Page 57 of The Queens and the Kings (The Isles #2)

brITT

Needle pricks against her cheek roused Britt. Groggy, aching all over, she batted her eyes open to find bright, white brumes floating in delicate whorls around her. Clouds? But . . . how?

Several moments passed before she registered that moisture collected on her hair, her clothes, everywhere. A steady bobbing motion—up and down, up and down—heightened by wheezing breaths punctuated otherwise still air.

She recalled the ship, the wyvern, the escape.

The wyvern.

Britt sucked in a cool breath. The rhythmic motion was the wyvern in flight, cutting through clouds and breaking out the other side. Denerfen popped into her view. He pressed his forehead so close to her eye that he peered right into her iris. His forehead butted up against her lashes.

“Den?”

He squawked, flapping backward. She sat up gingerly, an aching mess from head to toe. A glimpse of cloud tops awaited far, far below. Had the storm retreated? Or had they elevated?

Comprehending her physical position in the world was one thing: she sat on the back of the wyvern, was not drowning on a storm-tossed sea, and headed somewhere unknown. Understanding that position was something else.

Denerfen trawled happily across her shoulders and through her hair, trilling his throaty pleasure at her awakening.

Pedr would be livid, but that was another problem entirely. Britt pressed a palm onto a space on the wyvern’s back in front of her. The rough skin undulated with each wing flap, which came more frequently during wind gusts, and less often during the smooth glides in between.

“Thank you,” she said.

The wyvern’s head, intent on the course, twitched slightly to the right. She took it as an acknowledgement, however frail.

“You spoke to me, right? I didn’t imagine that?”

No commanding voice replied.

Chilled from the upper atmosphere, she lay on her side, tucked her knees into her chest, and wrapped her arms around them.

Miserable cold. Deeply uncomfortable ride.

Inventory of her options was abysmal: she had none.

Clinging to the back of this wyvern and allowing it to carry her was the only plan.

Unless she wanted to hurtle off the wyvern and plummet to her death, which she didn’t.

She had no arcane ability, like Pedr. Admittedly, with the wyvern flying steady and even, it wasn’t quite as difficult.

Terrifying, though. The only thing that separated her from certain death were membranous wings.

Was the creature she rode on a Wyvern King, or the Wyvern King? Maybe some of them had the title, and others didn’t. Did they have subjugates? Beneath sinew and wing and claw, was a human in there?

Denerfen burrowed between her chest and her knees, curling into a ball on her damp dress. With each wing flap, her body tilted from side to side. The graceful motion wasn’t unpleasant, but she had to hold her stomach tight to counter the rocking.

They lowered into a cloud bank, where moisture saturated her again. The chilly wind, combined with the wet cloud, made her shiver. Her teeth clacked. Denerfen’s irritated mewls echoed in her ears. He hated the cold as much, if not more, than her.

She wanted to shout, “Why do you have to bloody fly through the clouds?” but lacked the energy.

What might have been hours—or minutes—later, the wyvern lowered into open space. Rain thickened the air, hitting with painful drops along her shoulders. Shivering miserably, she peered beyond the firm, powerful wings and whispered, “ Land-el .”

Land loomed.

The distant, black stripe filled the edge of the horizon like a ribbon. She didn’t recognize it. At this distance, it still looked nothing like the mainland. At least, not the areas she recognized. To their stern, a faint blush of pink heralded the onset of day.

They’d been flying west all night.

West.

Toward the Siren Queens.

No wonder the wyvern flew so high! The storm clouds here were relentlessly thick and miserable and terrible, casting a gray, withering deluge.

As they flew, a physical shock ripped through the wyvern.

He screamed. Jostling to the side, the wyvern corrected to the left, then right.

He flapped harder, bellowing as if attacked.

Britt clutched his spiny neck and prayed he didn’t buck her off.

After twenty seconds of teeth-jarring fighting, he calmed.

Through the pounding chaos, an ethereal, vague song drifted on the air.

Oh, what a song.

Melodic, dramatic, torn from the depths of soul.

Both majestic and horrifying at the same time.

The music reached into Britt’s soul and gripped her, taking control.

She couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Her mind turned to mud.

Denerfen cried out, as if in pain, and plunged under her arm to hide his ears.

The song wound through the sky, weakened by the thud of wing and roaring wind.

The wyvern banked to the right as soon as the song began.

