Stolen Read Online Free

couldn’t love, couldn’t feel, that she was broken. But she no longer suffered from that hollow feeling of emptiness. In its place she felt a warm, deep sense of fulfillment. She was complete. She had lived half awake, only half alive until she found her drakon. But now she was whole. Ready to live, to fight, to face whatever came next.
    She was the last remaining Guardian of the Blue, the first and last drakonrydder of the third age of Vallonis.
    Nat inhaled deeply, feeling a tingle from the life all around her.
When the war is over, when the Blue is safe, I will come back here.
Deep in her heart, she knew that her dearest hope was that she would not return alone.
    But there was no more time to dream.
    As quickly as it had disappeared, it returned. The grayhawk had found her.
    And now there were two of them.
    Let them come.
As the gray-winged planes streaked above the forest, their engines as silent as bird’s wings, great gray harbingers of doom and death, her drakon filled the sky with fire, turning the clouds into vapor and the air into flame.
    A drone crashed to the earth, burning, dying.
One more,
thought Nat,
one more drone to defeat and then we can rest.
    But Drakon Mainas was slow to move this time, the months of battle finally taking their toll on the great beast.
So many wasps,
she thought.
Too many.
Soon it would rest; soon
they
would rest, she soothed. Just one last push. One more attack.
    Breathe,
she told her drakon.
Breathe and let’s burn this thing and go home.
    No fire came. The last grayhawk set its sights on them, sent its rockets arcing into the air, and she felt a dozen bullets tear through the drakon’s hide. Nat screamed, feeling as if her whole body were tearing open as the iron pierced the drakon’s scales. Each shard stabbed at her chest, stealing the breath from her lungs, the pain nearly knocking her from her mount.
    Breathe,
she told herself.
Breathe.
    Struggling against the pain that consumed them both, Nat inhaled as deeply as she could, felt the fire burning inside and out, and before the drone could circle back to fire at them again, she unleashed the drakonfire, bathing the great gray warbird in a pillar of flame that turned the entire body of the drone into a red, glowing cylinder. She watched as the cylinder bent and collapsed, hurtling toward the granite cliffs, shattering into a thousand pieces as it struck the rocks.
    They did it. They destroyed the latest battalion as completely as the ones before it. The RSA would have other resources, of course—who knew how many more in its great armada were hidden in the frozen oceans of the world.
    But for now, they had won.
    Nat’s heart was racing as she and her drakon rose once more into the clouds. The sound of the crash reverberated across the island valley. She would bring the news to the Council’s Messenger, to tell the Queen that the land was safe once more.
    Home now,
she urged.
Home and sleep.
    We will have time enough to celebrate.
    A sudden strange rumbling shook the air around them. That was no warbird. That was no grayhawk.
What is that?
Nat gripped the reins tightly, waiting, uncertain, and the drakon hovered, flapping its giant wings, remaining in place.
    Let’s get out of here,
Nat told her drakon, but before they could move, a black cloud engulfed them, piercing the drakon with shards of hot iron. They’d been hit with a new weapon, Nat realized. They weren’t bullets or missiles, and they were everywhere, painful, hot, and stinging with dangerous silver poison. The drakon moved its body to shield Nat, to protect her from the iron rain, as the iron daggers tore at its hide, searing through scale and armor into the soft flesh of the great beast, drawing rivers of blood.
    The pain was too much to bear and they fell, crashing into the earth, the drakon beating its wings to cushion the landing as they smacked into the trees and the rocks, hitting the ground in a clatter of pebbles and