****
Mads had come for her, as she knew he would. When Savannah left to meet him, she didn’t bother securing April to the chair—a fact that April didn’t even notice at first. Her hand throbbed with excruciating intensity, three of her five fingers bent at odd angles. Every twitch caused new agony to tear through her, and even if she remained perfectly still, she couldn’t make the pain abate. There was heat in her side, just below her ribs, and heavy drops of blood flowed over her hip.
But adrenaline took the edge off her pain, allowing her to shuffle to the door and try the handle. It turned in her hand, much to her surprise, and as long as she heard the two dragons overhead, she could keep moving. She kept hoping for the final roar of the deathblow—it never occurred to her that Mads wouldn’t win. She’d not only seen him fight before, but now she knew the dragon intimately; knew his size, his strength, his speed, his age. He’d killed Chester with hardly any effort at all.
But the fight went on and on and on. The earth itself shook with the force of their brutality, windows and frames rattling with every roar. When she peeped through window at the end of the hall, the world had turned into a merry hell of dancing flames. At that moment, the dragons were so far above her that they were nothing but tiny specks, but soon they were plummeting back to earth. At first, she thought Mads was driving Savannah down from the clouds, but as they got closer, she realized it was Savannah with the upper-hand.
Mads slammed down, wings outspread, his tail going limp as soon as he landed. April forgot about the ceaseless throbbing in her hand, the free-flowing blood on her side. She forgot about everything except her need to be at his side. It didn’t even occur to her that Savannah might dart down from the sky and pluck her up like an eagle capturing a rabbit. Her place was at his side, and regardless of their fate, they would meet it together.
The late summer day might have been comfortable if not for the fire zipping around the yard. The flames were already licking at the corners of the house and it wouldn’t be long before it went up like a dry tinder box. April ignored it all and raced for her dragon, still lying immobile where he landed. He wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be dead. The fall had stunned him. Had knocked him unconscious but it certainly hadn’t been enough to kill him.
The closer she got to his immobile form, the more her conviction faltered. He’d landed so hard, he’d made a crater, and his great chest didn’t rise and fall. No smoke twirled from his nostrils, and even the vibrant red of his scales had dimmed to something almost black. Like burnt cherrywood.
She felt something gathering deep in her stomach. A cry without words. A prayer for a missing god. It built on itself, growing stronger by the second, pushing up from the core of her body to her chest, bubbling and fomenting into her throat. Heat stung the back of her eyes, but there were no tears. She moved towards him like she was walking under water, but she covered the distance in mere seconds, unmindful of the dragon hovering above her.
When she finally reached his side, there was no heat radiating from his body. She touched his dear face, but there was no response; no flicker of his eyes, or air filling his lungs. The dark feeling inside of her continued to grow. It felt like a hot stone in the base of her throat and she opened her mouth wide, like she could disgorge herself of that pressure.
“Now you will die at his side. And you will both BUUUUURN.”
The sounds coming from Savannah’s mouth were not words—at least, they weren’t English words. But somehow, April understood every single syllable. How dare she. How dare she?
All of her life, April preferred to take the path of least resistance. If somebody angered or upset her, she walked away instead of confronting the culprit. If somebody stole from her, she shrugged it off and simply replaced the item. She even did her best to keep people at a distance, avoiding making new friends because then she would never have to work at having a relationship. She had never considered herself a coward, but it was simply easier to live like one—without confrontation, without struggle, without a fight.
But now April had something she wanted to fight for. She had anger that couldn’t be contained. She had lost something that nobody had the right to take from her; something that could not be replaced. She pushed herself to her feet and dragged herself up the wall that was Mads’ ribcage, climbing onto his stomach, spreading her blood across his scales.
From her vantage point, she lifted her face to the sky and she roared. The dark thing inside of her dislodged from her throat and flew at the great monster in the sky. For a moment, April was sure she could actually see it: some sort of cloud that expanded until it surrounded Savannah completely.
In the next instant, Savannah turned to stone.
The massive rock shattered as it hit the earth, immediately losing its form, turning to dust and pebbles. The earth shook from the impact and she lost her footing, falling flat on Mads’ stomach. She lay where she fell, silent tears wetting her cheeks, falling down on him like rain. She could feel the heat of the fire-now completely wild across the parched land. It would spread to them soon, and they would burn, exactly as Savannah had predicted. April could get up and run, but run to where? Home? What home did she have without Mads?
Her tears fell in a torrent, clogging her nose and sinuses, until she was finally forced to lift her head. The fire danced ever closer, and she couldn’t withstand the heat on her cheeks. Her tears evaporated, her skin pulled tight, and a sort of peace enveloped her. This is it. This is…
Movement beneath her cut off her thought. She closed her eyes, unable to bear the sudden flare of hope. It’s nothing. He’s not-
Breathing. One long slow inhale. One very slow exhale. And another one after that.
April crawled up his body. “Mads? Mads, are you awake? Mads?”
His wings had been splayed over the ground, but now they moved up, enclosing her in a protective cocoon. The heat of the wildfire disappeared and she could hear his heart beating against his ribs. The tears sprung back to her eyes, though this time they were from pure relief. He was alive. She’d been mistaken before. What did she know about dragon physiology? Perhaps he’d just been in shock and—
His talons closed around her and the world shifted as he righted himself, wings pulling back to lift them towards the clouds and safety. She looked down as the flames caught the house, consuming the dry wood in seconds. The thick smoke was already obscuring the sun, and Mads was moving swiftly to escape the battleground, but April saw the outline of the dragon’s tail in a stone cropping. It looked like the remnants of an ancient dinosaur, and that too was lost to the golden-red fire.