"Xaden, there's more than one wyvern." There's a moment of silence, but I can feel Xaden's palpable shock, then rage.
"If you get separated from Glacies, call out, then fight until I get there."
"No chance of that happening. I'm not letting her off my back, wingleader," Glacies growls as I get my first good look at the airspace above the city, flooded with dragons, gryphons, and wyvern, just like in the creation fable.
"Soleil found a sealed entrance to what looks to be a mine," Xaden says. "I need—" Glacies turns abruptly, veering toward the mountains. "—you to see if you can put down some cover so Garrick and Bodhi can get the townspeople evacuated," he finishes. "Liam is on his way."
"On it." My pulse leaps.
"Glacies, I can't aim."
"You will," he says like it's a foregone conclusion.
"Orders are being dispersed amid the gryphons."
"Dragons can speak to gryphons?" My eyebrows shoot up.
"Naturally. How do you think we communicated before humans got involved?"
I hunker down across his neck as we dart above the city, passing over a clinic, what looks to be a school, and rows and rows of an open-air market that's currently on fire. There's no sign of the purple-robed venin we first saw as we sail over the shriveled body of a gryphon and its rider near the center of town. My stomach turns, especially when I see a wyvern circling back toward them—and Sgaeyl is on an intercept course.
" She can hold her own," Glacies reminds me. "And so can he. We have orders. Focus."
Focus. Right.
We pass families scurrying from their ruined homes, then over the city walls, heading toward the opening in the side of the mountain where Soleil's Brown Clubtail swings its tail into the wood planks covering the abandoned tunnel. There are a few outbuildings lining the road but not much else.
Glacies pulls hard to the left as we approach, the strap digging into my legs as my weight shifts in the saddle with the abrupt motion. Then he flares his wings to hover in front of Soleil, facing Resson and the screaming crowd that runs the hundred yards between the city walls and us, led by a pair of gryphons and their fliers who continuously look behind them, scanning the skies.
But what they don't see is the venin striding our way from north of the gate, watching the crowd's movement with a narrowed red gaze. The veins on both sides of her eyes are more pronounced than the earlier rider's, and her long blue robe reminds me of the staff bearer who survived the clock-tower blast.
