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Peck’s voice drips with derision. “My boy, shouldn’t you be looking after your own wife and child?”
I don’t have time to respond before he runs off. I’m trying to remember if Ellie told me where she planned to be today, when the wyvern comes crashing back into the atrium.
This time, Orion is nowhere to be found. The wyvern licks its lips, blood staining its silvery maw, and I can’t help but wonder if perhaps Orion’s in front of me after all.
That thought is a bit too morbid to ponder, especially when I’m about to do battle with an Other, so I push it from my mind.
The wyvern stalks toward me, its talons clicking against the cracked marble tile.
I don’t wait for it to attack. Instead, I use a technique Orion’s been teaching me to summon several vines at once. They burst from the earth beneath the already cracked tile, wrapping themselves around the wyvern’s scaly legs.
It cries out, its shriek rattling the half-open ceiling. It tries to stomp out the vines, but they continue coiling around its legs, and though the wyvern is panicking, its efforts are spread too thin.
I use the opportunity to run toward the beast, summoning a series of vines that serve as footholds that catapult me onto the wyvern’s tail.
I was hoping for its back, right above its neck, but whatever.
The hilt of my blade glistens in the sunlight pouring through the open roof as I wield it, jumping to my feet and racing across the beast’s scaly back.
It writhes against the vines, whose grip wanes as I split my concentration between maintaining them and remaining upright.
I make it all the way to the wyvern’s neck and raise my blade.
When the creature extends its wings.
It flaps them, sending a gust of air through the atrium so forcefully I stumble for balance.
Two more beats of its wings, and something snaps.
My vines.
The wyvern howls in delight.
Then launches into the air.
I have half a second to dig my fingers between the scales of its neck for purchase, but doing so requires both hands. I wince as I hear my sword clank against the ground, left behind as the wyvern and I soar into the heavens.
CHAPTER 70
ELLIE
Cecilia is screaming, and I can’t help but wonder if it will be the thing that will save us or end us.
No, if anything ends us, it’ll be the Other that just burst through the window and now lurks on the floor of the nursery.
Piles of shattered glass litter the floor around its scaly, silver paws. Long claws protrude from the fissures in its paws, matching the dripping fangs extending from its long, scaly snout. Wings flake out from the reptilian creature’s back, stretching themselves out, causing more glass to slide off the membranous skin and clatter to the floor.
The silver scales tip me off that this is an Other, though it’s shaped like the mythical wyvern.
It stalks toward us, a razor-sharp tongue licking its silvery snout.
I’m not sure what to do. Does one scream at an Other? Likely not. If that were the answer, my bellowing child would have already frightened it away.
“Help,” I call, in case the guards haven’t realized Cecilia’s screams aren’t the routine sort, which of course they haven’t, because Cecilia screams constantly. “Help. Someone, please!” I shout, tucking Cecilia closer to my chest.
My heart pounds, but the fear coursing through my veins transforms into something else, something more productive, because what I feel doesn’t taste of fear at all.
No. This is something different.
