It fought harder.
Faster.
Smarter.
Its tail lashed out like a whip, the stinger impaling one of Kaelen’s warriors through her wing. The female gasped. A choked, broken sound that curdled my blood. By the time another warrior tried to drag her away, her wings had already begun to dissolve under the venom.
Keira sobbed harder, wings curling inward as she wailed.
“Don’t look,” I whispered, my voice raw as I covered her face.
My stomach lurched as I watched the female writhe in agony until she stopped moving altogether. Bile coated my tongue, but I swallowed it down for Keira’s sake.
“It’s almost over,” I told her. “You’re safe.”
The lie scraped my throat on the way out.
Because no one here was safe, not while that thing still breathed. While any of them still breathed…
The dread I’d been putting off for hours came crashing over me in a wave now. Surely Draven had to know, had to see that the monster we were tracking before was not this one.
No beast this size could effectively crawl along the treetops without toppling the forest completely. Maybe it should have been a comfort to know that the other one was smaller… That it might be weaker, put up less of a fight…
My mind flashed back to the aged pages of the compendium. Back to the notes in the margins, and the details I’d been insistent on writing down. Ones that the books my library had given me only corroborated.
Korythids laid eggs. Not just a few at a time. But hundreds all at once…
I took a deep, shaking breath in, trying to stave off the panic threatening to claw its way out of me.
The Korythid screeched again, and I pressed my hands over Keira’s ears to help block the sound. The monster staggered backward under the combined assault of Draven’s ice locking its mandibles shut, and Kaelen’s blade driving deep into the plates near its head?—
My breath caught in my throat. The smallest ember of hope flared to life as the Korythid stumbled. It slipped, its massive body crashing to the ground before dragging itself back up.
Draven used his mana like icy manacles, freezing each of the Korythid’s legs in place, and refusing to let it get away. A warrior with bright pink braids and a matching spear darted low, drivingit deep into the exposed joint of a back leg. Another plunged down from above, his blade striking the vulnerable curve of the monster’s neck.
Then there was Kaelen, bloody, relentless, and furious. He twisted through the air and thrust his blade into the seam near the frostbeast’s head. A loud, ear-splitting crack rent the air.
The Korythid convulsed violently.
Its roar shook snow from the trees in the distance, sending a silver-white avalanche of ice and snow crashing down from the mountain peaks.
Then finally, the monster’s legs buckled as Draven released the hold on his mana.
It collapsed with a ground-shaking thud, its legs curling inward like burning parchment, its tail giving one last spasm before falling still.
Steam hissed from its wounds. Black venom seeped from its tail onto the ice. Snow drifted down in soft flakes as if trying to cover the horror we’d just survived.
Keira’s breath hitched against me, her sob muffled in the wool of my cloak. I got to my feet, smoothing a trembling hand down her back, more for my own steadiness than hers. The air still crackled with the remnants of battle, mana, scorched ice, the metallic reek of frostbeast blood.
My pulse beat a frantic rhythm that refused to slow.
“You’re alright now,” I whispered, even though the words felt like a lie, too thin in the mountain air. “You’re safe.”
Batty shifted beneath my cloak. Her tiny claws dug suddenly, urgently, into my shoulder. A warning tremor buzzed through her body, high-pitched and frantic.
“What is it—” I began as my skathryn flapped her wings furiously, her gaze fixed on the Korythid’s unmoving form.
My blood went cold. And something deep inside of me already knew the answer. She wasn’t looking at the corpse of the monster, but rather just beyond it.
