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watched over her shoulder as Shandrazel faded into the rain.

    SHANDRAZEL HATED FLYING in the rain. He disliked the water in his eyes and loathed the way the wind treacherously shifted and vanished beneath his wings. Yet duty drove him, duty and love. Despite their differences, he loved his father and cherished his spirited younger brother. He hoped that no harm had come to either of them. The only real danger he could imagine was if Bodiel had crashed in a sudden downdraft. But even then, he’d been so low over the trees that the crash wouldn’t have been fatal. If Bodiel had been diving in pursuit of Cron, what possible harm could the slave have done? Despite his father’s  keenness for the sport of hunting humans, Shandrazel saw no more challenge in it than he did in his mother’s appetite for devouring baskets of white kittens. An unarmed human was a small-toothed, clawless thing. Certainly, Bodiel was safe.
    During the confrontation with his father, Shandrazel hadn’t watched where his brother flew. He had no idea where to start his search. He blinked through the rain, trying to make sense of the tangled treetops that rushed beneath him. The jagged ends of broken branches caught his eyes. There was a gap in the forest canopy. Shandrazel descended into a small clearing to find his father already there.
    A slain dragon hung in the crook of a tree. It was a sky-dragon, not Bodiel. In the dim light, Shandrazel drew closer. The beetles swarming over the dragon’s body gave testimony that it had hung here for hours. The body stank; the sky-dragon’s bowels had loosened after death. Oddly, just beneath the stench, the air carried the unmistakable mouthwatering scent of horch.
    A single arrow jutted from the dragon’s jaw. Shandrazel studied the arrow, which was fletched with a red feather scale from a sun-dragon’s wing; black thread wrapped around its split core fastened it to the slender shaft of ash. He then looked closer at the dragon’s face. He gasped. He knew this dragon.
    “His name was Dacorn,” said Shandrazel. “A biologian. He taught me botany during my summer on the Isle of Horses. Who would do such a thing? He was a gentle soul. He had no enemies.”
    Albekizan paid no attention to Shandrazel’s words. He, too, had noticed the arrow. He plucked it from the corpse to examine it. It was a tiny thing in Albekizan’s talons, a fragile sliver of wood that Albekizan snapped effortlessly.
    Shandrazel raised his long neck and bellowed, “Bodiel!”
    “He won’t be answering,” said Albekizan. His father leapt up, knocking aside branches as he caught the air, rising once more to continue his search in the violent rain. Shandrazel tried to follow but the rain made it difficult to see his father, let alone keep up with him. They flew in ever widening circles, searching the trees, and soon Shandrazel had lost all trace of his father. He continued his search, hoping that finding the corpse of his former teacher was only a macabre coincidence.
    At length, Shandrazel found Albekizan sitting by the riverbank with Bodiel’s head clutched against his chest. Bodiel’s arrow-riddled, lifeless body lay half in the water — it was possible he’d died further upriver and drifted to rest here. Shandrazel landed, feeling as if his own heart were pierced with an arrow. Never had there been a soul as bold and joyous as Bodiel’s. It seemed impossible that he should be dead.
    Shandrazel stepped forward, using his wings to shelter his father from the rain. He froze as Albekizan looked at him. Their gazes locked. Albekizan’s eyes burned with fury, fury and something more, an emotion he’d not seen in his father’s eyes for many years: passion. Albekizan, cradling Bodiel’s dead body, was filled with frightening, fiery life.
    Shandrazel stumbled backward, his talons slipping in the muddy earth. The air seemed charged, ready to spark.
    The king dropped Bodiel into the mud and rose to his full length. In his