That did nothing to comfort her. When a strong arm wrappedaround her to keep her in place, she knew she was imprisoned, not saved.
“Greetings, Princess Syla,” a ridiculously calm baritone voice said. The rider.
She squirmed in his grip, though the last thing she wanted was to fall off and break her neck. Through the distorted corners of her spectacles, she could make out the castle courtyard far below. No, falling wouldnotbe good. But she couldn’t let the rider take her away and abandon Fel. Those wyverns would get him—if they hadn’t already.
“I got it right, didn’t I?” the rider asked. “Princess Syla? I’m here to take you somewhere safe, Your Highness.”
“Like where?” she demanded. “A torture chamber?”
“No, my mission is to keep you from that fate.”
The dragon had been circling above the courtyard, but it banked, wings flapping to take off in another direction.
“Fel!” Syla craned her neck to look down, her hand still pressed to her spectacles.
For the first time in her life, she was flying, riding a dragon, but there was nothing delightful about it. And wyverns lurked all over the courtyard below, blood dripping from their talons and fangs. They’d paused to eye the dragon warily, but its arrival hadn’t scared them away.
“Is that the soldier?” the rider asked.
“My bodyguard. He’s in danger.” Syla thrust her hand toward the ruined castle below. She couldn’t see Fel, who was presumably still in that hallway, but shecouldsee the two wyverns that had been attacking them. One disappeared into the building. “Help him!” she urged, though she doubted her captor would.
If anything, he had to be pleased that she was alone and utterly defenseless. Her bag had fallen, so she didn’t even have her book to throw at him.
“Very well,” the rider surprised her by saying.
The dragon glanced back. It had been angling out toward the sea, but the rider must have communicated with it—she’d read about the telepathic link that dragons and riders shared—for the creature banked again, and it flew back toward the courtyard.
The wyverns must have believed the dragon intended to leave them to their business because they weren’t looking up at its approach. Not until the great green creature soared low, wings stretched out in a glide that took it over the ruined courtyard wall to skim the ground. It snapped up a wyvern that had been about to enter the keep.
Fangs crunched audibly through scale and bone, and the smaller beast screeched. The wyvern twisted and tried to claw at its captor, but the dragon had it around the back of the neck, and the smaller beast couldn’t reach it with talons or fangs. More crunches sounded, more bone breaking. The vertebrae in the wyvern’s neck?
As if its prey weighed nothing, the dragon flung it over the wall and toward the edge of the bluff, as Syla had earlier imagined it would throwher. Limp, with its neck broken, the creature tumbled out of view, already dead.
The remaining wyverns, having realized the threat, took to the air. Their chaotic flight reminded Syla of when she’d seen someone’s wolfhound barking and running down the beach, seagulls scattering. The dragon roared instead of barking and sprang for another wyvern, one that had lingered, trying to take its meal with it.
Syla, still horrified that the scavengers were eating the remains of her people, looked toward the castle instead of at the body that dropped. She tried to spot Fel near the doorway, but the shadows were deep in that hallway. The lantern he’d carried had gone out. Even the courtyard was dim, with no moon visible through the clouds and few fires remaining burning, so she couldn’t make outmuch. Nor could she see the face of her rider when she glanced back at him.
The dragon finished the second wyvern it had caught, breaking its neck, the same as the other, and flung it aside. Briefly, their mount landed, but only, Syla sensed, so that it could bunch its muscles to spring into the air again.
“Fel!” Syla yelled, afraid they’d been too late to help him—and that her captor would take her away before she could learn his fate. “We can’t go yet.”
She glanced back. What could she say to persuade someone who was undoubtedly her enemy?
“Heis not the one I was sent to protect,” the rider said.
“I’m not going without him. He’s been my bodyguard for—” She stopped herself from uttering the truth, that Fel had only been assigned to her two weeks earlier. “I’ve known him foryears.” That was true. She’d seen Fel often when visiting the castle.
“The wyverns are gone. He’ll survive if we leave him here.”
“He’s got my pack and mybook,” she said, trying another tactic, but what would a history tome matter to a dragon rider? Those people didn’t evenread.
“Those items sound precious to you.”
“Extremelyprecious. The pack has a first-aid kit inside.” Technically, it had a random collection of decorative medical items she’d grabbed from around her room, but shehadthought to include bandages and suture thread. “Oh, and there’s a pretty dragon artifact inside. I’ll give it to you if you pick up my sergeant.” Maybe it was a silly thing to mention, but she didn’t have much that a rider might value. What else could she bribe him with?
“What color is it?” he surprised her by asking.
“Red.”
