Aston woke with a start as he felt heat rush over him. He and the other elementalists had been guarding the portal to the realm of the dragons for twenty-four hours, and they’d been sleeping in shifts, not that Aston had been able to get much rest. The pain in his chest wasn’t abating, and he felt himself being pulled to the very portal he was sure he didn’t want to walk through. It didn’t take a genius to know that walking into a realm filled with huge, fire-breathing lizards was a dumbass move.
But there had been many times he’d had to stop himself from standing up and doing just that. He’d distracted himself by asking Professor Fernis every question he could come up with about all of the different supernatural creatures and battles he’d faced. Regardless of the pull that Aston felt, on
