Page 14 of Until the End of Ever (To the Cruel Gods #2)

SILVER

“ W e’re gonna die,” I announced, in case that wasn’t obvious to everyone here.

“Yep,” Barron agreed.

“Ninety percent chance,” Francois estimated.

“Obviously,” Isla pipped in.

Irwin, for his part, started to cry.

All six of us were hidden behind a boulder, but it was only a matter of time before one of the demons flying ahead in circles, searching, scanning the area with their keen eyes before burning it all to a crisp, spotted us again. Especially with the bloody sobbing.

I wasn’t one to kick someone while they were done, but if he got us all killed, he deserved it. “I swear to all the gods, if you give away our position, I am chucking you up in the air so they can snack on you while we run,” I hissed.

“Cheer up. It’s not that bad,” said Gideon, with a damned chuckle. “We’re all alive!”

Not that bad.

Not that bad!

“My hair’s burned to a crisp!” I reminded him. “And so’s your shirt.”

He looked down, as though surprised to find himself shirtless. “Oh. No, I removed it. It started to get hot out there.”

I kicked him. Maybe his “ ouch !” would end up catching the attention of the predators, but it made me feel better anyway.

“They’re flying away,” Alden Stillwater whispered, peering from behind our poor concealment. “Still circling, though. I think we’re not who they’re looking for. Whatever they’re hunting, it’s their priority. I think they just wanted us out of the way.”

Great. My hair had been sacrificed as a mere warning.

Barron was the first to speak. “I say, let them have their prey.”

“Hear, hear,” I said, glad some of my fellow trainees packed some sense today.

Francois nodded. “Seconded.”

“Can we go home?” Irwin bawled.

I focused all of my attention of Gideon, hoping that my eyes conveyed what I had too much good manners to say out loud: “ Please , fire him after this.”

Gideon shrugged. Coward.

“What if the prey is like, a unicorn?” Alden countered. “Or a chimera, a sphynx…”

I realized all these creatures were sacred to one god or another, and after the trip to Delphi, I took that fact a lot more seriously than I had last week, but… “Better them than the rest of my hair?”

I couldn’t understand why they sent only two protectors with a bunch of trainees to hunt dragons .

Well, technically, all the other protectors had been on assignments when the emergency alarm had blasted, but really, what the hell were the six of us supposed to do?

Yes, Gideon was a badass, and Alden, with his fae blood, silent, fast, and deadly, but there were a dozen bloody dragons.

Francois was a transfer from the Paris Huntsmen. Apparently, he didn’t do well with night assignments, so he decided to try his luck in Highvale instead. He wasn’t too bad; out of the four trainees, he was the only one who could last more than twelve seconds on the training mat against me.

Barron aimed to become a runner, and that was all there was to say about him. He’d spend his life solving petty crimes and charging after kids who thought fire spells were a good practical joke.

When Isla initially joined the Guard, she intended to become an inquisitor, but I talked her out of it. She had a brain, the physical aptitude, and unlike me, a fair amount of magic. She was going to take the trials to become a protector, like me. Hopefully, we’d be paired together.

Sure, I’d prefer to have Kleos watching my back, but she would stab herself in the heart before becoming a protector.

I knew my best friend would never have joined the Guard in the first place if it weren’t for me.

She would likely have let her mother turn her into a mini Zenya, joining a temple just so she could read all day.

Thankfully, the Guard had the Archives. Yes, I was selfish for making her apply to the same institution as me, but frankly, someone had to save her from herself—and her mother.

And Irwin… was Irwin. It was a miracle he hadn’t peed his pants already.

His father was a protector, so Irwin had applied to the Guard.

The fact that he’d been accepted was a proof of rampant nepotism.

He’d do just fine in the Archives with Kleos.

If he survived until then. Sending him on a dragon hunt was insane.

Unless someone up there wanted him dead.

“Silver, one of them got you while you pushed Irwin out of the way—I looked back. The beast’s fire blast hit you full-on. And the only thing that got singed was a bit of your hair.”

“A bit!” I protested, grasping a fistful of my formerly hip-length hair. Formerly meaning this morning. Most of it was gone.

“Shh—” Isla snapped.

Right. Dragons.

“My point,” Alden continued, “is that you’re fine . I say we keep following at a safe distance. We need to know what they’re hunting, where they’re going—and if their prey is our responsibility, we need to get it to safety.”

I grumbled under my breath, wishing he hadn’t made such a good point.

Coming back emptyhanded and with no information was going to leave an awful mark on our records.

It might not matter for people like Irwin or Barron, but for me, it might make the difference between a protector assignment and being sent to the inquisitor squad.

I was too good to end up a runner, but the protectors only took the top percentile straight out of training.

Typically, most people had to score a few years as inquisitors before getting bumped up to protector.

I sighed. “Fine. But send Irwin back to the transport. He should go home.”

“And me,” Barron was quick to add. “I’ll…err…make sure Irwin doesn’t get lost on the way.”

Sadly, Irwin absolutely was the kind of guy who would.

“Fine. You two, go, and tell them we need backup. No trainees,” Alden added quickly. “Unless Valesco’s back.”

