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)
Good thing I moved.
Before it can go for her throat, I thrust my sword into its eye and shove with all my strength. The blade plunges through the softer flesh with a sickening squish. Its high-pitched scream rings in my head like a bell, and I debate my life choices when it wrenches its head back, nearly taking me with it. My fist catches on the steel ball at the top of the sword’s hilt, and I lock my grip as the wyvern falls away.
Glane dives after the plummeting heap of scales and wings, and I fall backward, my ass hitting every ridge of her neck before colliding with her pommel scales.
“Are you kidding me?” I heave myself into the seat, then lock into a position my muscles are more than familiar with, sword still in hand. Red flashes by on the right. Cath.
“Did you fall off? No. I did not bond a whiner.” She chases the wyvern down through the rain, then latches on to its neck and rips its throat out.
I throw my weight left and narrowly miss being sprayed by blood.
“Eighteen!” she declares, flaring her wings to pull out of the dive and point us back to the northern wall.
“Seventeen if we’re going by your measurement, since I wounded it first.” Another lump of gray falls in a blur ahead of us, and I look up to see Cath and Cuir descending toward us. There’s a hole in Cuir’s right wing, and the laceration on his chest is going to leave a scar, but I can’t tell at this angle if Bodhi is wounded.
Glane’s head swivels as a bluefire wyvern circumvents the city to the south, sending a row of trees up in flames. “That one.”
“Not our airspace.” Kaori and the other officers hold the eastern, southern, and western territory, which is swiftly becoming the epicenter of the battle due to the winds, but they’re down their most powerful rider—Garrick. And there’s no sign of Chradh in sight.
“For someone so decisive, you have yet to act on that—” Glane starts to lecture.
“Stop right there and I’ll agree your kill count is eighteen.” My ribs tighten as we descend toward the city. The venin are done fucking around—they’ve come themselves. Blue flame swirls down the spiral tower, courtesy of two wyvern climbing its sides, and the fire whips outward as a dark wielder in gaudy scarlet robes sweeps her staff in a circle from the top of the landmark. Gryphons launch with their fliers toward the threat.
A sinking feeling pools in my stomach. There are too many of them, and we’re already exhausted. Beyond the three felled dragons, four more lie wounded along the walls to the west beside innumerable gryphons. Their bleeding riders do their best to tend to them, and I look away from what’s likely a fatal wound on a severed tail on a large brown.
“Orders?” I’ve always known I’ll die in combat. I just don’t want it to be today.
“The tower!” Glane shouts.
Quinn.
My head snaps toward the left, and my heart somersaults. One dark wielder in purple robes strides down the eastern city walls like he owns them, and another in crimson fighting leathers approaches along the northern. Both are headed for the turret where the only person I truly love on this battlefield is working, and she probably doesn’t even know they’re coming. “Relay to Cruth!”
“Already done.” Glane’s wings beat as quickly as my heart as we move toward the walls. There’s nothing we can do from the air. I’m going to have to dismount.
Glane growls.
“You know it’s true, and I’m not leaving her to die.” I sheathe my sword and move to her shoulder despite the roaring wind shoving at my back. Orders can come later; I have to go now.
Infantry soldiers fight to intercept the dark wielders and are flung from the walls like inconsequential dolls. The guards plummet fifty feet to their deaths, clearing the path for the venin.
Terror saturates my lungs, and my heart pounds.
“You are to defend the tower from the walls with the wingleader,” Glane relays with a disagreeing snarl, banking left for a parallel approach.
“Great. Get me on the wall, now.” The dark wielders are less than thirty feet from the door of the turret, and the two remaining guards in the cross-bolt launch platform above look ready to flee.
Damn it. They were supposed to be safe. No one was supposed to know, but the purposeful strides of those dark wielders prove they know what’s happening in that tower.
“Your death would annoy me.” Glane slows just enough so I’ll survive and extends her foreleg as she flies along the northern wall.
“Same.” I race down the scales of her unwounded leg. There’s no time for fear, no room for mistakes, not when Quinn is being hunted. Reaching Glane’s talons, I leap into the rain without hesitation.