“FIRE!” ABEL SHOUTED, PULLING THE reins. Karak reared back, wings wide and gleaming with starlight. The dragon loosed a hot blast of fire that hit the incoming ice in midair.

As the ice and fire slammed into each other, they created such a sudden cloud of vapor that the air cracked with thunder. Mist enveloped Abel and Karak, along with Sax and his dragon. The force of the Frost Dragon’s breath pushed against Karak, but Sunrise Reaper’s fire pushed back just as hard. The dragons were locked together, exhaling ferociously. Abel wasn’t sure who could do it for longer.

He thought about his DrakoTek cards. Frost-spitting dragons had a +2 against fire breathers … and if the cards were right, then Karak was going to run out of breath first!

Knowing that, Abel knew he had to control how the battle ended, instead of letting Karak exhaust himself.

In the cloud, the Frost Dragon was just a shadow, but the huge temperature changes in the air would trick any heat-seeking goggles Sax had on. Abel and Karak were nearly invisible to him—and to the ground crews below.

The Sky Knights only understood power. They wouldn’t stop attacking until Abel was destroyed, so Sax probably couldn’t imagine a defensive retreat so close to victory. Abel could use that against him. He snapped the reins, and Karak broke off his fire breath. At the same time, Abel steered Karak to lean all the way backward, belly to the sky, rotating in a full backflip.

“Hang on tight!” he shouted to Silas. A blast of ice shot through the mist, just over Karak’s belly and over Abel’s brother, who was gripped there.

“AAHHH!” Silas screamed.

They rolled through the loop-the-loop. Abel held on for his life, grateful for the safety harness. They came out of the flip just below the mist cloud, with Silas a nose’s length above the hard glass ground.

They streaked forward with three massive wingbeats. Karak dove to their circle, sliding Silas onto the surface as gently as Abel’s mom slid a pancake onto a plate. Then Abel turned in a quick circle and came in for landing himself.

Sax was still up in the cloud he’d made, searching for his opponent. Ally and Lina were only just arriving over the Glass Flats, both of their dragons looking the worse for battling, neither having defeated the other.

Fitz sat on the back of his dragon. He pulled at the reins, and the dragon launched its rainbow fire, signaling the end of the battle with a shower of rainbow sparks.

“Wind Breakers win!” he yelled.

Roa and Topher charged forward, cheering.

“That was incredible!” Roa helped him down from Karak and hugged him.

“Unbelievable!” Topher joined the hug, surprising even himself.

“Nice flying, bro!” Lina yelled from her own circle. Drey and the other Sky Knights were busy yelling at each other for not even seeing when Abel had grabbed Silas off the rooftop in the first place.

“Losing kin!” Fitz announced. “Surrender your battle dragons to the winner and abide by the terms of your bet. All debts owed by Abel and his family are forgiven.”

Jazinda looked like she had just smelled a fresh pile of dragon dung, but she nodded. Sax led his Frost Dragon to Abel and presented the reins. Ally did the same, and so did Lina.

“I’ll expect Grackle returned to the Half-Wing by morning,” Jazinda said.

“My dad will have already released him,” Abel replied. “If he’s walking now, he should make it across the city by sunrise.”

Jazinda grunted. “You’ve got guts, Abel,” she said. “We’ll honor the terms of the bet. But I’ve got my eye on you. Remember that.”

The huge dragons towered over Abel. Karak eyed them all warily, then looked down at his rider, waiting. The other three dragons looked down at him too. Abel held four long leashes in his hands. He had four powerful dragons that suddenly belonged to him. They were a little scraped up from the fighting, and panting from the exhaustion of the battle, just like he was.

“You won them all,” Topher said. “This is amazing. I think we have more dragons than any seventh graders in history.”

“No,” Abel said. “We don’t have any dragons.”

“What—what are you—” Topher pointed up at the dragons. “They’re, like, right there, Abel! Do you not see them? Did you crack your helmet? Is it a concussion? DON’T FALL ASLEEP!”

“I mean,” Abel explained, “Karak won the battle, not me. And it wasn’t even his fight. It was ours. People’s. It’s not right, battling them this way, keeping them this way, making them fight for us.”

“But—they’re dragons!” Topher said, his voice cracking. “Fighting’s what they do.”

Abel shook his head. He looked at Roa, who gave him a small nod of agreement. He hoped Topher would understand. He was just starting to like the guy and would hate to see him go back to being a bully. But even if he didn’t understand, this was what had to happen. “I’m letting them go,” he said.

