Sunniva handed it back to Rafe. “There’s a storm coming. I want to use it to test the network.”
“How soon?” Marcus glanced up at the sky.
“Four, maybe five hours. If it works —” she’d been thinking about this. “I can try and connect your matrix to it.”
Rafe stared at her with dawning realization. “Yes.”
“Can it handle that?” Marcus sounded concerned.
It was Rafe’s turn to snort. “You blow up one generator and no-one forgets. We can use that to get power back into our systems, don’t you see?”
“You destroyed my favorite jacket.” Marcus leaned forward, propping his chin on one hand. “You can bypass the aerie?”
“I’d have to move the matrix from the workshop,” Sunniva answered. It would be tricky, but doable.
“And your brother?” Blue eyes on her again, seeing her with all her faults. And achievements.
“I tell him it didn’t work.” Sunniva knew this was a weak spot. Even if Giels believed her, if he sent her back to the homeworld…
She would never be able to come back again. She looked at the two humans. It wouldn’t fix Rafe’s heart or Marcus’ modifier, but they both looked hopeful.
It was their world.
“All right. We try it.” Rafe lifted up the matrix, letting it catch the afternoon sunlight and making it glow through the metal. “If we’ve got time, would your dragon like a rematch? No weapons this time, and I do include rocks.”
Sunniva opened her mouth to answer and her dragon seized control, wrenching her halfway through a shift, her feet ripping through her shoes. Yes!
Wait! Sunniva tried to hold on, but it was like drowning in a flood of emotion, need and overwhelming desire. Her dragonmesh was flaring. Sunniva yanked at her jacket.
Rafe stepped back quickly. “All right, then.” He turned towards his plane.
Marcus reached out and pulled her sleeve free. His hand ran down the line of her arm as it shifted from skin to scales, setting it alive to sensation. “Are you all right?”
Her vision was flickering between her dragon’s and her own, the dragon’s far more intense than usual. As well as the air currents she was used to perceiving, Sunniva could see a thick purple band running between her bracelet and Marcus’ modifier, and smaller thinner lines disappearing off towards the crawler and the distant aerie. She squeezed her eyes shut and her dragon forced them open again. Now!
Even in dragon form, she felt as though she was bursting out of her skin, and the tender spots on her head were sore again with a pain that sharpened to two distinct points. Itching, yearning — there was something she wanted. Something near. Speech came out as a hiss. None of her shifts had ever been like this.
What is it? she thought, frantic. What’s wrong?
The band between herself and Marcus was twisting, and she could see now that the purple was a mix of a red from the opal and the blue from the secondary matrix. It pulled at her. Is that what’s bothering you?
Not enough. The words felt difficult, as if her dragon was finding it impossible to think clearly. Not — She stepped forward, claws digging into the ground.
A whine of engines. Rafe’s plane lifted up, pivoting, and she caught a glimpse of his intent face through the windscreen.
Mine! Her dragon dropped her jaw and crowed in triumph, the noise bouncing off the rocky cliff-faces and echoing around the hillside. Now!
She leapt into the air with a massive spring, the backdraft of her wings nearly knocking Marcus over, and followed.
Sunniva, caught up in the relentless pulse of her dragon’s feelings, struggled to hold on, but the realization that her dragon was finally rising had torn away the last shreds of control. For the first time, she lost herself entirely in her dragon’s joyous chase.
Rafe led her out and down the valley, the rocky scree giving way to close-cropped grass, and the bright rippling line of a stream winding through. She caught up easily and tapped one of the stubby wings lightly with her nose. The plane twisted away sharply as if stung, and began to climb. Thrilled at the challenge, Sunniva beat her wings more strongly, searching for every scrap of advantage in the light breezes. The air was damp and heavy. A distant part of her mind remembered the coming storm.
Higher and higher. The little plane drew ahead again, and then dropped suddenly, nose down. Sunniva overshot, and by the time she twisted around the plane had come up again, passing just beneath her and waggling its wings mockingly. Sunniva chased it back towards the mountains, and up another valley. The cliffs at the top were steep and stark, jutting out in warning, and Rafe was flying low; too low to make it over. Sunniva, suddenly worried, sped up, and the plane jerked suddenly onto its side and slid out of sight soundlessly between the rocks.
What? She caught up, confused, and saw that the jutting cliff face had concealed a thin pass through the mountain. In the distance, Rafe’s plane did a slow loop. Sunniva, mouth curling in amusement, flung herself through the narrow pass and after him, her claws scrabbling on the rocks.
There was a lake on the other side, the water’s still reflection doubling the snowy peaks. Rafe flew low over it and Sunniva, wings straining, caught up briefly, dipping below him in a shallow dive, splashing them both with icy water. He went up again and she flew up beside him, matching speeds as they climbed. The wind from the snowfields below was bitingly cold, and the water droplets on the plane’s wings clouded over into beads of ice.