Book of Fire. Michelle Kenney

braced itself against the inevitable collision. I clenched my eyes tight, expecting to feel airborne at any moment and then … nothing.

      ‘Max?’ I whispered hoarsely, unable to contain my shock.

      His response was to press my back reassuringly, but he was clearly as bewildered as me. The Sweeper decelerated fast against a backdrop of unfamiliar noises, and my heart thumped with denial. We seemed to have passed right through the wall itself and against all odds, made it inside the domes without being detected.

      Adrenaline spiked my limbs, as my senses were swamped with layers of new sounds and scents: voices, the hum of machinery, and a pungent, metallic smell that filled my nostrils and grated the back of my throat. I hugged my camouflage of pine branches and downy birch close, and tried to ignore the discomfort. We weren’t in Arafel any more.

      All the myths I’d grown up with were finally about to draw breath, or explode into tiny suffocating fragments – and I was terrified.