Drunk with the sound, Britt swayed on the wyvern’s back.

When Denerfen shrieked repeatedly, the Wyvern King’s head snapped around. His sharp eyes narrowed on Britt’s.

“Is that,” she whispered, “a Siren Queen?”

Darkness rushed up to her at once.

Britt jerked awake, sucking in a breath so quickly she coughed. In between passing out and waking up, the world had dramatically changed. The previously choppy flight was easy and smooth. An utterly still sky, flung fluffy clouds from side to side.

Quiet.

Stillness.

“So this,” she murmured, “is what it’s like to truly fly.”

The previous experience was torture in comparison. Denerfen nibbled on her ear, tugging. He made a sound in his throat that confused her. A quick survey confirmed that he appeared . . . weak. Exhausted. His slow, labored blinks roused concern.

“Den?” she whispered.

He nipped at the pad of her thumb, which he always did when hungry.

Britt straightened.

Where were they?

The sun stood directly overhead, so either hours had passed, or an entire day. Her muscles ached, her throat thickened from thirst. She scrubbed a hand over her eyes, remembering a storm. A song.

The Siren Queen’s song.

She caught her gasp as the weary wyvern lowered out of high clouds with half-hearted wing beats. Familiar land waited. The steep-pitched cliffs of Klipporno. The expansive wharf and ships dotting the ocean.

Had they traveled all the way from the Westlands without her realizing it? The Siren Queen’s song had sent her into an unconscious oblivion. Daunting. She snorted. They thought the wyverns couldn’t fly for very long. This Wyvern King more than quadrupled expectations.

He angled them lower, passing over land toward the not-so-distant confines of the wyvern pen. Her heart rose into her throat, along with her stomach, as their altitude dropped.

“Take it easy!” she cried.

Open air morphed to plush fields and rocky hills. They soared over the alpine peaks of the giant wyvern pen and into utter stillness without a wing flap to betray their presence. No Keepers were visible as the wyvern descended.

Denerfen stuck his head out of her hair, nostrils opening and closing. Eagerness thrummed through him like an energy current. She reached up to touch him, finding calmness in his presence.

“Returning to their arena is either a good thing or a very bad thing,” she murmured.

Denerfen agreed with a tiny burst of sound from the back of his mouth.

The wyvern stopped flying to hover near the outer pen edge.

Dirt skittered. Like shifting shadows, wyverns emerged from the deep, dark dens.

Their spying eyes sent a shiver all the way down her spine.

Ten, twelve, fifteen, nineteen wyverns emerged in a circle.

Every eye trained on her.

She swallowed her rising fear.

“Bad thing, Den,” she said, breathless. “This is definitely a bad thing.”

Of all the things Britt might have expected from the wyvern, returning to the pen was not it. The rampant fear of wyverns that ran through the mainland culture remained high in her mind as she stared at nineteen beasts, at an utter loss.

What now?

The wyvern to which she clung stood upright, trembling with exhaustion.

His wings lowered. Clutching Denerfen, Britt slid down his back, tumbling head over feet, until she thudded onto the dirt, landing on her side.

The hard impact sent her teeth and shoulders jarring.

Pain rippled through her jaw and into her head.

“Thanks,” she muttered.

The wyverns didn’t make any noise. Not one of them. No protests, no yowls, no strange grunts or groans. The strange inactivity was as worrisome as the sheer number of them.

Did they . . . talk? Like this one spoke to her? They certainly didn’t move. Hardly breathed.

She stumbled to her feet, groaning from her protesting muscles.

The lack of outright violence was one small mercy.

She brushed dust off her sleeves, spinning in a circle until she faced the wyvern she rode.

The intensity of his eyes roused a thrill of intuition.

He wouldn’t be staring at her with such blatant expectation if he didn’t want something.

The way he studied her made her straighten.

He was different.

A vague memory of the Westlands resurrected from the sleepy reaches of her mind.

While they flew, he physically reacted to something in the air.

As if . . . awakened. The impression of him being utterly changed overcame her as they stared at each other.

More than basic intelligence brightened his eyes.

Then again, she met him in a closed ship, amidst backstabbing sailors, fire, and abject pain. Maybe this was the wyverns. His right leg lifted. Using his snout, he motioned to the ring of blood around his leg, where the metallic contraption locked him into the ship.

“Does it hurt?” she asked.