Found by Sarah Prineas Page B

past my face and ’round behind me. A quick slice and it’d cut the ropes tying my hands. I fell forward on my knees onto the pine-needly ground.
    I looked up, and the dragon was standing over me, its front legs like two pillars to either side. Before I could scramble away, it lifted a claw and knocked me onto my back, then lowered the claw. One of its talons gouged into the ground next to my neck; the other went through the shoulder of my coat and sweater. I squirmed to try and get away, and the dragon leaned forward, pressing me into the ground.
    “All right,” I gasped. “I’ll keep still.”
    With its other taloned foot it poked at me, first at my feet, then my shoulder, pushing aside my coatand pulling down the neck of my sweater with a sharp talon-tip.
    “Conn, what does it want?” Rowan asked from where she lay under the tail.
    It was looking for something. Oh. I was a wizard; it wanted to see my locus magicalicus. “I don’t have one,” I said softly.
    At the sound of my voice, the dragon’s head reared back. The talons closed around me, snatching me up, gouging chunks of dirt from the ground. The dragon’s other foot grabbed my knapsack. With a thunder-clap of wings, the dragon leaped into the air.
    “Conn!” Rowan screamed.
    I felt the lurch of the ground pulling at me, and a wild rushing of wind. The dragon beat its wings again, an echoing whumph ; the land let me go and we whirled upward.
    Away we flew, straight toward the dazzling sun.
     
    The dragon circled over the pine forest. I felt when it tracked onto the spell-line leading straight south;we shot away, faster than falling, the finding spell humming in my bones.
    One of the dragon’s talons was still stuck through the shoulder of my coat. Just over my face was its foot, like the palm of a giant hand, but covered with smooth scales. I caught my breath and reached up and rested my hand against it. The scales were warm. My hand trembled against them. The dragon’s talons went around under my back, holding me tight, the way a bird’s foot holds on to a branch. It wasn’t going to let me fall. I twisted around to have a look at where we were going.
    To the west, at the edge where the land met the sky, the sun was falling down behind low hills. The sky on the other side was turning deep velvet blue, pricked with stars. Below, the land was darkening. I saw a greeny-black blanket of pine forest, then a lighter brown ribbon—a river. Beside it was a wide, soot-smudged clump of houses and streets and towers glinting in the setting sun, the city of Torrent. And straight below us, the scorch-black spell-line.
    Rowan hadn’t been hurt, that I could see. What would she do when Argent got back with the supplies? She might realize that the dragon was heading down the spell-line. She might try to follow. Or they’d turn and go back to Wellmet.
    The sun flung a few last beams of light across the sky, then sank out of sight. The land below grew dark. An icy-cold wind whistled past, but the dragon’s foot kept me warm. I leaned to the side and looked up between the talons that curled around me. The stars hung down so low and bright, I could have reached up and brushed them aside with my hand to see into the deep, velvet-black sky.
     
    The dragon flew straight through the night. I had time to tease out the knots and get Argent’s rope off my wrists. And to think about what the dragon wanted me for.
    Clear as clear, it’d come down the spell-line, and it was bringing me back up the spell-line. It could’ve killed Rowan, but it hadn’t; I didn’t think it meantme any harm, either. It might have some other reason for coming to fetch me, but we were flying toward my locus magicalicus, and that was reason enough for me.
    “Fly faster, dragon,” I said.
    It wouldn’t hear me, even if it did have ears among all the spikes on its head.
    I lay still and listened to the wind rushing past and the whumph-whumph of the dragon’s wings beating overhead. When I