mage agrees with what the other mages did. You can't blame an entire faction over the actions of a few."