They were glad to leave the homestead behind, though even the spatter of rain did not remove the stench. Ren flew ahead, the Not-Twin, Vale, navigated. Surprisingly, he took them off the main trade route and down the shorter, river path. The same Para advised prior to departure.

Navigation not required, Para passed the time in her memories. Where had she never stepped foot? She had only been down south to Pandemyne, the capital, where The Crown palace stood. Never beyond the western woods, nor down the southern shoreline where the Hlin fishing towns stood.

By the time River signalled to land, she had mapped out a possible route. The dragon had the crates off by the time they touched down beside her.

“All yours,” was all she said. No observations or half hearted expression of luck.

The boxes stank. Ren swung his head away as he helped strap them to Lysander’s saddle.

Para wrinkled her nose. At least she only had to put up with the odour for a few hours, then it was Ren’s problem for the last leg of the flight.

Lysander raised his head and closed his eyes, exhaling long and slow. His eyes were shut tight, lips wrinkled in tension. Clearly the odour was bothering his far more sensitive nose.

River was already far from them, on the precipice of the cliff and poised for take-off.

“We will navigate,” called Lilac.

Para shrugged. They had established who was doing what and when, well before they took off. Teams worked that way, swapping roles to keep everyone from burning out, and providing fair opportunity. No need to defend that right. Unless the team was rubbish and did not follow such basics. Para had yet to decide how to label their group.

Another whiff of foul odour hit her and she gagged.

“Is everything alright?” Lys lowered his head to her level.

She ran her tongue over one mismatched sabre. “Nope.” She gestured at the boxes strapped to his back. “I won’t be alright till these are gone and our pockets are full of cash.”

Lys snorted and narrowed his eyes, curling his lips. “You and me both. Let’s hurry up and finish this.”

Despite being an older, solid built dragon, Lysander had to take several running steps to take off, and beat hard to gain altitude. He rose gradually, heaving breaths.

“She tapped the soft part of his neck, not an instruction, but a request.”

Once level, Lys angled his head, his good eye peering back.

Okay? You’re not acting normal. She signed to him.

He nodded and waited to see if she had anything else. When she didn’t, he turned back.

Sitting upon his back, she could feel the flight like she had wings of her own. And she had, when she had been Hlin, back before they traded their wings for fins. Lys caught the air current and released the tension he had been holding. The flight became smooth and easy.

Only then did Para relax and sink into her usual flight activity.

Three hours of sifting through memories. Three hours of reliving her past lives as though they happened moments before. She could close her eyes and feel her wings unfurling, patterned like amber leaves and twice as beautiful.

They dropped.

Her eyes shot open and she flung her hands into Lysander’s feathers. “What the fuck!” Heart racing, she thumped her fists against his neck.

He was looking ahead, neck stretched and rigid. One wing was beating rhythmically, the other open and unmoving.

Fuck. They were falling. They had never fallen.

She couldn’t think. There was no memory for this. Nothing to fall back on.

Falling. Plummeting. The wind ripping at her hair and drying her eyes out till they stung. She flipped through every memory where she fell, never on a dragon though, but there had to be something. The time she fell as a child and skimmed her knees. Or the time she had tangled her wing in her cloak and toppled to the ground, ending in a loud crack and darkness. Or when she had caught her claw in the split of a branch and fallen from a tree, barely catching herself on a lower branch by stabbing her dagger into the wood.

She drew the knife on her belt and buried it between Lys’ shoulder blades.

His wings snapped to his sides and he cried out with the sound of flutes being smashed against each other.

She clung on for her life.

Lys spun midair and the boxes shuddered. She could hear the wood creaking and the sound of leather straps snapping. They knocked into a tall fir. Pine needles rushed past and she closed her eyes tightly.

She was flying away from Lys’ back, the whole saddle had given way on one side. She screamed as she swung around his side and against his stomach, a second before they impacted the ground.

Breathing hurt.

The tree, or what remained of it, spun above her.

She laughed out of shock. “I almost died.” And then it became real. She had almost died. If not for the saddle breaking, she would be under a dragon, crushed in an agonising end.

There was no time to wait for the shaking to subside, she pushed herself onto her knees and crawled off the dragon. His breathing eased once her weight was off, along with a long groan.

He turned on his side and wrapped a leg around his chest.

She leaned against a tree and waited for the spinning to end, only it would not. The edges of her vision were darkening by the second, narrowing on the sight of demolished boxes and strewn limbs.

“Lysander.” Was she as quiet as her voice sounded? She had difficulty hearing with her heartbeat in her ear.

“Are you hurt?” He did not move from the position he lay curled up in.

