I vowed to find others, he thought as the rain fell. To find people like us—exiled, afraid, alone. I vowed that they will have a home, a place to belong, a place to feel not diseased but blessed.

Jeid called that home Requiem, naming it after Tanin's youngest sister whom the villagers had poisoned. Tanin didn't care what their tribe was called. He only cared for that person out there—a person like him, rejected and scared.

"If you're out there, Sena," he said into the rain, "we'll find you, my friend. We'll bring you home."

They flew for a long time in the darkness. Maev—damn her hide!—kept flying so far ahead that Tanin nearly lost sight of her. The old wound in his wing—a hole from a hunter's arrow—ached in the cold, and air whistled through it. His breath was wheezing with a similar sound. Every time he caught up with Maev, she only flashed him a toothy grin, blasted a little fire his way, and darted off again, faster than ever.

"Maev, in the name of sanity, this isn't a race."

She grinned over her shoulder at him. The flames between her teeth lit her green scales. "Everything is a race, brother. We're racing to save a prince. We're racing to forge a tribe. We're racing to finally find you a female companion, because I swear you've been looking funny at sheep this past year."

"Very funny, Maev. Now I'm a heavier dragon than you, and you know I have a hole in my left wing, so please slow dow—"

She cut him off with a blast of smoke, turned back forward, and raced ahead again.

Tanin was grumbling and pounding his wings, trying to catch up, when the shrieks rose ahead.

His heart seemed to freeze.

He knew those sounds. He had heard them before when hunting upon the plains.

"Uncle's rocs," he muttered.

Tanin winced. That day he had fled into exile, his uncle too had left Oldforge. Zerra—disgusted with his twin's disease—had since dedicate his life to hunting those he called weredragons. Wandering the wilderness with a bronze sword—a sword Jeid himself had forged for him—Zerra had finally joined a wandering tribe of roc riders. The Goldtusk tribe had been but a ragged, near-starved group of barbarians, and Zerra had slain their aging chieftain with a single blow from his blade—a blade such as these ramblers, with their stone-tipped spears, had never seen. Since then, Zerra had swelled their numbers, breeding the rocs from a humble dozen to a hundred beasts, starving and tormenting the great vultures and teaching them hatred of reptiles.

And now those rocs flew ahead—invisible in the darkness but cawing louder than thunder.

The rain intensified.

Lightning flashed and Tanin saw them: dozens of the rotted vultures, not even a mark away, hunters upon their backs.