“No. And I’m completely fine with that.”
“Get as high as you can! We need to stay above him.”
“We’ll lose the clouds if we go too high!” he snapped back.
“Just do it.”
“Then you better hold on to something.”
“What? Why are you—oh my fucking gods, you dick!”
Instead of being like a normal fucking dragon and rising gradually, Kevin turned his face upward, his body shifting until it was almost perpendicular to the ground. I held on as tightly as I could, pressing my face against the back spike, trying not to slide off. I started to lift off Kevin, my legs sliding back, and I squeezed my eyes shut, almost biting my tongue clean in half as we rose through the rainstorm. If it went on much longer, my arms were going to be the only thing on Kevin, and they were already tiring.
And then we broke through into sweet, warm sunlight.
I gasped as Kevin leveled out.
I opened my eyes.
The sun was bright. The sky was blue above us. There was a curve to the horizon, and it felt like I could see forever.
“Holy shit,” I said, my voice carried by the wind. “This is—”
It was calm. It was peaceful. It was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen.
Below us was a storm that stretched out across Verania.
Everything felt still. Like we’d crossed from one world into another.
“Have you ever been this high before?” I called down to Kevin, breathless.
“Once or twice,” he said. “But not in a very long time.”
“It’s… amazing. I can see why you fly.”
“Usually it’s without the threat of death. Well, that was before I met you. Now it seems like the only reason I’m in the air is if something wants to eat me or if I’m getting wizards blowing their whizbangs and their sparklies at me.”
“Dude. That sucks. My bad.”
“Eh, worth it.”
I took a deep breath and leaned over as far as I dared, trying to see if I could find the dragon before he found us.
I had a dizzying sense of vertigo as I stared down below us. The cloud cover belied how high we were, but what I was seeing wasn’t exactly what my brain was telling me. I saw the clouds below. But in my head, I could see straight through them all the way to the ground below.
“Oh man.” I swallowed thickly. “If I throw up on you, I am so sorry.”
“If you do, I’m going to eat you myself,” he said, glaring back at me.
“Bullshit. You love me too much.”
“Try and see, wizard. Remember the truth corn lady? I left her feet behind. I’ll leave nothing of you behind but the memories.”
“That…. Okay, that was actually quite impressive. Well played. Any vomit I might have had is now firmly back in my stomach where it belongs.”
“Thank you for sharing.”
There was nothing below us. I was starting to get uneasy. I would have thought the Great White would follow us much more closely. Granted, if he was as big as I thought he was, he couldn’t move as fast as Kevin. He would be a lumbering thing, something we needed to use to our advantage.