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Arc nestled the egg inside Vahly’s satchel, which sat beside her bow and sword belt. She held her breath as he adjusted it, but he was careful, keeping the buckle on the flap from clipping the delicate exterior.

The egg held her attention in full as a buzz ran through Vahly’s chest. She had found a friend, solid and trustworthy. But how did she know this? None of it made any sense. This unborn creature was her confidante?

Nix’s mouth lifted, and she ran a gentle, taloned hand over the shell, looking to Vahly as she approached. “What do you think is hiding in there?” Nix asked.

Vahly shrugged, wishing she had more answers than questions. “I don’t know.”

Arc sat and crossed his legs, appearing far too calm. They needed to rush outside with the egg and do some kind of celebratory dance or something to show the world how excited she was about this find.

“I know what it is,” Arc said quietly, frowning.

A weight settled on Vahly. He didn’t seem pleased. “Don’t hold back on your elvish wisdom now.” Vahly knelt beside him.

“It’s a gryphon egg,” he said.

Disbelief slid through the cave. There hadn’t been a gryphon spotted as long as Vahly had been alive. And from the scrolls she’d read looking for clues to her power ritual, they’d been extinct for at least a century.

Nix fell back, mouth open. “This is even more shocking than the idea that the elves continued to flourish for so long without the rest of us knowing a thing about it.”

“Are you sure?” Vahly asked Arc, touching the egg and feeling the echoing scratch against the underside of the surface.

Arc nodded. “Those plum-hued spots only show up on a gryphon egg. I too had thought they’d passed from this world.”

Vahly stood, then sat again, unable to be still. She gripped Arc’s bare forearm, feeling the warmth and strength of his elven flesh and bone. “I can feel the creature inside.” She touched her heart, where the tugging sensation was strongest. “When do you think it will hatch?”

Arc’s head dropped. He looked up at Vahly through a thick lock of his raven hair. “It will not hatch.”

Vahly’s heart seized, and she jumped to her feet, bumping her head on the cave’s sharp ceiling. Rubbing the pain away, she peppered Arc with questions. “But why? How do you know? Did elves study gryphons? You can’t possibly know for certain.”

Nix took a long drink from her water skin, then handed it to Vahly. “Drink. If you die of thirst, none of this will matter.”

Vahly did as Nix suggested, taking a quick sip. Her body wanted more, but her mind didn’t have room for worrying about that.

Arc stood, arms crossed and eyes sad. “They died off due to a general failure to hatch. We have records of it in our scrolls. The gryphons once thrived in the Red Meadow and the mountains here and to the north. But after the first of the major wars between elves, humans, and dragons, the new eggs never managed to hatch. No one knows exactly why, but the accepted reason is the gryphons didn’t have enough prey.

The smaller animals were driven out of the area by dragonfire spreading through the underbrush, and the hungry gryphon adults bore offspring that died in the shell. ”

Vahly blinked, wishing Arc were more often wrong in his assumptions. Her limbs filled with sand, and the ground suddenly looked inviting for a long sleep and a good cry.

Nix eyed Arc like she might consider him for her next meal. “Elves. You’re always blaming it on the dragons. Your kynd started that first war, Arcturus, if I remember the tales correctly.”

Arc’s nostrils flared. “Only because you had infringed on our hunting grounds.”

Vahly held up her hands. “Peace, you two. I thought you’d grown fond of one another. Where did the fondness run off to, hm?”

“He’s fine,” Nix muttered. “Lucky he’s so pretty.”

Arc looked down, amusement showing on his full lips.

Vahly tucked the egg farther into her satchel and lowered the flap over the shell. Heavy and sluggish, she pulled her bow over her back, then buckled her sword belt around her waist.

Arc and Nix drank more from their water skins as they argued.

Vahly’s thoughts clung to the egg. Why was she meant to find a gryphon egg?

Especially if it wouldn’t hatch? Was her magic faulty?

Perhaps the earth’s drumming and that tug near her heart were only aftereffects of the fever she’d suffered.

This couldn’t be the Source’s plan. An egg? What was the point?

Daylight drifted through the break in the rocks, and Vahly started toward it while Arc and Nix talked quietly behind her.

Before leaving the cave, Vahly set a hand against her satchel.

Beneath the fabric, the egg’s shape curved against her palm.

“What is the deal with you, egg?” she whispered.

“I hate to drag your unborn tail into this mess of a life I’ve made here.

Wouldn’t you rather stay in this cave? You might have a better chance of hatching in this safe place. ”

Perhaps it was her imagination, but Vahly felt a hard thump against her palm. “The creature inside just bumped me again. It’s alive. I know it. I think it’ll hatch. He is strong.”

Arc’s voice rose. “He?”

The knowledge swelled over Vahly’s mind, sure as the rising sun. “The gryphon is male. I don’t know how I know that. But I do.” She patted the egg and walked into the sun.

“Maybe this is tied to your earth magic too,” Nix said.

They walked in silence, all of them puzzling furiously.