A Shard of Sun Read Online Free PDF

real, yet could not fly out of it. He veered through a chaos of wings, talons, and massive snapping jaws, the wyrms smashing into the towers and arches of the Dawn Spire, killing. Black feathers rained around him and he shouted for his uncle. He shouted for Stigr, then for Asvander, for Brynja. For a moment the ruddy gryfess winged beside him, and his heart thrilled, beating hard, but when she looked at him, her pale golden eyes only condemned.
    He thought he saw Kjorn, below, sprinting across the plain with a pack of painted wolves behind him.
    He screamed for Tyr to intervene, begged for the sun to rise. A sharp, high pitched voice answered him, calling his name.
    Shard rolled and bumped into a warm, scaled body.
    Hikaru loomed over him, wings hunched around them both in a protective mantle.
    The world seemed to tilt and reel as Shard found his breath. Real wyrms, not his nightmare, screamed out in the dark and beyond them, the silent, false sky glowing with splashes of the glowworms.
    Shard lay on his side, panting, staring up at Hikaru, now the size of a mountain cat—much larger than a gryfon fledge. His length made him seem larger. When he saw that Shard was awake, he lowered from his crouch to coil his body in a circle around him.
    “What did you dream?” His voice flicked like a winter wind, warming toward a new depth. Shard yearned to hear the accent of the Sunland, Amaratsu’s warm accent, but Hikaru had learned his speaking from Shard, and his speech was the half-lilted, rough burr of a gryfon. “You were crying out so loudly I thought the wyrms had broken in.”
    Shard shut his eyes. “I dreamed the battle at the Dawn Spire, when the wyrm cut down my uncle.” He stood slowly, stretching inside Hikaru’s coil. “Or maybe it was a battle to come.”
    “I hope not.” Hikaru loosed a strained chuckle. “It sounded horrible.”
    “It was,” Shard agreed, closing his eyes briefly as he remembered Stigr, motionless in the red mud.
    “I’m glad you’re awake,” Hikaru said, averting his gaze and seeming, Shard thought, to purposefully change the subject. “I want to show you something.” Hikaru slipped out of his coil, and Shard realized he was losing some of his youthful awkwardness, coming into the strength and grace of his delicate bones and his serpentine body. He tried to determine if it had only been another day or if he was losing track of time entirely.
    “What is it?” Shard followed him to the crystal wall, to the shallow groove Shard had managed to create by wearing his talons dull.
    Hikaru crouched, and, his eyes on Shard, dug his paws against the dirt and rock.
    “Don’t,” Shard said quickly. “I know you want to help, but let me. You’ll wear your claws dull and then where would we be? Hikaru…”
    He trailed off as Hikaru’s gaze became sly. He held up a paw, full of dirt and rock, then dropped the dirt to the ground. Where Shard struggled to carve the shallowest groove in the ground, Hikaru dug steadily. Easily, he scooped another paw full of dirt, and another. Shard stared, then grasped one of the dragon’s forelegs, holding it up to examine the claws.
    In the false star light they gleamed, sharp as shaved obsidian.
    “I think,” Hikaru murmured with suppressed delight, “my talons are stronger than yours now.”
    “I think you’re right,” Shard breathed. He’d been a fool. Of course Hikaru’s claws would be sharper, stronger, and Shard needn’t have been so protective.
    “We can escape,” Hikaru said quietly, his gaze moving to the dark beyond the walls.
    “Yes,” said Shard. “Let’s fill the hole again. I don’t want the wyrms to suspect. Not all of them leave when they hunt. A few stay, to wait, but they do sleep. We’ll wait for them to sleep, and dig more.” He pressed his own talons to the rock, relieved and then terrified. He shivered, brightening his voice. “Are you ready for the rest of the world, Hikaru?”
    “Yes.” Every little pointed fang