Dragon’s Heir

Let me tell you, running for your life is not all it’s cracked up to be.

Movies make it seem so exciting, so energizing, so…doable.

When do those characters ever breathe?

I had done track, and even so, my heart was now hammering its way out of my chest and my throat was burning and my legs trembling and my feet throbbing and my lungs could never get enough air. The air here was too stale, and the tunnel was absurd. Whose idea had it been to carve all these bends, rises, and dips, anyway?

Not even cross-country had been this bad.

Of course, even cross-country hadn’t required me to keep shooting glowing ice darts ahead just to see my path, each dart requiring a drain of precious energy.

I felt stifled, trapped in a never-ending nightmare. Like I was running forever through the intestines of some giant rock beast that would digest me for a thousand years.

I was suffocating.

As stupid as I knew it was, I slowed with each second that passed as I lost steam. That horrid, raspy creature and all its minions could be right on my tail, and I still couldn’t help decelerating. One time I even slipped as I was making my way down a steep dip and half slid, half rolled the rest of the way down. I groaned and tried to ignore the flaming stings and bruises as I pushed myself back up and stumbled back into a run.

As much as I yearned to stop, as much as I wanted to just curl up and cry, then sleep for a year, as much as I was tempted to just surrender and let what came, come…I knew I couldn’t. Not if I wanted to live. Not if I wanted to see my family again and end their grief.

Not if I wanted Ben to crush me in his arms again.

Kor had told me to trust my instincts—and to pay attention to all magic around me. (Why I kept listening to Kor was an existential question for another time.) Right now my instincts were screaming at me that the enemy was still behind me, and that enemy was prickling with magic gone bad.

I had to play a mental game with myself, a variation of the one I had used in cross-country. It went like this: I would shoot ahead. I would think, I can only go that far. Then, when I got there, I found I could go just a bit further, so I shot again.

I can only go that far.

Shoot.

Ben, please hurry.

Shoot.

Then I came to a fork, and I just about wept from despair. But I squared my shoulders, said a quick prayer, and ran to the right, shooting more glowing shards than usual and charging them with more energy to make certain Ben knew which way to go.

Of course…the disadvantage of that was the rasper would know too.

And then…just when I truly thought I could go no further, I felt something new. Something cool and fresh. Hope surged in me, giving me another burst of speed. I rounded a curve.…

This time I really did cry, but from relief, to see silver moonlight ahead.

I ran with all the strength I had left…until instinct once again screamed at me to slow. I realized what was wrong almost as soon as I got to the end of the tunnel: the open sky I could see beyond was too open. It led to only.…

I gasped and flailed back from the edge. The tunnel ended as abruptly as if it were a hole in a bread loaf and the rest of the loaf had been sliced off. Only a tiny lip jutted out beyond the tunnel mouth, with only a sheer drop down a nearly ninety-degree mountainside below.