Mercy Burns (Myth and Magic 2)

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I simply glanced back down at Angus. His face was etched with pain and the knowledge of death, but when his gaze met mine, the blue depths were aware and desperate.

“Coral,” he said, his words slurred and voice hoarse. “You must—”

“Shhh,” I said, squeezing his fingers. “Just rest. We’ll help her. I promise.”

“Go to her now. Save her. They’ll kill her.”

“If they haven’t already,” Damon murmured.

“No, she lives. I’d know.” Angus gulped down air and his fingers clenched against mine, squeezing them hard enough to hurt. “Moraga Drive. Blue house—”

His voice faded, and a heartbeat later his eyes rolled back into his head and his grip against my hand suddenly loosened.

He was dead.

I blinked back tears as I leaned forward and closed his eyes. This man might have betrayed both Rainey and me, but he didn’t deserve this sort of death, didn’t deserve to be alone when his soul moved on.

“Damon—”

“We are not staying here to pray for his soul, Mercy.”

“If you’d just shut up and let me finish a sentence,” I snapped back, “you’d learn that I was about to ask how quickly we can get to Santa Rosa.”

Because if we could get Coral free soon enough, then Angus would not be alone come dawn.

He looked at me like I was crazy. “You’re no

t actually going to attempt this rescue?”

“I promised—”

“That’s neither here nor there. By the time we get there, the woman will be dead. They’re obviously getting rid of all possible complications. It’s your own safety you should be worried about.”

“Except that Santa Rosa is the last place they’d expect me to go, so it’s probably the safest place to be. Besides, she might know something that could help us, and that alone makes it worth trying.” I stared at him mutinously. “I’ll do this alone if I have to.”

“You’re crazy enough to do it, too,” he muttered, and ran a hand through his hair. “Okay, we’ll rescue this woman. But if she doesn’t have any information, we start doing things my way.”

“I don’t like your way. It involves killing people.”

“If I kill them, I can’t get information out of them,” he snapped back. “If we want to get there quickly, the best way to do so is to fly.”

My heart began to race. Not from excitement but rather from fear. Flying and me weren’t exactly compatible. And I had the scars to prove it.

“We can’t—”

“We can take the boat out to sea and fly from there. It’s going to be a cloudy night, so the chances of being seen are low. Especially given we’re black and brown respectively.”

“That’s not the problem.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Then what is? Are you afraid of the sea?”

“No. But as I told you before, I can’t fly. I’m a draman without wings.”

Confusion touched his expression. “But you have every other dragon skill imaginable.”

“Well, as you keep noting, I’m strange. And I didn’t get the wings.”

“I said you’re crazy, not strange. Totally different things.” He made a frustrated sound. “And this makes things more difficult.”