The Heart of a Nightingale

Chapter 3.1

My blood went twice as cold as I looked at it. The hideous beast laid there looking at me with its golden eyes.
Since Ellesmere was covered with fjords and mountains it hadn't been a surprise that this wasn't my first encounter with one of the hideous beasts.

  It had been years since I had seen one. The wyverns had been told to be common on these lands but I had been avoiding them for two years and hadn't even wanted to see one. Its hazardous eyes glared at me making me take a step back.

  Its dragon scales turned into grey as I backed off ending up on the ground crawling backwards one small movement at a time. The wyvern was pretty huge in size and its eyes, jeez, they were huge as if they were trying to carve into my soul.

I closed my eyes as I saw a flash of light in the creature's eyes. The light seemed oddly familiar.

My mother.

I froze on the spot as if I had seen a sign of a ghost. The flash of light had made me lay there trembling from the fear.

I had been scarred from my damned history.

And I would never forget that light that I had seen when the witch had pointed her hand at my mother.

The blinding light dimmed at the moment I opened my eyes.

I froze.

It had turned into a human.

  The ambassador.
He dusted off the snow that had come from the ground where he had rested on, in his wyvern form. His hair had frost on top of it which made no sense.

  "I wanted to talk to you," the ambassador said as I stood up and took a couple of steps back. He had been a wyvern a few seconds ago and now he wanted me to talk with him? I put my hands into fists and stiffened my body. The ambassador softened his look and glanced around us to make sure nobody saw his shift.

"What do you want?" I asked quietly while trying to keep my voice from trembling. He looked straight into my eyes as he tried to approach me although every time he did I took a step back.
"I need you to help me-"
"N-no, never," I said closing my eyes to find my back stuck on a building's wall. I kept shaking my head from the shock until he grabbed me by my shoulders with an incredible strength that went through me in a flash.

"You have to listen to me-"
"Not in a million years," I hissed as he took a step back. I opened my eyes to find myself looking into his wyvern eyes. They were haunting gold from the fury.

Anger.
If he really was a shapeshifter and could indeed turn into other creatures then the full recovery could take hours, days or even months.

"You have no idea how much in trouble we are if someone sees your encounter with me," he said and took a firm grip on my shoulder. I winced as his hand felt hard against my skin.

"I know very well that the king isn't a douchebag," a filthy lie. "And I know that you didn't just suddenly appear on a field of snow where there had been a wyvern a few seconds ago," I flared with anger as he gasped out with fury and looked around us just in case if there was someone lurking in the shadows of the buildings. I knew that he was scared of something.
He took his hand off my arm and stiffened. I studied his body with filth as he glanced at my indigo blue eyes.

"Look," he looked at me. "I want you to do something for me."

  "And what is that?" I spat out the question. "There is nothing that I could do to you, maybe try asking the king like you always do."

   "Unfortunately this involves the king so shut your mouth and listen," he said and gave me a look that was filled with fury. He was a filthy shapeshifter who hadn't learned his lesson.