He settled on the ground with his legs outstretched and his back braced against a wall.
As I approached him, he upended the bottle over his mouth. When only a small slosh came out, he snarled and chucked it toward his right. It shattered when it hit, spraying glass and the stink of sour wine through the air.
That gave me an idea.
Whirling around, I held onto Drask as I rushed to the end of the street, where I spied a shop across the way. It didn’t take long to buy a bottle of wine and return to the alley. Worry gnawed through my spine while I did it because I thought he’d be gone. Instead, he dozed with his head tipped back to rest against the wall, his mouth hanging open to release jagged snores.
I placed the bottle between his outstretched legs and nudged his thigh. “Wake up, Prager. I’ve got something for you.”
“What, what?” he muttered, staring up at me with a frown. “Who are you?”
“The person who brought you wine.”
His gaze lit on the bottle, and he lifted it, cackling. “A friend, that’s who you are.” After twisting off the cork and chucking it aside, he patted the ground beside him. “Sit. I’ll share.”
“No wine for me.”
His inexplicably sharp gaze met mine. “That’s right. You have questions, don’t you?”
“Why would you think that?”
His hand snapped out, his fingers coiling around my ankle. When his skin touched mine, a chill flashed through me. Releasing me, he flopped back against the wall of the building again. “The blade is that of Alessa,” he said in a sing-song voice. “Tear away the blight, and you might just set things right.”
I leaned closer. “Can you tell me what that means?”
“There’s silence among the trees, but not.” His head tilted, and he squinted up at me. “They whisper many things to those who will listen.”
He fumbled with the front of his tunic, shoving it this way and that.
Drask flapped his wings in a furious rhythm, and his urgency crept through me, making my skin quiver.
Shrugging the feeling off, I stooped down beside Prager. I wanted to shake him, make him give me answers, though I wasn’t sure I knew the right questions to ask. “Tell me where to find the blade.”
“What blade?” he snarled.
“The Blade of Alessa.”
“Why would you want that, precious one?” With a guttural snarl, he leaped, his ruse of drunkenness gone.
Drask flew up as Prager flung me back onto the damp alley stones. My back smacked hard, driving the breath from my lungs.
Prager loomed over me with a long, thin, and very sharp appearing blade pressed against my throat. “What pattern shall I carve on your skin, precious one?” Tipping his head back, his shrill laugh rang out.
While I struggled to suck in a breath, his face changed, morphing into that of an elderly woman with scars on her cheeks. Her dingy gray eyes locked on mine.
She would swallow everything inside me and leave only an empty shell behind.
Her face snapped forward to hover over mine, and her sly grin revealed jagged fangs. “She was dethroned, but her strength still towers within her. Did you know that you, precious one, can bend nature?”
While I remained frozen, splayed out beneath her on the cold stone slabs, Drask fluttered down and attacked, raking his claws across the back of her head. He landed on her skull and beat a furious dance on her skull with his claws and his wings.
“Wretched thing,” she cried, tumbling sideways.
Sucking in a breath, I shrugged off the magic she’d used to freeze me. I leaped to my feet, my dagger finding its home in my hand.
She tumbled across the ground, rolling to dislodge Drask,who reeled away and came back to land on my shoulder.
With a feral snarl, Prager plunged toward me.
