The Wyvern’s massive head shakes side to side. “I have eradicated your kind by the hundreds, halvgud. What makes you believe I would spare your life?”
Calder is seized by the two warriors and dragged toward her, where Argnier and Edmund kneel, bound.
“Let them go!” Aura rushes forward, realizing that no one is stopping her progress. “All of them passed their trials!”
Suddenly, Fitz’s words return to her:“You must know that passingthe test in the forest gives safe passage to the Inner Sanctum. But she can deny entry if you understand my meaning, halvgud.”
“I will not permit a Gothi, Lavinia’s discarded bedfellow, and a demon to seek solace in my sanctum.” Blue flames threateningly mist around her nostrils.
Aura’s heart races as she glances at the robed warriors, who bind Calder’s wrists behind his back and thrust him to his knees beside Argnier.
A dreadful realization grips her spine.
Their lives now depend on her ability to persuade the Wicked Wyvern to spare them.
“We are on a mission to destroy Lavinia and Makt. Please, great one, we traveled all this way to appeal to you! To join our cause!”
The Wyvern’s feet shudder the ground as her head lowers to Aura’s level. “You want me to release your cousin? The boy who would enrage you until you turned him into a toad? What about the man who kidnapped you as a child at the behest of his deranged lover, ruining all chances of friendships outside your father’s designs?”
Aura’s gaze shifts to Argnier and Edmund, who avert their gazes in shame. Her jaw drops, unable to imagine in a thousand winters that Argnier–the man who embraced her despite the issues with her grandfather–was the one who kidnapped her as a child. The man who encouraged her to refine her skills as an artist is the same one who nearly delivered her to Lavinia.
Her heart sinks to her boots with a heaviness nearly dragging her to the ground along with them.
“Or what about the man who should never have taken you to his bed?” The Wyvern’s thunderous voice continues. “The one who should have stopped your affections when you naively sought him out back in Salt. The man who carries the darkest secret. For he is not who he appears.”
Aura clutches her chest as the truth wavers before her eyes–the truth she knows deep in her heart. Anguish fills Calder’s features, and her heart shatters in her hands.
“He hides behind ‘Avardsson,’ but I can read the runessurrounding your party. Your bedfellow is the first son of Makt in a millennium.”
The words strike her harder than she expected. Her father’s strength and her mother’s wisdom cannot fill the cold emptiness in her broken heart.
He lied to me.
Worse, neither Argnier nor Edmund react to the Wyvern’s revelation, leaving Aura as the last to know Calder is a halvgud.
Not just a halvgud, but that of Makt.
The earth seems to crumble beneath Aura’s feet.
What if I’m wrong about these men?
“Our mission is greater than their sins.” Aura lifts her chin.
Her mother’s words of support encourage her to straighten her back and lift her chin, even as her heart shatters into pieces within her chest.
The Wyvern considers Aura in unnerving silence. Finally, she shimmies around, inclining a pearly white wing toward her. “Come, little witch. Let us see if you can convince me to spare your companions.”
Little witch?
Carefully, she climbs atop the Wyvern’s scaly back.
As she takes flight, Aura grasps at anything she can, her stomach somersaulting as they ascend above the treetops and soar through the sky. She squeezes her eyes shut, unable to stop her belly from fluttering this high above the ground.
At last, the Wicked Wyvern lands, and she can sway onto her feet.
“Your trial was the fastest I have beheld, little witch. It takes much to impress me.”
Aura blinks out at the expansive lake, so clear she can see straight through to the rocks below.