One by one, he unclipped the armor and the leashes from the dragons he’d won. Abel bowed to each of them, like he’d bowed to Karak when they first met.

“You’re free,” he said. “All three of you. Go to the wild. Live as you were born to live.” The dragons blinked down at him. “Go!”

“Abel,” Ally told him. “Dragons aren’t meant to be free. You really should have paid more attention in class.”

“I won, and I can do what I please with these dragons,” Abel snapped back at his teacher in a way he never before would’ve dared. “And I am setting them free.”

“But … but … we won!” Topher whined.

“You better do it fast,” Roa said. “The law’s coming.”

They pointed, and Abel saw a long line of Dragon’s Eye wyverns racing from the city toward the Flats.

“It’s the Eye!” Jazinda shouted. “Scatter!”

“Savvy!” her Red Talons replied. Suddenly, there was a rush of movement as all the kinners scrambled back to their dragons and melted away into the night.

“See you around, kid,” Sax snarled. He climbed on the back of another Red Talons’ dragon as a passenger, and the two flew off.

“Better get a move on, Abel,” Fitz said. “You don’t want to get caught out here.”

He too flew away into the dark.

“I am not going to jail again because of some snot-nosed, comic-reading kids,” Ally grumbled. Olus and the Thunder Wings loaded up their dragons to flee. “But I will see you all back in school,” she added as she left.

It sounded like a threat.

“I think our grades are gonna suffer because of this,” Abel apologized to Roa.

Roa shrugged. “There are more important things than grades.”

“You’re way cooler than I thought you were,” Topher told them. “But if you let these dragons go, we’re gonna be powerless.”

“Their power isn’t ours,” Abel said. “We just borrowed it for a while. I want to give it back.” Topher didn’t try to stop him. Abel shouted up to the dragons looming over them, “Hey, dragons, go! Go on!”

He tried waving his arms at them, but they just stared at him. Then, as one, they looked at Karak.

Of course. Karak had won, which made him the alpha dragon, just like in class with the ERDs. They’d do whatever he did, which meant Abel had to convince his own dragon to leave first.

He had to say goodbye.

“Karak, thank you.” Abel undid the saddle and heaved it off Karak’s back. “It’s been an honor to fly with you, but you need to be free.”

Karak lowered his face to meet Abel’s, just like when they’d first met. Abel set his palms flat against the warm snout. “You can’t stay. They’ll lock you up in a stable again and make you battle. You need to go now. Your wings are your own, and they should take you wherever you want, not where people tell you to go.” Karak bumped him a little and grunted. “No, not even me,” Abel said.

The dragon snorted; then he reared back up to his full height, opened his wings, and screeched. Roa and Topher flinched, but Abel stood tall in front of Karak. He raised his hand to wave goodbye. Karak bent his legs and thrust himself into the air with a roar. The other dragons watched him rise, and then, with their own terrible roars, followed him, circling overhead.

“Wings wide, my friends,” Abel whispered after them. “Wings wide.”

“Abel,” Lina sighed. She looked back at her own kin, who were waving frantically at her to go. The Dragon’s Eye were closing in. “You made a lot of powerful enemies tonight.”

Abel looked up at the dragons as they finished their circle and flapped away into the darkness. Dragons flying free and wild—how long had it been since that last happened? He smiled and wiped a tear away. “Yeah, but I made some powerful friends too.”

Lina shook her head. She backed toward her kin, hopping on a running dragon as they all disappeared back toward the lights and crowds of the city.

“So, uh, how are we gonna get out of here?” Topher asked. They were three kids, alone and dragon-less on the Glass Flats, with the Dragon’s Eye just minutes away.

“They don’t have any proof we were involved in the dragon battle,” Abel said. “Except for Silas.”

They all turned to look at his brother, who was still on the ground. He’d lost his helmet in the landing but was sitting up with his hands bound behind his back. His hair was a mess, and he had a nasty scrape on his forehead. He had an even nastier expression on his face.

“You want me to cover for you again?” Silas snarled. “Why should I?”

Abel thought of a lot of insults he could hurl at his big brother right then, but there wasn’t time. The law would be on them soon. If he and his friends were going to stay out of Windlee Prison, he had to make peace with Silas, and he had to do it fast.

“Because you’re not nearly as dumb as your face makes you look,” he said.

Ah well. He couldn’t resist. Roa elbowed him, and he tried again, nicer.