Onyx Storm (The Empyrean Book 3)

Command is built on respect, rules, and obedience. Squads are built on trust.

—Leadership for Second-Years by Major Pipa Donans

RHIANNON

Imogen. Quinn. Violet. My heart pounds. I don’t know how to protect the pass when we’re down three of our most powerful, battle-hardened squadmates, but failure isn’t an option.

Thank Zihnal, the infernal wind stopped. For a moment, I thought we’d all be blown to Cordyn. I inspect what I can of the Medaro Pass from its entrance and sigh with more than a little relief that none of the civilians fell in the squall.

“The cliff blocked the wind for them, as it did us.” Feirge steps away from the safety of the base and pivots sharply to face the winding valley that leads to Draithus.

“Tell the others to form a line. If we can fly now, so can they.” A horde of gray had just rounded the last curve of the valley when the windstorm hit, driving the wyvern to land.

According to Cath, every dragon was forced to hunker down in Draithus, too.

“Done,” Feirge responds, and rain splashes at the base of her neck.

Great. Rain is the last thing anyone on this damned cliff needs.

I remind myself of what Raegan always says—Zihnal gives what he sees fit. No use thanking the god for one blessing and cursing him in the next breath. I’d like to see her say it under these circumstances, but she’d probably pull it off. She’s always been the more graceful twin.

Tara, on the other hand, would tell me to make my own luck.

I check right, making sure the others weren’t harmed in the freak windstorm. Maren and Cat fall into line, and neither they nor their gryphons look worse for wear. Beyond them, Sliseag swings his tail, keeping his wings tucked for proximity, and Sawyer nods my way. Then I look left and find Neve and Bragen both in position, with Aotrom shifting his weight impatiently.

Ridoc stares at the northern peak, not the path through the valley just south of it, like he could see straight through the thing if he tried hard enough.

Part of me screams that we should be on the other side of that peak, but we have our orders. And half a squad.

I clear my throat and my feelings. This isn’t the Squad Battle. I make a mistake here, and innocent people die. We lucked out when the wyvern that crashed through the holes I left in our defenses only took out the wall and not my parents’ house. No matter how much Violet means to me, she’s one life. We’re guarding thousands who are fleeing as my family had, and we owe them the same protection.

“Gamlyn!” I shout across the gryphons. “I need your focus here.”

He looks like he might give me the finger for a second, but nods.

“Acknowledging your fear for the lightning wielder does not compromise you.” Feirge calls me out just like always. “Ignoring it does. Accept the emotion and move on.”

My grip tightens on the raised ridges of green scales that form the pommel. “Of course I’m worried about Violet.” She’s out there in the one condition I never want any of us—alone. Tairn flew into the cloud cover moments before the windstorm hit, carrying Teine in chains and escorted by Marbh, and the last status report from Cath had both Riorson and Durran spotted near the city walls. At least I haven’t seen any lightning. “But we have a job to—”

A dozen wyvern—maybe more—rise along the valley floor a few hundred yards out. My heart begins pounding. “Ask Veirt how many Baylor can see.”

Screams sound in a chorus from the evacuees, both those waiting to climb and the ones already on the cliff. Rain. Wyvern. Panicked civilians. The situation has real shitshow potential. Gods, the first-years better be pulling the civilians to safety at the top of the pass as instructed. Graycastle and Mairi are already on my lecture list. Fuck knows what either of those two were thinking.

Undisciplined. I need to rein everyone in with a quickness.

“Baylor sees seventeen,” Feirge responds a second later.

Seventeen. Against three dragons and four gryphons. Shit. “That’s a little menacing,” I admit to Feirge.

“Then let us be menaces,” Feirge snarls, her head weaving in anticipation. “Ready to relay your orders.”

My orders. No pressure. We need to intercept.

“Riot, launch in a thorn formation,” I tell her. I learned my lesson in Aretia—we have to engage far from the cliff. “Drift, guard the evacuees under Bragen’s command.”

Feirge takes three steps, and I tighten my thighs to hold my seat as she launches into the cloud-soaked sky. “Kiralair is disgruntled with the decision.”

What else is new? I debate the choice for all the time it takes to blink. “Tell Kira they have better maneuverability against the cliff than we do and a full arsenal of runes. We can’t stop seventeen wyvern with three dragons. They need to be ready.” Just once, I’d like to give an order that Cat doesn’t feel the need to fight.

I settle my flight goggles over my eyes as we fly headfirst toward the wyvern, Feirge, Aotrom, and Sliseag forming three points of a triangle. We need to engage as far from the cliff as possible. Plenty of room to move forward, not a lot of room to retreat against sheer rock.

The enemy are roughly arranged in three columns, two deep.

