A Shield of Faith (BOOK 4)

Chapter 14

ADARA

Golden particles scattered over their shoulders when they left the safety of Irimount's cradle behind and into the frozen wastelands the Avaerilians called their home. Nausea fluttered through the world, the towering pillars long disappeared into the jaws of thick snow. "Gods." With no other option but to grip Yuven around the middle, her lungs squeezed tighter as she made the assumption that Yuven was flying higher and higher. "How are we going to even find it, Yuven? Did you have any other plan?"

"I always have a plan, who do you take me for, Fenrer?" Yuven scoffed, and spread out his arms without care of the reins. Strings of ice gathered around them and swirled into a sparkling finish, a pulsating barrier, their one last respite against the frostlands, though her lungs continued to gasp at the thinning pressure in the air. "One problem, next." He gathered pulsing wisps into his other hand, and Adara grunted when he bumped his open hand straight into her face with no hint of being gentle.

"Ow!" Adara held her nose. "What was that for?"

"You're not an Avaerilian, so unless you want to choke the higher I go — which, I don't want to listen to the whole time, I simply weaved an air barrier and shoved it down your lungs. You're welcome." Yuven twisted back around and gathered up the reins once more. His feathers stretched out further, joining in the dance of ice. "As for finding the wyvern, you're lucky I plan ahead." He rolled his neck, then sent out a shimmering, distorted glyph forward, and Tix'snuv continued to fly straight for it without falter and fear. In another instant, bile flew straight into throat when Tix'snuv dived through it with a screech. In the next, the environment never changed, and Adara leaned around Yuven.

"Where is it?"

Yuven looked around. "It has to be somewhere..."

"I don't see anything."

"I don't know if you've noticed, Sazaka, but sight is not on our side." Yuven clicked his tongue and urged Tix'snuv forward. "We'll find it, and then we'll finish what Fenrer started." He hooked his legs through the hooks along the saddle, then remarked, "First things first, I want you to tell me everything. Everything that happened to you in Volaris."

"What? Here? Now?" Adara asked, aghast.

"I will not ask twice."

Adara frowned at his back, then let out the burden of knowledge. "Blackwall wanted me to open the world sphere of Naveera," she admitted. "It's like I told you before we came here - the Ancients weren't deities, they were the Anima." Its chokehold reminded her of the history in her magick. "It wasn't them that tore open the hole into the Echo Obscura — they're the reason the Derelicts haven't completely swallowed the world. I saw three of them, Ojain, Ivara, Evyriaz."

"And Evyriaz is the wyvern we're currently being stalked by," Yuven mumbled.

"Sorry?"

Yuven's feathers twitched without looking back at her. "Ignore my musings, continue. Ojain, Ivara, Evyriaz, three out of the four names I have seen Fenrer pray to time and time again, whose scripture he builds upon his faith. He has never wavered in his belief, and now you're telling me his faith is built on lies." His fangs slipped over his pale lips. "Irony, I suppose."

"He was a man."

Yuven's feathers stilled.

Adara chewed on her cheek. "He was a man that could turn into a wyvern," she whispered. "As a wyvern, he was referred to as Evyriaz." His entire body stiffened as he gave her a beady side-eye, his pupils near hidden deep within the violet fields when she finished, "His name as a man, it was Euron Traye."