Steelhands - Jaida Jones [202]
None of us asked how a dragon would know something like that.
“You heard the boy!” Adamo roared, tearing his eyes away from the fight and pushing the line back. Ghislain followed suit after a split second, though I could tell it almost killed him not to be watching, to say nothing of giving up more ground. But it wouldn’t matter how much ground we held if we all ended up fried to a crisp.
Gaeth’s warning hadn’t come a moment too soon, either. As we were still scrambling to get clear of the battlefield, orange flames surged around all four walls of the tunnel; they licked hungrily along the stone and swallowed up my sight line of the two dragons. I felt like I’d stuck my head too close to the oven; I couldn’t imagine what it must’ve felt like at the center of the blast, with the tunnel walls so tight and the ceiling so close it practically was an oven down there. We were still near enough to the center of action that it made my face feel hot, but I was behind Adamo, so I knew I wasn’t in any danger.
If he let himself get singed, though, we’d be having some words. No amount of him taking me out to dinner was gonna make it all right for him to go and get hurt.
“Oh,” Raphael murmured, sounding like he was attending a meeting of the Brothers and Sisters of Regina, not boiling in the stewpot. “Isn’t that just the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen in your life?”
“Quiet,” Adamo said. Privately—for the very first time—I almost agreed with Raphael. I could be in awe of something and not want it to kill me at the same time.
“I want you all to know that I consider it an honor to die at your sides,” Toverre muttered, like he couldn’t keep it down anymore. I didn’t blame him, really. He’d tried as long as he could; some people just didn’t have the stomach for fighting.
“No one’s dying here,” Gaeth said quietly, patting Toverre on the back. In the dimness of the tunnel, I thought I noticed something strange about his eyes. One of them looked darker than the other. “Don’t write my Cornflower off just yet.”
Just as he’d said that—like I really needed proof they were connected on the inside—I saw a blue-and-silver head protrude from the flames, which themselves were rapidly petering out. I guess we’d got lucky, and the dragons themselves had to be fireproof, or else what was the point?
Both girls looked singed in the aftermath, but it was the kind of thing that’d polish off in time—that was proof Toverre was rubbing off on me, if nothing else.
As soon as she was clear of the flames, Cornflower lunged again, and I heard something metal go flying, hitting the wall and falling to the ground of the tunnel. I couldn’t tell who it’d come from, though, and neither of them seemed particularly injured. I guessed they didn’t miss a cog or two the same way people missed limbs. Clearly pissing mad—I don’t know how I knew, but I just did—Ironjaw whipped her tail around quick, scoring the walls and catching Cornflower across the face, though it only stunned her for a second.
“Deadlocked,” Ghislain said, as Cornflower’s sinewy body reared up to claw at Ironjaw, who was beating her small wings to try to fan what remained of the flames our way.
“You don’t really think you can hide back there forever, do you?” Troius called, so I guess he hadn’t choked on his blood or burned up. Our luck wasn’t perfect, then. “Come, now. My reluctance to kill you right away may have spared you thus far, but do you really imagine that boy can square off against me?”
“Seems to me like he’s doing all right,” Adamo shouted back. “Seems like your girls are pretty evenly matched, actually, since we’ve seen that your fire’s about as useful as a boat with no oars in this place.”
Troius said something else—probably an idiot rejoinder about how he thought he was only toying with us or some trash; I’d read it a thousand times in my da’s old romans—but I couldn’t hear him, because the whispering in my head’d just gotten