Chapter 688: Stealing Moves From The Best

Tonight was full of firsts for Serena Drakenfell and no one would ever know.

Bonded dragon during battle? Nope. Velkaris was occupied. That meant no Truebond Veils to escape powershots from water dragons.

A plethora of gold magic to form protective orbs and parachutes? No. She was rationing her magic. That meant they needed to be extra careful.

A commander to issue orders so she could focus on the task at hand? Next. She was in charge. And she had never issued orders before. Not during trainings and especially not during combat. That had always been King Tiberon or Dexmon over mindlink. But right now neither of them were here.

Mindlink? Naturally, no. Serena didn’t have mindlink with the dragon army she was currently leading into battle. She also was not on Shadowclaw’s mindlink yet either, which meant she couldn’t ask for updates from below.

The Aureus Catenes cuffs? Dead on arrival. The bracelets were a safety net if someone was hit. That safety net would’ve also solved the mindlink issue. But the bracelets were occupied by the Draken Forces currently and even if they had extras, everyone who wore one would be on the same damn mindlink. Two separate battles. One mindlink. Absolute clusterfuck.

That meant Serena needed to make this shit work another way and there was no room for mistakes.

The storm hit them before anything else.

CRACK.

Lightning split the sky in horizontal fractures, illuminating the clouds from within like something alive was trapped inside them and fighting to get out.

Rain came sideways, driven by winds that belonged to storm dragons, unnatural, manufactured, the kind of weather that existed because storm dragons were irritated.

Serena stood on Talon’s back. Rain hammered her face, her training suit, her bow. The wind tore at her from every angle, gusts strong enough to stagger a man standing on solid ground, and she was standing on the spine of a dragon climbing through the worst of it.

She didn’t flinch. Didn’t shield her face. Didn’t adjust her stance. This was nothing new. Every battle she had fought in included a storm like this due to storm dragons.

Talon climbed. His wings drove through the crosswind with a power that compensated for what the wind was trying to take.

He was not Velkaris. Velkaris was her bonded and could read her thoughts. What Talon had was instinct, speed, and the trained responsiveness of a prince’s dragon who had been ridden by royalty his entire life and knew what competence felt like on his back.

She shifted her weight left. Talon banked left. She pressed forward. Talon accelerated. The communication was physical, wordless, the language of pressure and balance that predated commands and worked faster than speech. He was reading her body the way she was reading the sky. Two strangers were learning each other’s rhythm in real time because the alternative was dying and neither of them had scheduled that for tonight.

Four frost dragons flanked her. Two on each side.

Their spotters were locked on her, tracking her position, ready to catch a falling body in zero visibility because she had told them it would happen. They were also under orders to evade rather than engage if they spotted Dark Fae. Every instinct in their training said close and kill. A woman their queen trusted had told them what happened when Dark Fae were hit, and they believed her.

Serena raised her left fist. Held it. The dragons held with her, wings adjusting, altitude steady. Then she pointed up. Circled once.

The signal was to stay close, circling, but to separate.

They climbed as a unit then the four dragons flanking her dispersed into the clouds. None of them were aware that their fearless leader, who stood on their prince’s dragon, was relieved as hell that her hand signals had worked.

All were gestures she had seen Dexmon, Tiberon, and Captain Halvek use during Draken Forces trainings. Never with her directly. A cherry on top of the baptism-by-fire cake.

They rose into the clouds. Into the blind dark where the corrupted fleet was hiding behind their own storm, using the weather as cover, letting the rain and the lightning do the work of concealment that wards and magic would have done on the ground.

Talon broke through the cloud layer and the world went dark and wet and formless.

Serena closed her eyes, sensing the dragons. Every one. Their size, their distance, their type. The massive density of a water dragon sixty meters to the northeast. The rapid, hot signatures of fire dragons clustered in a wing to the south. The cold, dense weight of ice dragons holding the perimeter. The electric, crackling energy of storm dragons generating the weather she was flying through.

She could not sense the riders.

But she knew that storm dragons carried four: one rider plus three spotters. Water dragons carried a rider and a spotter. Those were the ones that powershot boiling acid.

Tiberon approached every battle the same way and she understood the logic.

Start with the spotters. Always the spotters. A dragon without a spotter is a dragon without eyes on its six. Kill the spotter and the formation loses its nervous system. The riders keep flying but the coordination dies, and coordination is what turns a fleet into a threat instead of a collection of targets.

No magic. She flies dark.

She didn’t have her usual reserves of magic at the current moment so that wasn’t going to be a problem.

But regardless, gold on a dragon in the dark was a beacon. So. No magic. No glow. Just the bow and the arrows and the dark and the rain.

She could feel the water dragon. Northeast. Sixty meters. Massive. Its energy was a slow, heavy pulse, the rhythm of something carrying enough acid to dissolve the western wall.

She knew where the spotter would be. Behind the rider. The position that gave the widest view and the most exposed profile.

Serena opened her eyes. Drew.