The second wave came early.
Thirty miles south had been Dexmon's estimate. The estimate was wrong. The second wave had been closer than anyone sensed because the second wave had been hiding behind the storm that the first wave's storm dragons were generating, using the weather as a curtain and the curtain had been thicker than Drakenfell's scouts could penetrate.
They emerged from the cloud cover like teeth from a jaw.
Fresh riders. Fresh spotters. Fresh dragons whose corruption was darker and more entrenched than the first wave, the kind of darkness that belonged to creatures whose corruption had been applied deliberately rather than hastily, the difference between a lock picked in a hurry and a lock installed by a locksmith.
And they were carrying Dark Fae that the first wave had left behind.
