Total pages in book: 247
Estimated words: 235897 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1179(@200wpm)___ 944(@250wpm)___ 786(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 235897 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1179(@200wpm)___ 944(@250wpm)___ 786(@300wpm)
Halden stiffens. “Absolutely not, Cam.”
“He goes by Aaric, and he absolutely will,” I counter, earning myself a menacing glare from my ex that doesn’t even faze me. “You’re banned from Deverelli and have the temper of a two-year-old on a good day, Halden. Aaric is a rider. He’ll keep up with us in the air and on the ground, and having been in his squad for the last eight months, I can promise you that he knows how to keep his shit together when things go badly.”
Halden’s glare shifts to Aaric. “It was you who breached the royal vault.”
“Yes.” Aaric nods.
“Father blamed me.” Halden takes a step forward, and a tiny twinge of guilt nips the back of my neck, since our past is most likely the reason he took the heat. “Did you stay in Basgiath? Or fly with the rebels?”
“You already know the answer,” Aaric replies.
Halden turns as red as Sliseag. “Go back to the quadrant. I’ll be the only royal—”
“Good luck getting a gryphon to carry your basket again,” Aaric says, then walks toward Molvic without another word.
“Well, as awkward as this has been…” Ridoc lifts his brows.
“I’m sure you know your way off the flight field,” Xaden says to Halden, but the prince’s gaze is locked on the claws of the blue dragon.
“Violet.” Halden lowers his voice and slowly looks my way. The plea in his eyes hits me straight in the chest.
“I won’t let anything happen to him,” I promise.
Halden nods once. “I’ll hold you to it.” He looks at each of us in turn, and the promise morphs into a threat. “All of you.”
• • •
We spend a day at Athebyne and another at Cordyn, resting the gryphons between legs of the journey. They’re far less winded without the baskets to carry, but without magic to bolster their strength, we need to take two days to rest in Deverelli before continuing onward.
That second day convinces Mira of what she’d already guessed on our first trip: some runes work off the Continent. Now to narrow down which ones and figure out why. We’re each supplied with a handful of multicolored quartz disks to test. I’m grateful not to be sunburned—though I can’t tell if it’s the amethyst disk or the same rune on one of the daggers Xaden gave me last year—but annoyed to all shit that runes are the only thing Mira is willing to talk to me about.
The southwestern Deverelli coastline falls away in the early hours of the eighth day of the trip, and the color shifts from aqua to midnight blue as we head over the open sea.
And that’s all I see on the horizon—water.
If it weren’t for ships beneath us making their own journeys, I’d be more than a little apprehensive about flying into nothingness.
“Save your nerves for when we reach Unnbriel in nine hours,” Tairn tells me. “And save yours for when the winds shift,” he instructs Andarna, who’s clipped in below.
Gods, I hope the maps my father included are accurate. Dragons aren’t exactly boats. They can’t just float if they get tired, and nine hours from now will put our total flight time at twelve.
Gryphons aren’t fond of anything over eight.
The air current shifts sometime around noon, giving us a tailwind as the clouds clear, and Andarna relishes in her freedom unclipped from Tairn, off to his side. Her wingbeats are strong, but the difference in her left wing is far more visible without magic for strength. Each beat strains the tendons to gain full extension, and it isn’t long before she’s dipping slightly.
Worry wraps her prickly fingers around my throat when Andarna pitches in a gust, but I keep my mouth shut as she climbs back into formation.
“Do not lose altitude,” Tairn warns her. “There is no telling what weaponry arms the merchant vessels beneath us.”
“Do you ever tire of your own voice?” she questions, soaring a little closer to Sgaeyl.
“Never,” he assures her.
With nothing to do for the next eight hours but hold on, I listen as Tairn recites the lore of his breed from the first of his line up to Thareux, the first black dragon to ever successfully bond, back during the Great War, then stops.
Apparently the story is no longer worth telling once humans are involved.
The sun has slid into the angles of afternoon by the time Tairn catches sight of land.
“Thirty minutes!” he announces to Andarna and me, then lets loose a roar that vibrates my teeth to alert the others.
I pivot in the saddle to check our formation. Everyone is where they should be, with the exception of Kiralair, who is drifting back from her guarded position in the center, toward Aotrom’s snout. “Just in time, too. Kiralair is fading.”
“Had to bring the gryphons,” Tairn mutters as I turn forward again and the hilly coastline comes into view.