“Continue thorn—” Wait. “No, vertical. Switch to vertical formation.” It will give us the best shot at taking down as many as possible.

“Second-guessing your choices makes me do the same regarding Threshing,” Feirge lectures, climbing in altitude as we approach the steep walls of the valley.

“Very funny.” I wish I could see directly beneath us.

“They’re in position.” Feirge answers my unspoken question, but I have a feeling Aotrom is going to deviate as soon as he gets the chance.

“Check in with Sliseag.” We’ve got less than thirty seconds, and this will only be his second encounter after nearly losing Sawyer at Basgiath.

“He’s insulted you asked,” Feirge responds.

“Naturally.” I lock the toes of my boots between her scales and make ready for impact once I can see the shape of their teeth. “Top center first.”

“I thought we’d go bottom left,” she replies with mock innocence.

“No time for your sarcasm.”

Our target screeches, then climbs out of formation. Feirge breaks away to pursue, and my whole body clenches as a stream of blue fire erupts in our direction.

“Hold!” Feirge shouts, and I do exactly as she orders, locking my muscles as she rolls right. My body weight shifts, and I push with my right leg to balance out as she pulls a near-vertical climb.

“You’re going to do the thing, aren’t you?” I hold on to the pommel like a lifeline as our momentum stalls at the zenith she’s chosen.

“Maybe.” She pitches back left, falling into a dive so steep my stomach tries to dig its way out through my feet.

“You have to warn me!” I shift my grip and push at the pommel, readying myself for what inevitably comes next as we barrel toward the wyvern from above.

“Why? You were prepared.” She soft-snaps her wings, slowing our descent a second before we make impact just enough that I won’t go hurtling over her head.

The collision shakes my grip, and the rain isn’t helping.

Feirge digs her claws into the wyvern’s back and clamps her jaw at the base of its skull, where the neck is thinner, weaker. Its scream rattles my eardrums.

Then we fall, despite the frantic beat of Feirge’s wings. Fear rears its ugly head, and I try to swallow it. She has the advantage of being clear of the wyvern’s claws and teeth, but agility has always been her biggest asset, not strength. Her claws shred through the leathery gray wings, then she breaks their bones as the mountain rises to my right.

“Getting close to the ground!” I warn her.

“Your situational awareness never fails to leave me awestruck.” She heaves her weight forward, then wrenches the wyvern’s head back, snapping its neck as a blur of gray flickers through my line of sight.

“In that case, would you like to know about the one above us?” I ask.

She releases the wyvern into the mountainside below, and both our heads snap upward.

Aotrom flies by in pursuit, and a curl of green fire rushes up his tail. I cease breathing until the brown outruns the flame, saving Ridoc from a painful death, and then I face the source.

“Hold,” Feirge warns a second before we collide with the greenfire wyvern. She snaps for its neck, taking a bloody chunk away as it dives, spraying blood over the mountainside.

She sinks her claws into another and dissects its throat.

Where is the rest of the squad? I search with a quick swing of my head and find Aotrom flying vertically alongside the other wyvern above us. My mouth drops as he rolls, putting his spine—and Ridoc—against the creature.

“What in Malek’s name is he doing?” I shout as Ridoc claps the pommel with one hand and extends the other toward gray scales. Is he trying to get himself crushed? He can’t be seriously—

He is.

The wyvern shrieks, and a paler shade of gray spreads along its scales, emanating from Ridoc’s hand. The beast tenses, then ceases to beat its wings…and falls directly toward us.

Feirge surges forward, banking left to avoid the ridgeline, and I turn in the seat to watch the wyvern impact the rocky terrain. Holy shit, I think it cracked in half.

“Did you see that?” I ask as we round the corner of the mountain, finding Sawyer finishing a kill hundreds of feet below us. We need to regroup. If it’s this hectic back here, how outnumbered are they beyond the valley in Draithus?

I glance up at the sky and, in a moment of weakness, scan for any sign of Tairn. How long can Vi be out there by herself?

“Focus.” Feirge’s head swivels toward the pass, and I put my head where it belongs.

Shit. Seven of the wyvern got through. Cat has one by the throat, Kira’s talons tearing into the spaces between scales as it lies immobilized beneath her, while Maren takes aim at another with her crossbow. A second later, its wing is on fire. Impressive rune.

Bragen and Neve each chase their own up the cliffside, leaving four to pick off screaming civilians one by one.

“Regroup,” I order, determined to save as many as possible. “Shield formation.”

“Are you sure?” Feirge asks in that sweetly mocking way of hers.

We’re down three, but the strength of the squad is in the whole, not the individual. We will hold this pass, even in this godsforsaken rain.

“Positive. Let’s go.”