Page 136 of Foundling

The blood though…

Leita’s stomach churned.

Something’s not right. I can sense…

I can smell it, too, Thalia confirmed.

Then remember to take my side when this is over.

Leaping from Thalia’s back, Leita flew at the dragons, hitting the ground at a run as she closed in. Diving beneath their scrabbling front legs, she caught hold of a scale at Araxos’s throat. Getting her nails under it, she wrenched it away, making the great anax yowl in pain.

More blood welled up to the exposed skin, the smell of metal stinging her nose. It wasn’t the tang of iron but something else, something slippery and wrong.

Leita slashed at the skin, opening a wound.

His arm caught her in the middle, tossing her away. Attalus screamed in outrage, pumping his wings to crash down onto Araxos and pin him.

Pushing herself up, she ran back into the fray.

“I can smell it, the poison in him,” she cried. “Hold him down while I—”

Attalus roared in her face, blowing her hair off her shoulders.

“I know!” she shouted back. “I was wrong, I get it! But I’m not wrong now.”

With his strength and focus on keeping Araxos down, Attalus had no choice but to snort and let her approach. Araxos struggled, roaring when Leita thrust her hand not just against the wound but into his very flesh. Attalus clamped his maw around Araxos’s nape, holding him down while Leita reached deep, deep inside.

Hot, sticky blood oozed around her hand, and she could feel the anax’s very pulse against her palm. Her magic seeped into his veins and tissues, hunting down the strange metallic stench in Araxos’s blood.

At first, she couldn’t root out what the abnormality was. She searched as she had in Attalus’s system, destroying the venom that attacked his tendons and muscles.

But what afflicted the anax wasn’t in his tendons or muscles. And it wasn’t venom.

It was, indeed, poison.

Not the kind Attalus had been accused of using. No, a kind administered slowly, one that not only clouded the mind but clustered in it.

Her magic delved into the delicate sacks of his organs, and within the swollen bags of bile and blood and breath, she found what she sought.

The extraction was excruciating, given how much the anax fought her and Attalus. Leita’s hand slid inside the wound as Araxos bucked, trying to unseat Attalus, but her dragon held.

His hot breath cascaded over her, and when she met one of his large eyes, blinking not far from her head, understanding thrummed down their bond.

Do it. Finish it.

She pulled the poison from his kidneys and liver, condensing it in her palm. Leita dragged a handful of silvery, slippery liquid mercury out of the dragon king.

Then went in for more.

His brain was more difficult, requiring a gentler hand. Attalus’s lungs heaved like bellows with the effort to keep Araxos down, but Leita forced herself not to rush. She skirted his skull, keeping to the fluid suspending his brain. Within this she drew out the toxin, coaxing it along through veins down his long neck.

The final few drops dribbled out of Araxos’s wound, pooling on the ground beneath him.

Leita jumped out of the way as the anax collapsed with a groan.

Rolling over, she sat up on the scorched earth, her bloody hands trembling with what she’d done.

Attalus, though, didn’t move. His muzzle wrinkled up like an angry cat’s, bloodlust clouding his vision as his fangs sank deeper into Araxos’s hide.