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“You haven’t seen wingrunners in action, have you?” Dusan calls, beaming at my mate as his mount shoots into the air. “Prepare to be amazed, Lady Isavelle.”
* * *
I watchfrom among the trees as Isavelle hurries through the deserted village square, her cloak pulled up over her head. The day turned overcast as we flew, and flurries of snow are skittering across the cobbles.
As she reaches her cottage, she calls out for her mother and father and raises her hand to knock on the front door.
There’s the sound of running feet and half a dozen cloaked figures emerge from the laneways and behind walls and doors. Isavelle screams and runs back toward the square, but she finds no shelter or protection. With her cloak pulled tightly around herself, she peers this way and that, rooted to the spot from fear.
The Brethren are closing in on her, hands reaching to grab her.
A large creature whirrs out of the sky and shoots across the square lightning fast. So fast that the other Brethren don’t understand why one of their own is crumpling to the ground, blood cascading down his robes.
Isavelle pulls a short sword out from beneath her cloak and straightens up, her cloak falling back to reveal that it’s actually Fiala. The wingrunner wears an expression of bloodthirsty delight as she thrusts the blade up beneath a Brethren’s ribs and into his heart.
Wyvern after wyvern dives at the Brethren, either ripping the men with their talons or allowing their riders to sever heads and limbs with their halberds.
Beside me, the real Isavelle huddles into my side, wincing at the carnage but unable to drag her eyes away.
A few moments later, all six of the Brethren lie bleeding on the cobbles, thick rivulets streaming across the gently sloping square. Three wyverns land by the bodies, their talons gleaming red.
Captain Ashton and Leibel dismount and bow as we emerge from the trees and into the square. Dusan slides from his wyvern and grins at my mate.
“Did you see that, Lady Isavelle? That’s what wingrunners are all about. Speed, agility, and precise attacks. No roaring, trampling, or fire needed. Impressive, right?”
“You were an amazing sight.” Isavelle gazes at the bodies and body parts with a bleak expression. “I don’t understand why the High Priest is still trying to take me prisoner.”
I presume that the Brethren have discovered that she’s important to me, and so she either has to be captured or die.
It’s plain to see that the village is still deserted, and we saw no trace of anyone between here and where I landed with Scourge just over a mile away. “Does it seem to you as if anyone has been here since we were last in Amriste?”
Isavelle turns on the spot, examining every cottage, every laneway. Her expression is so downcast as she shakes her head that it makes my chest ache. “It doesn’t seem to me like anyone’s been here. Could my family and the other villagers have been taken behind the barrier to the south?”
I study her closely, thinking hard. “That is something to consider. They could also have fled into Grendu.” By all the gods, please let them be in Grendu and not captured by the Brethren.
Captain Ashton addresses me. “Leibel and I can explore the Silk Reed Plains for signs of the western townsfolk.”
Maledin and Grendu always had a strained relationship in my time. They didn’t trust our dragons, and we were less than comfortable with their necromancy and animal magic. The one thing we could agree on was trade, and that kept the peace, though I imagine that any incursion onto their lands from my wyverns would anger them.
“Fly along the border but don’t pass into Grendu territory,” I tell Ashton. “I will arrange for letters to be sent to nearby Grendu towns and their capital to ask the lords and the king whether refugees from Maledin have been sighted.”
Isavelle splays her hand against my chest and whispers, “Thank you.”
I cover her hand with my own as we watch Captain Ashton and Leibel take to the skies and fly west. We’ll know in a few hours if they spot anything, and in a few days if the people of Grendu have anything to tell us.
After they’ve disappeared over the houses, Isavelle turns to me and opens her mouth to speak, but she hesitates. A raven is perched on the edge of the well, gazing at her. “Mistress Hawthorne, I know that’s you.”
The raven flaps its wings and flies away, cawing.
As if she was there all along—and perhaps she was—Biddy Hawthorne shuffles out of the shadows between the cottages. The old woman looks from Isavelle to me, then to my hand clasped over my mate’s on my chest, and leers at us.
“Has the happy occasion taken place already,Ma’len? Surely it’s too soon for her first heat. You’ve only just met.”
“My first what?” Isavelle’s cheeks turn pink and she draws away from me.
“Don’t be shy around your Flame King just because an old woman is watching you, girl.”
“Grandmother,” I growl in warning. I don’t like the witch tormenting my mate, and I don’t like her calling Isavellegirleither.
