Chapter 3 - Blood in the Water
Pain shot up Lyra’s leg as the sentry’s armored grip tightened around her ankle. The soldier snarled, dragging her out from the mouth of the culvert into the open gloom. The hatchling shrieked inside her tunic, suddenly lunging outward. Its razor-sharp baby talons sank into the soldier’s exposed wrist between gauntlet and vambrace, drawing a thick line of red.
The soldier cursed, flinging his arm outward. Lyra kicked violently with her free heel, catching him squarely on the chin. His head snapped back, his grip broke, and she tumbled across the slick stones straight toward the drainage drop.
Behind her, the mother dragon saw her opening. With an earth-shattering bellow, she snapped the left tension chain clean off its iron mooring. The whip-crack of severed steel snapped through the air, shearing two royal guards clean off their feet and sending them flying into the stone pillars. The sheer concussive force hurled Lyra through the archway and straight into the vertical black of the drainage chute.
She plummeted through suffocating dampness, clutching the hatchling to her chest with white-knuckled desperation. Free falling through cold air, she hit the icy, rushing water of the underground subterranean river with a force that knocked the breath from her lungs. The current caught her instantly, dragging her into the roaring subterranean dark.
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Gasping for air each time her head breached the foaming surface, she held the sputtering hatchling above the waterline. The river churned violently through the belly of the mountain, tumbling her against jagged granite walls before suddenly violently spitting her out into the open night air. She crashed over a foaming waterfall, landing in a deep mountain pool below.
Coughing and dragging herself onto the gravel shore beneath the moonlight, she looked up toward the castle perched atop the cliffs. A crimson flame had erupted from the high dungeon windows—and high above the fortress, shadows with broad, leathery wings were descending from the clouds.
