Page 74 of Under the Iron Sky

The scythe came loose, taking a piece of the bracer with it to become a separate blade with a rotting bluish-green handle.

She lunged, flipping that blade forward, and plunged it straight through the side of his stomach.

Pain eclipsed everything, and Ikarus couldn’t think, couldn’t even pull in a breath as she pushed forward, and agony flared out across his stomach until he felt like he was being burned from the inside out.

She’d missed his vital organs, but she hadn’t been aiming for them. This was not a killing blow, he realized as she pressed the blade deeper and deeper until the end popped out of his back and into the wall of metal behind him, sealing him there.

Standing over him, the Light from her scythe and shield reflected in her eyes, she could’ve been one of the suns, torn straight from the sky and made flesh to wreak havoc on this world. She was the most terrifying thing he’d ever seen—and the most beautiful.

The tap of a button, and the metal handle at the edge of the scythe came away. The blade remained though, burning through his skin.

Ikarus desperately tried to pull it out and end this agony, but his fingers jerked away the moment they brushed against it. It was like trying to hold fire.

“Stay,” she hissed.

He couldn’t disobey her even if he’d wanted to. He called his powers to pull the blade out but they weren’t answering, as though they too feared the Light now pinning him to whatever was behind him.

He watched her sprint across the graveyard and climb into a jet, utterly powerless to stop her.

She slipped into the cockpit, and had just turned the engines on when Serone crashed in front of the jet, gums sliding back to expose those metal-shredding fangs.

The human was not afraid of her.

Come on then, the look in her eyes seemed to say as Serone took a step toward her, determination hardening every one of her features—until she looked at Serone’s paws, at what she was about to stand on.

Eyes flaring, the human reached out a hand. “No!”

Too late. Serone stepped on a patch of black metal. Something clicked, then shards of serrated steel as sharp as broken glass flew through the air, straight into Ikarus’s chest.

23

The dragon was screaming—but not from physical pain.

There wasn’t a scratch on it on account of Soraya sending those jets out using the autopilot function—a handy tool for transporting them and any goods and weapons they might carry without the need of a pilot. She hadn’t had time to link all the jets to her new bracers to activate the guns, so all they’d been good for was luring the creature away to even the playing field between her and Ikarus.

No harm had physically come to the dragon, but it was hard for Soraya to remind herself of that as she watched it charge across the graveyard, shrieking while it used its massive head to knock away any cannon or piece of metal in its way, clearing a path to its bleeding master.

Soraya’s fingers curled around the gear stick. This was her moment.

Ikarus was in no condition to fight, and with the dragon as distracted as it was …

That stunt with the berries shouldn’t have worked. She shouldn’t have been able to outrun him at the castle or cross that vast expanse of rock and spider dens and suns only knew what else to make it here—where, among all this metal that’d fallen through a crack in the earth, she’d been able to salvage weapons and Sentinels and fighter jets that were all still operational.

As though they’d all been waiting for her. This chance to fight back, to remind these Dar’rak scum who they were fighting.

There were so many things that should and could have gone wrong, but they hadn’t.

It was all mad. None of this plan should’ve worked—and yet, here she was, sitting in a jet, the running engine a soft hum in her ears despite all the years of neglect.

She checked the power gauge. Almost full. Even if it took her days of flying around to find a crack big enough to slip through and get out of this hellhole, she’d still make it out with plenty to spare.

She’d never get another chance like this.

But that shriek. It seemed to go on for eternity. So loud and hoarse it slipped beneath her skin like a blade and burrowed right down to the bone.

Her eyes flicked up of their own accord. Ikarus had gone very still. She might’ve thought he was dead had he not groaned when the dragon nudged the tip of its snout ever so gently into him, its massive body curled protectively around him like … well, like a dragon guarding its clutch.

She should go. Ikarus was strong. She’d made sure not to hit anything vital, and that blade in his side couldn’t sustain itself for long now she’d detached it from the bracer. He’d recover from this. Someone would find him eventually—but she’d be long gone by then. Back above with Theron and Deimos, Raina and Twiigs.