I grimaced at the thought of Kleos being here. I mean, she’d help. She might prove more useful than Barron, Gideon, or even me. But boy, she would literally whine for days about it.

The thing with Kleos was, she was fully capable of kicking serious ass. She simply preferred not to. I smiled, thinking about my friend.

“Never mind Kleos. I’d want Lucian,” I grumbled.

“Lucian?” Isla repeated. “As in Lucian Regis ?”

So, maybe I bitched about him a time or ten before getting to know him. I shrugged. “He’s competent. Plus, he brings snacks.”

“Oh, man,” Gideon grumbled. “Look what you’ve done. I’m thinking about his tiny little sandwiches right now. You think he’d bring some if I pushed his emergency button?”

I stared. Isla stated. Everyone stared. If looks could kill, Gideon would have been burned to a crisp faster than my hair.

It was Alden who ended up breaking the heavy silence full of disbelief and fury. “You have an emergency button?”

“So, what about it?” He shrugged. “We’re not in an emergency.”

“We are surrounded by dragons!” Irwin whisper-shrieked hysterically.

For the first time in for-literal-ever, everyone agreed with Irwin.

“They’re all the way over there.” He waved towards the flock of circling beasts. “The only casualty is Silver’s hair. We’re just fine.”

That, naturally, was when talons landed right on top of the boulder providing us with cover. A snout the size of my entire body lowered itself to us, thick smoke expelling out of it with each breath.

All right, all right. Don’t panic.

Alden had a point. The dragons only attacked when we were too close to the flock.

They’d otherwise left us alone. Plus, regardless of the fact that they were currently the size of a plane, they were just people, shifted into beasts.

We could reason with them. Ask them what they were doing, and whether they could do it in another bloody world.

That was our job. The job of protectors.

Safeguard people from threats they couldn’t handle.

“Yaaaaar!”

With a scream, Irwin stabbed the dragon’s nostrils.

We were all going to die. But first? I was going to murder my colleague.

I pushed Isla out of the way—she was my partner today, and as Alden had mentioned, I’d shown some immunity to dragonfire. I didn’t know if that was a me thing, or due to the emerald dangling around my throat, freshly refilled with Kleos’s energy. Either way, better my hair than, well, all of Isla.

I rarely managed to check my strength in the thick of it, so I pushed Isla a little too hard, judging by the sound of her scream, and if I wasn’t mistaken, the crack of bones breaking, but at least, she was out of the way when hell descended.

Fire wasn’t the right word to explain what came out of the creature’s orifice. It was too thick, too liquid and penetrating, closer to magma. But while it hurt like a bitch when it came into contact with my skin, it didn’t actually damage it.

My clothes were another story. I was wearing proper gear, not just my trainee outfit, but the enchanted cloth was nothing to dragonfire, melting rapidly as I rolled out of the way. Half of my top was gone, from the wrist to the neck.

Gideon was a half-dragon, technically, but it was ludicrous to compare his mother to these beasts. She was the Disney plushie version of a dragon, while these living, breathing winged monstrosities were firmly out of a nightmare.

Even he grunted. “Fucking hell!”

Alden’s fae reflexes had him halfway up the boulder. “Maybe we can talk about this!” he squealed, narrowly avoiding sharp talons. “We just need to figure out what you’re hunting.”

None of your business! Go!

The words screaming inside my head weren’t in any language I knew, but I understood it perfectly all the same.

Pack business. Our hunt. Our kill! Leave or die!

Another swipe of the talons and Irwin—dragged out of the way by Francois and Barron—did pee his pants, stinking up the already heavy hair.

“Gideon!” I screamed. “It stinks of fucking pee. Emergency button, now!”

Mercifully, the idiot admitted that urination constituted an emergency situation.

He shoved his hand in his pants, and frowned. “Shit. It’s in my shirt!”

Of course, he discarded the one way to contact the single most powerful friend he had in the middle of a dragon hunt.

“Barron, check on Isla. I think I broke something. Francois, Irwin. The shirt!”

The dragon seemed to only breathe fire in intervals, so it swiped at us in between. As its long neck reared back, I launched myself upward, landing on the back of its neck. The spine was so thick and wide it proved easier to navigate than the mountains we’d been trekking in all morning.

Distracted from its initial desire to roast my group alive, the creature started to lift its talons, aiming for me on its neck.

I didn’t really want to hurt or anger the dragon more than he already was. I just needed it to not try to kill us. And with a bit of luck, take his hunt to the next universe.

I stabbed the scales, holding back, to ensure I wasn’t piercing the thick hide.

The dragon swerved and rolled, trying to throw me off it.

Come to think of it, this was just a little bit fun. He was too big, so for all his speed, I had plenty of time to see and anticipate its moves.

“I have ze shirt!” the Frenchie yelled. “What does ze emeuhrgency button look like?”

“It’s a rune,” Gideon replied. “ Laguz !”

“Do I look like I took Runic? I’m not a putain de nerd.”

“Me neither, so that would be the only bloody rune in one of the pockets!”

“You have a million pockets!”

Meanwhile, I was dancing with an increasingly pissed-off dragon.

If I died today, I was going to haunt all of their asses.