War of the Princes 02: Dragoon Read Online Free PDF

coming!”
    I had risen from the bench, leaving the stack of Loring's papers on the seat. I was walking toward Eddie Elm before I realized what I was doing.
    My approach yielded a better picture of the battered man. I stopped, ensuring a ten-foot gap between us. His eyes were the first thing I noticed. They were different colors, one brown, the other silver and bloodshot. There were cuts and bruises across his face, his clothes were battered, burned and bloodstained, and his left shoulder was very obviously dislocated.
    “ Don't stop me!” he echoed.
    “ Easy, Eddie,” Kyle said, beside me. I couldn't stop myself from investigating but I was infinitely glad I wasn't alone. “What happened to you?”
    “ We're fools. He's coming. He's coming,” the crazed man repeated, looking around frantically. “Don't stop me. It's the right thing to do. It's the only thing.”
    “ We need to get you to a hospital, okay?” Kyle said, taking a cautious step forward. “Eddie, can you hear me?”
    “ He can't have us.”
    My nerves prickled. “Who's coming?”
    His eyes found mine and locked. I had asked the right question.
    “The Prince of Shadows,” he said in a broken voice.
    Now my nerves stabbed at me. “How?” The rest of the world faded out. In my peripheral vision, there were people running up the lawn. Black carriages raced up the street toward the weather station. Kyle stood close beside me, looking around us. Later, I realized that he had noticed what was going on long before I did.
    “ Kat,” Kyle said, attempting to get my attention. I ignored him.
    “ I have to do it. I was the only one who escaped. I don't know what happened to the others. Maybe they got away, but no, they couldn't have. I was the strongest. I was the strongest and I barely made it,” he began to weep. “I can't take the chance that they weren't captured. If he has Paperglass, we're all ruined!”
    Worst fears confirmed.
    “Kat,” Kyle said more firmly.
    Eddie inched closer to Loraine, his contorted frame perfectly aligned with a leg of the weather tower. There was a thin wire tied around that leg. It ran forty feet to where Eddie stood, the end coiling in his right hand. I didn't understand its significance. I was fixated on something else.
    “ Can Paperglass get home?” I asked, inching forward.
    Kyle grabbed me by the shoulders, halting my approach.
    “ What are you doing? Let me go!” I said trying to wrench out of his grip.
    “ No, no, no! There's no hope! No hope for us, don't you understand?” he began to shout. Eddie finally broke eye contact to look beyond me at the officers racing toward us. “I have to do it.”
    Using all of his strength, Kyle yanked me back, half dragging me away. “He knows about my mom!” I cried. My temper snapped within me and a familiar power surged, ready to aid me if I so desired. I'm ashamed to admit, for an instant, I was tempted. It just would have been so easy. I could make him let me go. But I remembered Calvin. I remembered Stakes. This was Kyle, one of my best friends. One of the people I loved most in the world. I couldn't let myself hurt him too. I gritted my teeth and forced the Spark into hibernation.
    Eddie raised his good arm. The wire went taut.
    I finally traced it back to the leg of the weather tower and my face drained of color. His arms still around me, I stopped fighting Kyle and scrambled backwards with him. There wasn't time.
    Eddie's eyes met mine again. “Forgive me.”
    The wire vibrated. It was quiet. For a long moment, nothing happened. And then it did.
    The steel weather tower leg screamed and burst from within, flinging deadly projectiles out in all directions. In a chain reaction, all of the other beam supports and legs began exploding. The tower buckled and tipped, seeming to hang in the air for an instant... or maybe that was my horrified perception.
    Safety!
    I grabbed Kyle by the arm and yanked, dragging him along behind me as I dashed to follow the Pull.