Page 103 of When the Sky Breaks

My brows knit together in frustration.

“They tried to get a Himalayan gryphon, from Nepal, to do circus tricks?” I nearly growled. “What the hell is wrong with these people?”

“Would you like me to start a list?” Ansel drawled.

“Where is it?” I asked as we emerged back into the ballroom. People were whispering, rushing, an occasional scream. There was one body on the floor that I could see—an older man, expensive tux, garish tie—bite marks along one arm and blood dripping from his ears.

“That way,” Ansel pointed and instantly I locked in. Himalayan gryphons were rare and dangerous—even more so than Barbary gryphons. They had a massive tiger’s body with feathered vestigial wings and a Eurasian eagle owl’s head—complete with two hundred and seventy degrees of rotation and plumicorns that could reach almost a foot tall when they reached adulthood. Full grown they could top six hundred pounds. But this one was small, young—bigger than a Labrador but not by much. But it had claws, and a vicious beak, and it was scared.

“Sorcha, don’t do anything stupid,” Neal warned, reaching for my arm, but it was useless. He missed my wrist by a hairsbreadth as I headed for the monster, clapping my hands and calling to it.

I glanced over my shoulder just in time to see Neal put a hand over his eyes.

“Just tell me if this goes badly,” he muttered to Ansel.

“She can handle herself,” Ansel replied, clapping a hand onto Neal’s shoulder and pulling his hands away from his face.

I turned back to the gryphon. “Here, buddy.” I whistled and snapped my fingers, and the creature launched itself at me.

I really, really hoped this worked out. I’d befriended jaguars before—admittedly just the once. I’d summoned a damn wolf spider—and those didn’t even form bonds with humans. Surely I could do this.

A dozen guests gasped, but the gryphon didn’t attack and instead flopped in a heap at my feet with a sound somewhere halfway between an owl’s hoot and a cat’s purr emanating from inside its chest. A wave of confusion and shock traveled out through the ballroom, whispers turning to murmurs turning to full-on conversations about the new High Lady and her terrifying power.

I sat down as the massive cryptid rolled onto its back and reached over the feathered back legs to scratch its belly.

“You’re a good boy aren’t you,” I said. “A very good boy.”

“That went better than it had any right to.” Neal crouched next to me.

“Cats are the easiest,” I said, still petting the creature’s belly, feigning confidence I definitely hadn’t felt. “Now find who did this and strip their title.”

“What?” Neal deadpanned.

“Find whoever orchestrated this,” I said. “Strip their title and rank. And have them finance the mission to get this little guy back to Nepal.”

“With pleasure,” Ansel muttered, already walking off.

Forty-Three

Sorcha

The SS Sargasso was a massive, gleaming, 187-foot-long, wooden-hull steamship. It was, as Ansel had repeated several times already, the fastest and most luxurious ship available for the crossing.

“You won’t even know you’re at sea,” he assured me more than once.

“I have a very difficult time believing that,” I muttered as a uniformed porter took our bags and a steward led us up to our suite. The ship was dripping in mahogany, gilding, and crystal. The surfaces were plush and the interiors lavish.

The porter led us through a maze of immaculate, thickly carpeted corridors and opened the door on an expansive set of rooms with dark red-painted paneling and deep amber jacquard furniture. It looked more like the smoking room at an expensive city club—not that I’d seen many of those—than anything I’d ever expect on a ship.

“And we have amenities from the future!” Ansel enthused, gesturing at the bar tucked along one wall—complete with a gravity-fed sink. “Thought that’d come in useful when you inevitably start throwing up.”

“So thoughtful,” I muttered.

“Your room is that way.” Ansel gestured at the door on the left. “Go change. Go rest. Dinner’s in two hours.”

I let Neal check the room over for any sign of pests or tampering, and after twenty minutes, when he finally felt confident it was clean and safe and acceptable, I sank down into the armchair by our bed. We’d barely left port and already I was fighting back the urge to vomit. I pressed fingertips to my temples.

“I do not know if I can do this,” I admitted.