Where are you? Sera asked.

Only a frightened, distant echo answered, so far away that she couldn’t even make out the words.

Alden had taken her dragon. He’d ripped away part of her soul, part of herself.

CHAPTER SIX

Dragon’s Tears

“WHAT HAVE YOU done?” Sera demanded, grabbing Alden by his leather shirt. She shook him. “Where is she?”

“I have done nothing but separate you. You will find her in this city,” he said calmly, indicating the ruined city down below.

Sera shivered. The wind cut through the empty window frames, battering her body, but that wasn’t why she was cold. She was frozen from the inside. Ice had filled that void in her soul, the void where her dragon should have been.

She glared at the Grim Reaper.

“That won’t help you, Sera. The only thing that will help you find your dragon is to embrace your magic.”

“You are sick. This game is sick.”

“I am helping you unleash your magic. That’s what you wanted.”

“Not like this.” Anger and anguish swirled inside her throat. “This is what you wanted. Don’t even pretend this is about anything but what you want.”

Then she turned her back on him and descended the beams to the base of the building. She ran outside and listened to the whispers of magic on the wind. She tasted the trail of her dragon’s tears, following it to the other side of herself.

As she moved through the city, emotions pounded inside of her, overwhelming her. She felt like her soul had been scraped dry. There was a big, gaping hole inside of her where her dragon had been ripped from her. She was as hollow as the broken buildings all around her. She was Dragon Born, half dragon, half mage. And what was she now? Incomplete. Broken. It all felt wrong. The world felt wrong.

She was getting closer to her dragon. She could feel Amara, and her dragon was just as torn up as she was. They stood on two opposite ends of the huge, empty expanse, their pain bouncing back and forth across it. Her whole soul echoed with lonely emptiness. Each bounce—each impact—hurt, like another little piece of her was being chipped off. She had to get to her dragon. She had to reunite with her, to be whole again. Even if that was what Alden wanted.

Sera felt Ryker’s band nearby. They were right in her path. She turned down another street, taking a different way. She didn’t want to fight them. She didn’t want to kill them.

A pack of monsters jumped out of a building, barring her path. They were some of the most disgusting, pus-oozing, mucus-dripping, scabbed-over creatures she had ever seen. Perfect. She didn’t want to fight people, but she could kill monsters any day of the week. It was so easy, so black-and-white. That was just what she needed right now.

A wave of magic, a marriage of elemental spells, tore out of her, cutting through the monsters. She kept running, not slowing down, not even for a second. She knew there were new monsters coming, but she couldn’t look back. The only way through was forward, always forward.

A herd of wild beasts, a mismatch of supernatural body parts, stampeded down the street toward her. The crumbling stones shook and rattled beneath her feet, but still she kept running, her magic cutting a path through the monsters.

“You are not taking the most direct route, the way you need to go,” Alden’s voice said in her head.

She ignored him and kept darting down side streets, in and out of buildings, avoiding Ryker and his friends.

“Sera, you know this confrontation is inevitable.”

Alden sounded genuinely concerned. Except he was full of shit. She knew he was. He’d put her into this situation. He’d dumped her into his post-apocalyptic wasteland. He’d ripped her dragon from her. He was manipulating her, trying to put her on the path he wanted—only that path and no other.

“Stay out of my head,” she growled under her breath as she ran.

A blast of magic took off a chunk of a building in front of her. More magic followed, a fireworks show of deadly intentions. Ryker stood in the street, blocking her. She kicked to a stop. His friends closed in behind her.

“Let me go,” she pleaded.

“No,” Ryker said. “You’re a monster as sure as any of these here.”

“I’m not. I’m a person.”

A heaviness had taken root inside of Sera, and with every second that she was separated from her dragon, the pressure was growing stronger. It pushed down on her, making her slower, weaker. Just what she didn’t need right now. That and a gang of people determined to hate her.

“If we let her go, she’ll slit our throats in our sleep,” one of them said. “Burn us to a crisp. Hunt down our children and eat them.”

“That’s not true.”

They ignored her protests.

“The Grim Reaper keeps adding more and more vile monsters, every day worse ones. But she is the most dangerous one so far.”

“I’m a victim here.” She turned in a circle, meeting each of their eyes. She found only hate staring back at her. “Just like you. He put me in here too.”

But there was no reaching them. Ryker swung his sword at her. Sera evaded, then knocked it from his hand. He lunged forward to grab her, and when she caught his arm, pushing him back, he hit the wall hard. He didn’t get up. Sera looked down at him, then at her shaking hands.

“Monster.”

The others glared at her, hate shining in their eyes, bubbling in their magic.

Sera backed up. “Stop.”