“I have made progress,” I told Colonel Dragonsire. “I can lift a few feet off the ground and set back down without landing on my ass.”
Usually.
He didn’t comment on my stellar accomplishment. Instead, he said, “Then we’ll need to get to the Sienna Sea the old-fashioned way.”
6
Dragonsire
My hands gripping tightly to the railing, I leaned over the edge of the airship. Far below, trees covered the land as far as I could see, a dense forest canopy swarming with hidden dangers. I hadn’t spotted any monsters yet, but I knew they were there. These wild lands weren’t called the plains of monsters for nothing.
That knowledge didn’t darken my mood. There was something about being up high in the sky, the wind in my hair, the breeze kissing my skin. It just felt right.
“Angels are supposed to be in the air.” Colonel Dragonsire came up beside me. Resting his arms on the metal rail, he looked out across the vast expanse. “We’re not meant to be stuck on the ground.”
There was a strange look in his eyes as he spoke, almost wistful. He probably wished he were flying under the power of his own wings rather than standing on the deck of a flying ship. He did seem like the sort who wanted to be the driving force behind everything. He definitely wasn’t someone who stood idly by, waiting to be driven around.
I wondered how he got along with Eva. She liked to be in the driver’s seat too.
“How did you and Eva meet?” Something—probably curiosity—compelled me to ask him that. “She’s never mentioned you.”
“Major Doren and I have not met. Our magic tests came back as compatible, so the Legion decided to marry us in the hopes that we would produce offspring with high magical potential. As soon as Nyx got the results, she arranged the marriage. I’m not compatible with many people.”
Imagine that. It must have been the ego.
His lips curled up like he’d heard my thoughts again. I wasn’t sure if I should be glad that the Master Interrogator could smile—or very, very worried.
In any case, I’d have to be careful around a powerful telepath like Colonel Dragonsire. I needed to be vigilant in keeping my thoughts in check. That was just another thing to worry about, along with my rebellious wings. I’d thought I was pretty good at masking my thoughts, but he seemed to hear them anyway.
“You’re not completely terrible at it,” he told me.
What a stellar compliment.
“Your magic is still adjusting to being an angel, which is throwing you off canter,” he said. “I catch only snippets of your thoughts. The rest I glean from your body language and facial expressions.”
Yes, the Master Interrogator sure lived up to his reputation.
“You could try to not read my thoughts and dissect my body language,” I told him.
“I could.” He braided his fingers together. “But I won’t.”
“Because you don’t trust me.”
“I don’t trust anyone.”
I wasn’t surprised. Paranoia was requirement number one on the Interrogator job description.
Still, his statement felt almost personal, like he’d been betrayed before. Someone close to him had hurt him. I was sure of it. But who?
A lover?
No, I decided. That didn’t fit. I was suddenly sure it had been a friend, someone he’d looked up to. Someone he’d trusted and admired. Almost revered.
“Careful.” That single word, spoken softly, pulsed with more power than a chorus of war cries. He was warning me not to dig there.
I felt tempted to poke that hornets’ nest anyway. Yes, Colonel Dragonsire was a big, bad angel with all the requisite prickles, an Interrogator who shrouded himself in his work, in unearthing traitors. But, somehow, I was now certain that he acted this way because he’d been betrayed; he wanted to make sure nothing like that ever happened again to him or anyone else. That behavior was so…human.
“I am not human,” he said, his voice as cold as his eyes. “I gave up my humanity long ago.”
“I know.”
“You’re not human either,” he told me. “You are an angel.”
“We angels aren’t supposed to hold on to our humanity. We’re not supposed to feel anything.”
His grip on the rail tightened. “You never stop feeling.” His hands pulled away, revealing the hand-shaped dents in the metal. “You just feel…differently.” He looked down at his hands like he didn’t know what to do with them.
I was hit with a deep, inexplicable need to pat him on the shoulder, to heal the pain in his soul. But I didn’t reach out. I didn’t touch him at all. Angels were funny about personal space. He might have taken my friendly gesture as an attack. And, besides, no one hugged the Master Interrogator. It just wasn’t done.
He met my eyes for a moment, then his gaze flickered away, staring out to the horizon. We stood there in silence—with no sound but the whistling wind and the gentle hum of the airship—the minutes dripping by.
“We’re about to have company,” he announced, finally breaking the calm.
“Darkstorm?” I followed his gaze over the ship’s edge.
But it was not a dark angel that I saw there. It was a herd of wild birds.
No, not birds, I decided, looking more closely. They were flying dinosaurs, each one as big as a wolf. Their shimmering scales were in a state of constant flux, changing color from purple to green to gold, depending on which way the sunlight hit them.
“No doubt the beasts are here to gorge on the magic powering the ship,” Colonel Dragonsire said.
“No doubt,” I agreed.
Monsters were attracted to magic. They fed on it, craved it. Hunted it. They wanted it so badly that, every so often, a particularly crazy beast threw itself against the big magic barrier that separated the plains of monsters from civilization. The force of the impact vaporized the monster in an instant.
As the flock of dinosaurs looped over the ship and dropped into a sharp dive, Colonel Dragonsire waved his hands through the air in a wide arc, weaving his spell. The front two flying beasts bounced off an invisible wall of telekinetic energy and crashed into each other. Completely paralyzed by the psychic spell, the pair of dinosaurs tumbled toward the ground.
The rest of the flock swerved to avoid the psychic barrier, changing course toward me now. I drew my sword. Lightning sizzled to life on it. I swung it, the tendrils of charged magic snapping out from the blade, crackling through the air. My magic blast hit one of the beasts, then forked out from its body, hitting two others. The air smelled of burning metal and roasted dinosaurs.
Two beasts zigzagged around our spells and tackled Colonel Dragonsire to the deck. Wooden planks creaked and split as he wrestled and rolled with them in a tangled blur of black and green light. He moved faster than anyone I had ever seen, angels included.
Certain he could take care of himself, I grabbed a handful of powder from two of my waist pouches and tossed it at the flock. The two powders ignited with a boom, colliding into a vortex that sucked up most of the remaining dinosaurs.
By now, only two beasts remained, but they weren’t giving up. They came at me from both sides, bowling me over. My ribs groaned as my side crashed against the deck. Cringing in pain, I leapt at one of the dinosaurs as it came around for another pass. I grabbed onto its smooth, scaly body, holding to it just long enough to saturate it with my magic, then I jumped back down.