The world does one long, slow spin, and my lungs turn to stone.
The creature’s scales are a pure, unrelenting black. I catch a single glimpse of long, brutally sharp teeth, and slam my eyes shut.
Jorah wants me dead.
That’s the only reason he would—
Use the handle in the wall and you’ll find yourself directly outside the healers’ quarters.
Forcing myself to open my eyes, I glance over my shoulder. The wall is right there where Jorah said it would be. I did exactly what he warned me not to do. I became distracted and turned left instead of right, wandering the wrong way like an idiot.
I just need to get to the door.
Sweat rolls in rivulets down my spine. My hands have blistered, but I barely feel the pain as I force myself to turn my attention back to the predator thirty feet in front of me.
Wyverns are supposed to be extinct.
I shouldn’t be surprised that the emperor is keeping one here. I would feel sorry for it if I wasn’t about to be its meal.
Slowly, I crouch.
The wyvern turns its head.
Enraged yellow eyes meet mine.
And then someone steps between us.
Rorrik lifts the same hand he used to disembowel Cargyn just days ago. Slowly, gently, he strokes the wyvern’s snout.
My mind struggles to digest what I’m seeing.
Rorrik croons something too low for me to hear, and the wyvern’s eyes turn heavy-lidded and glazed.
I don’t understand.
Rorrik’s people were the ones to hunt and slaughter wyverns. When the proud, lethal creatures refused to bow to the vampires, they were declared a threat—their population decimated.
Just a few years ago, tears rolled down Evren’s face as he read aloud from one of his precious books. The First vampires—the ones created by Umbros himself—butchered adult wyverns and then found their nests, stealing wyvern eggs and setting them on fire.
This revelation is like a splash of ice-cold water dumped down my back. But the curve of Rorrik’s lips is even more shocking.
And far more dangerous.
My lungs turn to stone. I’m going to die. And I would rather be burned alive and eaten by the wyvern than caught and tortured by the emperor’s sadistic son.
No.
I’ll wait them out. That’s my only choice.
But every few seconds, the wyvern sends a withering look my way. I’m downwind, the breeze carrying my scent farther from both of them, but the wyvern knows I’m here. And soon, so will Rorrik. If he doesn’t already. Perhaps he’s playing with me.
I’m pouring sweat, dizzy with fear. But waiting isn’t going to work. I need to move.
Three steps to the door. Turn the handle. Duck to the side to avoid the flames that will pour from the wyvern’s throat. Leap through the open door. Slam it shut behind me.
Three steps.
I can do this.
