Lexyn tried her best. She had fought so hard to change, to be someone who could one day fly. A year ago, she’d never imagined she’d have made it this far. Three ice wraiths, nasty ice snakes that glided through the air spitting frost, coiling around their victims, and draining all their warmth. She had killed them all with her sword, fire oil on the blade melting them into puddles. Not even she could discount how skilled her cuts had been. Her father would’ve been so proud to see how much she’d grown as a warrior. She’d proven her own worst doubts wrong. She wasn’t caught between two worlds she couldn’t belong to. She could fit into both, bring them together in whatever way she wanted to.


    The sabretooths had been next. The girl who hid in a tree while her brother, her best friend, had died below managed to slay not one, but four of them. Sure, Dryxl and Maxilla helped. The good boy had found his bravery alongside her, transforming from the timid drake that only arrived after the fighting to one that rushed in to prevent claw and fang from tearing Lexyn down. Yet it was her sword that dealt four killing blows, each one a promise kept to Hyzqar that she wouldn’t waste the life he sacrificed his own for.


    Half a dozen wyverns. Each rapidly shifting in the air. She’d taken out two with arrows before they arrived, transitioned to the blade with ease, deflected their attacks, killed one more with a return blow. But they’d taken down the drakes. Three of them at once. She needed to keep her focus just to keep from being hit in the back. She dodged and parried, rolled and leapt, doing everything she could just to buy time for Zyryxa or Natazia to answer her call for help. Perhaps it would’ve been enough, if she’d seen the abominable before it slammed into her.


    Lexyn let out one last cry before it seized her throat. Not for Natazia. Their leader had lost herself. Lexyn believed she’d find herself again, but knew firsthand how long that could take. Nor did she call out for Zyryxa. Her best friend was a force. Lexyn would trust her life to her without hesitation. But in her moment of desperation, there was one person she wanted more than any other. The person she wanted most of all. The man she loved.


    “Pelzyq!”


    But Pelzyq was gone.


    The massive yeti clamped down on her throat, crushing her windpipe as its knee pressed on her chest. Lexyn flailed, reaching for her knife she plunged it into the abominable’s side. Once. Twice. Three times.


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    The yeti growled, loosening its grip for a moment. While she fought to gather air to her lungs, the wyverns fell on her. They tore through her abominable furs, into her flesh, picking it apart with teeth and talon. Lexyn tried to shake them off, but the yeti pressed her down. She waved her knife at the wyverns, cutting into one of them. It released a high-pitched caw in her ear as the yeti’s massive hand closed around her throat. She swung the knife, but her wrist was caught. The yeti clenched until the knife fell to the snow. Lexyn bucked, but how could she toss aside a creature that weighed a thousand pounds while three other monsters were tearing into her.


    Even worse than the pain of dying, of being strangled, crushed, and eviscerated, was what she left behind unfinished. Lexyn tried her best. She’d come so far, far enough to believe that she could’ve maybe gone far enough to fly someday. But that day would never come. She didn’t go far enough, fast enough.


    Amarzallax, the beautiful dragon she dreamt of, the one that had called to her asking for a bond, flew in the sky right now. But Lexyn would never fly with her. She’d never see Natazia reclaim herself, never be there when Zyryxa made it to the top and changed Volqor forever. The last thing Pelzyq would remember of her was the flash of fear in her eyes. He’d live the rest of his days believing himself the problem. The broken, incurable son of a horrible man. But he wasn’t that man’s son. How she wished he could see himself through her eyes. Then he would see that he was good.


    Her vision blurred, she couldn’t fight back anymore, her arms and legs going limp. She kept her eyes open, clinging to the last resistance she had left. She fought for every moment because she was done being the one who gave up on herself. Even when it seemed hopeless.


    Colors shifted above her. A flash of movement, a sprinkling of blue against white. Air flooded into her lungs. She fought away the wyverns, the agony of their cuts not dissipating once they detached. Bleeding all over, Lexyn stumbled to her feet. She reached into her satchel and swallowed an antitoxin, hoping it would be enough to keep the wyvern poison from killing her. As her vision stabilized, she lifted her blade, and sought her savior.


    Zyryxa, she thought.


    Pelzyq shoved the abominable to the ground, his axe buried in its thick neck. Screaming at the top of his lungs, he hammered the yeti with his big fists.


    Lexyn burst into tears but had no time to sit with them now. The night filled with howling as even more beasts crashed over the tundra, converging upon them. The fighting had only just begun. But with Pelzyq returned, with Zyryxa tearing through last of the wyverns, and the sword in her hand, Lexyn was ready to prove that her best was good enough.