“At last. I finally have you,” the dragon said.

  The words were smooth, almost conversational. The voice carried, a lighter pitch than the beast granted with its roar. Yet, Toby got the impression that the words coming from its mouth didn’t feel right. It’s jaw worked when it spoke, but it was wrong—occasionally, sound came when its mouth was closed, or sound disappeared while its mouth was open.

  “You’re now the last of your village. Once I wait for you to age and die, that orb will finally be mine.”

  The kobolt hissed something wordless and furious. The dragon’s throat glowed. Blue light built behind its teeth, a sick, electric radiance. The air around its jaws tightened and hummed. Toby’s skin prickled; every hair on his arms stood on end. Then the dragon unleashed it.

  Blue fire and storm roared out in a solid torrent—a rushing column of burning color threaded with lightning. It crashed toward them, wide enough to swallow huts, loud enough to drown out thought. Toby flinched, throwing an arm up on instinct. Heat slammed over him like the sun had been dragged down and hurled at his chest. His eyes squeezed shut against it. In that brief darkness, regret came sharp and fast.

  I didn’t even find them in the marshes, he thought wildly. Never found them. Never brought any of them down.

  He found the thought of failure worse than the fate of death. There was a deep, ringing note, low and pure, that cut through the roar—like someone had struck a great glass bell over the village. Toby opened his eyes. The force smashed into a curved wall of nothing just ahead of him and spilled away to either side. The ground shuddered; his boots skidded half a handspan in the dirt, but the worst of it slid past. He did not burn. He did not die.

  Heat licked at his face, hot enough to sting. The air tasted metal-sharp and scorched. The blue egg blazed. Its surface shone so bright it hurt to look at, all that deep glassy color turned into a hard, steady light. The air between it and the dragon rippled, warped, a curved plane of nothing that caught and held the storm breathed against it. The dragon’s fire crashed against that invisible wall and split, coursing out to either side in sheets that burned dirt and the far outer huts and sent steam hissing up from the creek.

  Inside the barrier’s curve, Toby stood untouched.

  “You’ll never have it!” the kobolt screamed. His voice was high and hoarse, staff leveled toward the dragon. “Never!”

  The dragon’s breath guttered into sparks and smoke. It snapped its jaws shut and snarled, a sound like rocks grinding. It slammed one wing forward. The membrane hit the invisible line with a meaty crack. Blue light flared along the curve of the shield, lines of force spider-webbing out where claw and leather met whatever held between them. Dust flew, huts shuddered, but the barrier held. The dragon pulled its wing back, chest heaving once. When it spoke again, its tone had cooled to something almost bored.

  “I am patient,” it said. “You will die. You will starve. You’re short-lived. It’s only a matter of time; the orb will be mine.”

  The dragon’s head cocked suddenly, nostrils flaring. Those copper eyes slid away from the barrier—up the slope, toward the rise where the horses were tied.

  “And you even brought me lunch.”

  Toby’s stomach lurched.

  “No—”

  The dragon’s chest swelled again. This time the breath was a quick, savage burst, blue fire lancing up toward the crest of the hill. The sound of impact came a heartbeat later—a wet, splitting crack, followed by the shriek of animals in terror, then nothing at all. Smoke boiled up over the lip of the rise. Toby felt something in him tear.

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  “Oak,” he whispered. His voice didn’t sound like his.

  The dragon beat its wings once, lifting its bulk just enough to pad closer to the slope. From where Toby stood, he could not see the horses, only the dragon’s head dipping out of sight, the crunch of something large and brittle between its teeth. It came back up chewing.

  In its jaws hung a shape Toby knew well enough to recognize even blackened. A big gelding’s carcass, charred and smoking, saddle half-melted to what was left of the hide. One leg dangled limply, the hoof gone dark and glossy. Oak, saddle and all. The dragon tipped its head back and gulped. The blackened mass slid down its throat in one obscene, easy swallow.

  The world narrowed. Heat, grief, rage—they all slammed together in Toby’s chest so hard he thought his ribs would split. The Art leapt to meet them, no coaxing needed. It flooded into him in a fierce, cold rush that made his fingertips tingle and his teeth ache. He drew Falreth. The sword came free of the scabbard with a sound like a breath through clenched teeth. Toby planted his feet, every muscle locking to hold against the tremor that wanted to start in his knees.

  I cut through the stone, he thought.

  He remembered the way Sire Ray cut through metal like butter. He pictured the scar in the south—that wound in the earth, a single slash carved too clean to be anything but intention. He thought the way the air had felt when Maxwell drew the bow, when his arrow had flown like pieces of storm. He pulled everything.

  The Art answered, harder and sharper than anything he had ever taken before. It surged up along his spine, down his shoulder, into his arm, making the sword feel both weightless and too heavy to bear. His vision tightened at the edges. Something hot and wet slid from his nose over his lip. He did not stop.

  The dragon was turning back now, licking blue embers from its teeth. Its gaze brushed past the barrier again and snagged on Toby—on the lone upright figure still standing, sword bare, eyes burning.

  “Well,” it said. “It has been some time since I saw a man. They always bring the best meals.”

  Toby swung. Falreth’s edge cut the air—a clean, horizontal arc. The blade itself never came close to touching dragon-scale, but the Art did. The force he’d poured into the swing leapt from the sword-tip like a second, invisible edge, a pressure that bit where steel could not reach. For an instant, Toby saw it—a thin, solid shimmer in the air, a line no wider than a finger, racing toward that vast blue head.

  It hit across the dragon’s nose. The sound it made was small compared to the roars and crashes that had filled the last few moments—just a sharp, meaty hiss, like flesh meeting hot iron. The dragon jerked back with a snarl. A line of blood appeared along the top of its nose—a shallow cut, an inch deep at most, running from one side of the bridge to the other.

  The dragon blinked, more in surprise than in pain. Then it laughed. A short, amused sound, as if someone had thrown a pebble and actually managed to make it sting.

  “That is new,” it said. “Careful, little storm. You might almost matter in a century or two.”

  That’s it? Toby thought. That’s all I did?!

  The abomination moved. One massive foreclaw hooked down out of sight. Another. Toby heard more crunching, more tearing leather, smelled fresh waves of burned hair and meat. When the dragon straightened again, it held the remaining horses like toys—one charred body clutched in each front claw, another dangling limp from the corner of its jaws. Bits of tack and splintered wood hung from them like broken ornaments.

  “Guard your sphere, little lizard,” the dragon called toward the kobolt. “Die slow. I will be back when you are bones.”

  Wings flung wide. The downbeat drove Toby a half-step sideways, dust whipping around his legs. Sparks skittered over blue scales as the dragon leapt, climbed, and turned south, a dwindling streak of color headed toward the horizon and over the scar.

  The Art tore out of Toby as fast as it had come. His vision blurred and the world whirled as if he’d spun around on the spot a dozen times. He felt at his nose and his fingers came away slick and red, droplets already drying rusty on his skin. He had just enough time to think of Maxwell’s lectures. Sire Ray’s fate. Of warnings about overreaching. Of walls and duties and how far was too far.

  The ground was kind enough to come up to greet him, and everything went black.