“For the moment,” Lirin said, not very reassuringly.
“I’m here to find him. We must go immediately.” Cela turned to Peyton. “Thank you so much for all your help. I have to go now.”
“Can I come?” Peyton asked. “It seems like a shame to come all this way and not ... you know. Go all the way. In case you need backup or anything.”
Cela shook her head. “No humans are allowed on Griffin Island. No non-griffins at all.”
“They’re not on Griffin Island,” Lirin said. “They’re on Challenge Rock.”
The words seemed to take a moment to sink in. Cela’s ears rang.
“Did he challenge Kav?” she asked.
Lirin nodded. With another wary look at Peyton, she shifted. Peyton gave a little gasp.
“If you want to come, you can ride on me,” Cela told her.
Without hesitation, she shifted to her griffin form. Peyton approached her hesitantly, ran a hand along her side, and then climbed on.
“Like this? Are you sure it’s okay?”
Cela nodded, although she wasn’t entirely positive that itwasokay. It had been a long time since she’d done much flying, and she wasn’t used to carrying passengers.
But the flight to Challenge Rock was not so far as Griffin Island.
Lirin launched herself gracefully into the sun-drenched sky. Cela followed, feeling heavier and clumsier with Peyton’s weight on her back. Peyton gasped and clutched at Cela’s neck fur as they both plunged toward the sea, but Cela’s wings caught their weight and she leveled off above the waves.
Lirin had already set an arrow-straight course, skimming the waves to avoid being spotted by tourists or passing boats. Cela flew after her.
Tyr was somewhere ahead. She thought she felt his presence drawing her closer, as if she was a compass needle pointed to her true north.
She could only hope they were not too late.
TYR
Tyr lookeddown from the island’s rocky pinnacle. He was surrounded by four guards in their griffin forms, but he had no desire to fight them or, as they perhaps thought, to run away. He was where he wanted to be. He only hoped Cela could forgive him.
Especially if he lost.
Challenge Rock was a lonely place, stark in its unforgiving natural beauty. The rocky island rose from the sea as a series of rock pillars, shaped over the years by the pounding of waves and storms. Only those with wings could reach their tops. As, indeed, thousands of sea birds had done; in the nesting season, this island would be surrounded by their cries and the whirr of their wings. At this time of year, high summer, there were only a few, wheeling in the sky and giving their lonely cries.
Tyr was surprised that he had been allowed to see Kav at all. When he had first arrived on the shores of Griffin Island, exhausted from days of flying, the enforcers had kept him on the beach, refusing to admit him into the interior of the island. Tyr was fully prepared to fight his way past theguardians, but in the end, when he demanded to see the head of Silvershell Clan on Cela’s behalf, they had arranged a meeting here.
He was still very tired. He had been permitted to hunt fish for his dinner, reminding him that he’d grown used to the far more variable and palatable food on the mainland. He had hardly slept. Now he awaited Kav on top of the rock, his wings shielding him from the sun and wind.
He hoped that he would be able to keep control of his griffin and not fling himself with beak and claws on the man who had exiled and cruelly punished Cela, the mate who had never deserved her. The thing that kept him still was his hope of seeing Cela again. If he attacked Kav, and especially if Tyr killed him, he would never leave Challenge Rock alive; the guards would see to that.
But with diplomacy, with courage, there was a chance—and it was this chance he had to take.
A small group of winged shapes appeared, skimming low over the waves. From a distance, they might be taken for seabirds, but as they came closer, they were much too large.
Griffins.
Tyr waited.
The second group of griffins landed on the largest of the rocky sea stacks, where Tyr and his guards were waiting. At their head was the largest griffin Tyr had ever seen. When he shifted human, he was still a large, powerful man. He wore leather clothing as a sort of light armor and, as some high-ranking griffins did, ornaments made of sea glass and shell in his hair and on his wrists.
His entourage shifted as well, so it seemed this was going to be hashed out in words, at least initially.
