Page 75 of Under the Iron Sky

She blinked them away, but tears pricked her eyes when she pictured their faces. She was going home.

But what if he didn’t recover …

Ikarus was a monster. He’d killed so many people and never felt a shred of remorse for any of it.

It would be a pitiful death too. He wouldn’t be remembered for dying in a blaze of glory in the heat of battle. He’d die alone, spluttering on his own blood—because a human refused to save him. Now there was some poetic justice.

But Soraya would die too.

“Her life is now bound to his,” Ramapheal had said. “If she dies, he dies.”

Was she ready for that? To never see any of the suns rise or set again? To be laid to rest down here, beside her enemy, where even her gravestone would never know the warmth of the suns?

Apparently not, because the next thing she knew the glass cockpit was sliding away and the cool steel of a medical pack was beneath her arm and fucking hell—what was she doing?

Her boots hit rock and she ran toward the dragon, toward the man she’d killed so many times in her head she could fill an entire book—but whose life held the key to her own.

She was almost there when the dragon swung its head around, those reptilian gray eyes locking onto hers, and hissed.

Soraya skidded to a stop.

The dragon’s fangs gleamed. It stared at Soraya, stared through her until she could’ve sworn some emotion flickered on either side of its serpentine pupils.

Swallowing down the part of her that was screaming fuck this and making a very convincing argument to turn around and get back in the jet, Soraya said, “I’m not going to hurt him.” She slowly raised the steel case in front of her, the bronze star emblazoned on the back staring at her as if questioning her sanity. “This is a medical pack—that’s all. It won’t hurt him, I promise.”

The dragon did not look the least bit convinced.

Soraya dared a step closer and had just started to believe that she was getting through to the thing when it lurched forward, fangs snapping.

Soraya flinched back, cradling the metal case against her chest. “Enough!” Stupid. She was so, so monumentally stupid to speak like this to the creature that’d just almost bitten her hand off.

But Ikarus did not have time to waste.

Soraya inched forward a step, ignoring the dragon’s answering snarl that sent her knees wobbling. She had no idea if it even understood her. She’d only ever seen Ikarus speak to it in their language, but she had to try.

“Your master doesn’t have much time,” she said, forcing her voice into something soft and calm, a tone she used when lying to injured soldiers who asked when they were going home. “I can help him, but only if you let me through. You need to trust me.”

The dragon stared at Soraya, seeming to consider her words. It leaned forward, the scales across its neck and back vibrating like a cat on its haunches—until Ikarus coughed. A horrible, hoarse sound.

The dragon took one look at the blood now coating its master’s chin and slowly uncurled from around Ikarus, rose to stand, and took a step back, creating just enough space to allow Soraya to go to him, while its fangs glittered beside her shoulders, no doubt in silent warning of what it would do should she not deliver on her promise.

Soraya wasted no time getting started. The scythe winking out with the push of a button, she caught Ikarus just as his knees gave out, gently lowering him to lie flat on the ground, and tore open his jacket and shirt to assess the damage.

Her breath caught at the sight of all that blood. This may have been worse than she’d thought.

She flipped open the pack, doing a piss-poor job of ignoring that voice in the back of her head hissing that she was a soldier not a healer, that she took lives instead of saving them, and removed a roll of cloth to wipe away the blood.

Breathe, she told herself. She could do this. Just one thing at a time.

Soraya ran the fabric over his chest, careful to stay well away from the wounds. It took barely seconds for the rag to be drenched with his blood.

Years of trauma marked the skin underneath, a map of every brush with death and battle fought. She’d thought this might be the case. Like he’d said, no one got as high-ranking as they did by sitting behind a war table, but the sheer volume of the scars made her stomach flip.

Had she given him any in the early days of the war before he’d earned his horns? Some she easily recognized as scorch marks from Vordellian weapons, dozens of circular scars like little burning suns from their guns, and that slash of raised skin peeking out from his shoulder was from a lightlance, but those burn scars starting just above his collarbone … Those were not from her people.

The highest started just above the curve of his jaw, the others an inch or two lower, usually covered by the high collar of his clothes, the long thin lines fanning out across his throat in the vague shape of a hand with long, slender fingers.

What the hell did they do to one another down here?