“Just wait.”
A sentry flew overhead, and we both froze. Pischiel seemed to melt into the forest around us, hidden by the shadows of the large oak next to him.
“Cool trick.”
We waited for what felt like years, but was likely only a few minutes.
“Pischiel—”
“Shh. Wait.”
He was right. A few minutes later, another sentry flew past, patrolling this area of the grounds.
“Come here,” Pischiel hissed, and I grabbed onto his arm.
Since I was invisible, his hands fumbled, but he managed to lift me, staying low as he flew us just above the ground. Thanks to the way I’d grilled Vas as we flew, I knew how difficult it was to fly that low, especially while holding another person. By the time we landed a minute or so later, Pischiel was panting.
“I’m not that heavy,” I muttered darkly around the ring in my mouth, and he choked out a laugh. We both ducked into the shadows of the building’s entrance as another sentry flew past. Then Pischiel cracked open the door.
“No ward?”
He shook his head. “They need to be fed up to twelve times a day.”
I stepped inside, my eyes adjusting to the dim light. And that’s when I heard it.
Far, far below us. Screams, roars, and the sound of chains clanking on metal.
I was glad Pischiel couldn’t see the way I’d begun to tremble. Then he held out his hand and my clammy palm met his.
The ghost of a smile crossed his face. “Frightened, princess?”
“Shut up and show me how to get down there.”
The building was completely empty. Nothing but dust and muddy footprints on the floor, which proved that it wasn’t an empty warehouse after all. Pischiel led me across the empty expanse and to a flimsy door.
The staircase was even more narrow than the one leading to the dungeon. If it was claustrophobic for me, it had to be hell for Pischiel, as his wings scraped the sides of the stone walls.
We traveled down, down, down, until I lost track of how long we’d been walking, and all I could focus on was putting one foot in front of the other and not falling into Pischiel as I navigated the narrow steps.
Finally, finally, we stopped at another door, and I removed the ring from my mouth. The sounds were louder now—so loud that Lucifer must have placed a suppression spell on the worst of the noise. Pischiel opened the door, and I gaped.
We stood on a platform, looking down at level upon level of caged wyverns. The cavern must have been at least a mile deep, and the wyverns all seemed to catch our scent at once, the roaring and screaming growing so loud it seemed to echo in my brain.
The wyverns’ scales were dark. The light was so dim that I couldn’t tell if they were entirely black, or if some were a midnight blue, others a dark green.
Unlike dragons, the wyverns only had two legs. But that wouldn’t hold them back. When they took to the skies, they’d be sleek, fast, and deadly.
Thousands of them. There were thousands of wyverns in this place.
My heart thundered in my chest, and nausea swept over me, quick and all-encompassing. It took a few tries before I could speak, my mouth too dry to talk. “Can they communicate like the dragons?”
The blood had drained from Pischiel’s face, and his eyes were bleak. He obviously hadn’t expected this many either.“They’re incredibly smart. Can take orders when they choose, or when they’ve been trained to. But if they can communicate, it’s only with each other.”
The wyverns closest to us tossed their heads. They strained, screaming out their rage and making their chains rattle. They couldn’t stretch their wings, and being kept from the open sky had driven them into a killing rage.
Dread uncoiled from my gut and crept through my body. It froze each muscle, every nerve and sinew, until even my face was numb. Lucifer had enough wyverns to bring down thousands of our demons if they took to the skies. Enough wyverns to make us regret ever thinking we could win this war.
Enough wyverns to tear apart andkilleveryone I loved.