Each sense returned when she focused on it. Pain was a strange one, where it did not hurt until she remembered it should. Para checked herself over to find torn clothing and fresh blood from the scratches beneath.

Breathing stung and she guessed it was a bruised rib at best. Blood pooled beneath her, clear in her vision. She focused on it and felt it trickling down her fingers.

A piece of skin was hanging off her arm, scales still attached. 

She pressed her hand to her mouth but it was too late, she violently hurled everything in her stomach all over the bloody grass.

“Scratches, bruises, and my forearm has been degloved.” Her finger brushed the flap and she gagged, fighting the urge to throw up again. Gingerly, she pressed the flap back down and pulled her sleeve over it.

Lysander raised himself and wobbled several steps towards her.

“Are you?” She directed back to him.

He stopped, and lowered his head. “I think so.” From front to back, he stretched his limbs. “Nothing unusable,” he added after his checks.

“What happened?!” She roared, stepping over chunks of bloody wood.

The saddle hung off him, still partially strapped. He dragged it as he backed away from her.

“Lysander, stop!” She called out, throwing her hands up and swallowing bile. He froze in place and followed her line of sight, to the mangled crate tangled in the ropes, with a person still inside.

The dragon didn’t dare move. “Do you think they’re alive?”

“Gods Lysander! Cut the crate off.” She covered her mouth.

He snapped the lines and the strain on the crate was released. The legs that had been tangled and pulled up fell down in a heap, shackles clacking together. She approached slowly even though she knew there was no reason, legs with unbroken bones did not collapse that way.

The inside was viscera, a pile of sticky red mass. The remains were people, but there was no identifying them. There were three arms that she could easily make out, she did not stay longer to look for more.

Lys had stopped.

Sick. She felt sick. A horrible yawning pit opening in her chest and threatening to consume everything in its path.

“It happened again.” She saw him freeze and the pit became an spiralling mass.

He had frozen, simply stopped. There was no ignoring it any longer, no more pushing it back to the recesses of her waking mind. Not when she nearly died. Not when he was dying.

“The brass is going to kill you. It’s spreading into your brain and it’s going to kill you. One day, you are going to stop, and never move again.” She wiped furiously at the tears on her cheeks.

“Para –“

He was cut off by the thuds of two dragons landing.

The not-twins were on the ground, running over before she could collect herself. They stopped just short of the mangled crate.

Para desperately tried to stop the tears, angling her head away and pulling herself back together. Calming her thoughts. Only to open her eyes to Lilac kicking over a panel to reveal another mangled corpse.

“No survivors,” called River from behind Lilac, nose to the ground beside another pile of wood.

Para ground her teeth together. They were fucked in so many different ways.

Ren raised his head. Hissing, his crown flattened against his neck. “We have visitors.” He said with rising panic.

Dragons dropped from the sky.

Para caught her breath, and bolted for Lys. They had to take off and flee. The money was lost, their reputation was in tatters, and she was not about to let their freedom get taken away too. All that careful planning, a lifetime of mastering their craft.

Lys scooped up his saddle and held out a leg to her. She dodged one of the landing dragons and sprinted for her friend, catching a flash of a guard saddle. Those heavy duty pieces of leather were impossible to miss. Her heart thundered at the sight of the duchy emblem, proudly displayed on the dragon’s shoulders.

Ren was on the ground, snapping his teeth at the dragon leaning on him. Beside him, a person was thrashing on the ground, swearing loudly and kicking out. They may have been working together, but they were not a team. If the roles were reversed, they wouldn’t think twice about leaving her and Lys.

She reached Lys, felt his leg wrap around her, and was flung violently to the side.  

Her back ached. She lifted herself, straining her protesting muscles. Barely off the ground, she collapsed.

“I’ve got you.” Lysander pulled her closer. He was crushed beneath another dragon, who was making rapid work of binding his wings against his back.

The person standing beside the dragon, with his arms folded and scowling, looked down the moment Lys spoke. His eyes focused on her and she cursed.

He stomped over. “Get up!”

“I just fell from the sky, do you really think I can get up?” She snapped back.

All hope of being left alone and forgotten, vanished when he pulled out a rope and stalked over to where she lay.

Lys tried to keep him away, he tried so hard, even when his legs were yanked away and he was thrashing against the other dragon, he kept trying.

The guard grabbed her upper arm, squeezing far harder than necessary, and dragged her away from Lys. She cried out as she was dragged over a stone, that knocked her sore ribs and sent a shock of pain up her side.

“Stand up,” he ordered. She scrabbled to get her legs beneath her, and managed to push herself up.

He strapped her arms behind her back. “You are under arrest for people smuggling and homicide.”

“Yes.” She grit her teeth. “I figured that.”