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Cold, unfeeling Valerie couldn’t handle such a thing.

Please...Valerie’s lungs were starting to squeeze every time she took a shaking breath. She could feel the crack in her mask, could feel her façade breaking.Please! I do not want you to die.

Staring down at the sweet girl’s face, she knew the answer. She bit at her bottom lip tightly. It was dangerous. It also may not work. It would put them directly into the clutches of something terrifying.I have no other choice.

I hope I do not regret this.With a deep, haunting breath, holding Kaeylyn across her knees and against her chest, Valerie raised one of her hands to the night sky.

She sent forth a beam of white light.

I will bargain my life for hers.

Geryon flew across the skies, searching relentlessly, when a great beam of light shot towards the stars. It was far in the distance, shining out from the ground through the trees.

He narrowed his eyes, unsure of what it was. That did little to stop him from heading in that direction.

Where is that sea snake?The slippery woman he hadn’t managed to find.She is clever. She will have found other ways than magic to hide their tracks.

Much could be done to throw off and obscure the senses of a Dragon.

A person rubbing themselves with strong scents could dilute their own, or jumping into water would wash it away temporarily. The fact he’d chased down their horse and found no rider meant she knew he’d follow it. Only another tracker would know these things, would be able to evade him with this aptitude of skill.

Her kind usually does not have this type of knowledge.Witches often just relied on their magic without learning anything beyond it.

She’d known human etiquette, so much so that she convinced him completely. Geryon didn’t see through her disguise whatsoever. She hadn’t been a fumbling, uneducated, unknowledgeable Witch, someone easy to catch playing pretend.

Instead, she’d known which fork to use when eating, how to hold herself, how to speak with those of noble blood. Now to discover she also had knowledge of tracking? The fact that she was able to evade him meant she knew of his kind, their strengths and weaknesses.

She used a spell that hid herself from me.She’d masked herself completely in the palace and must understand Dragons to do so.

It was only when Geryon came close to that beam of light did he know he’d come upon the Witches.Finally, I found them.He could smell them, even from the air, but he also smelt blood, a deep, air saturating amount of it.

He paused in his descent.This appears too obvious. She knows I am hunting them. She would not be so careless with her witchcraft.

Geryon could see this for what it was: a trap.

Trap or not, they were stationary and unmoving.She is one Witch.The child wasn’t much of a threat.I have killed many of her kind.One woman wasn’t frightening.

Geryon thought about the spell that would morph his size smaller. He changed to the same size Rurik had been inside the palace when he heard him climbing the walls, the same size as a common house cat.

Flying between branches, he attached himself to a tree trunk so he could observe them carefully from above.

The Witch was kneeling, her body crossed over the torso of the child, who was lying on her back. Her arms were snug against the child’s side, folded while her head rested against them.

She is bowing like a frog.That was strange.

Neither were moving, but he could smell her magic, could scent the essence of it, the power of it. He allowed his own to fill his skull so he could see the tendrils of her essence, what she was doing.

She created a shield.One to protect them.

Now that he could see them, he noticed she was covered in blood. The smell of human men was strong in the air, and it was the same blood coming from a direction not far from them. It was a confusing mix.

Either they were attacked, or she attacked them.She managed to kill multiple people?One woman had killed what he could smell was at least four or five men?

“I know you are there,” she shouted. Her hands were clenched, and he frowned at the tremor in her voice, one he’d never heard from her before.

He wasn’t surprised she knew he was there; she would have heard his large wings flapping when he first approached. He, however, was too small to reply, not with the distance between them.

“Please. I do not intend to attack you.”