Page 200 of Burn of the Everflame

I eased her away, and she shuffled back to sit at Tybold’s side. Her eyes stayed stubbornly on me. Tybold’s eyes stayed steadily on her.

Luther joined me on the palace steps. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“Righting a wrong.”

That was a good enough answer for him. His hand slipped into mine, and we watched in silence as Tybold’s wings spread—slowly, slowly, inch by excruciating inch—until the tip of his dark feathers fluttered against Sorae’s.

She hissed and sidled away. Tybold’s wings snapped in, angry smoke curling from his nostrils.

“Sorae,” I murmured. “Please.”

Rosha, the Faunos gryvern, was the next to arrive. She was a beautiful creature, and she knew it. Her fur was dense and glossy, and her pale feathers almost seemed to glow under the moonlight with an iridescent shine. When her knife-sharp talons sank into the soil on Tybold’s other side, she ruffled her wings, flirtily flicking them out against him.

Sorae’s jealousy boiled across the bond. Her pupils slitted as muscles tensed beneath her fur.

Rosha chuffed, the sound coming out like a laugh.

Tybold didn’t move an inch. He stayed focused on Sorae, oblivious to Rosha’s preening.

The Arboros gryvern, Onaar, landed not long after, another pretty female who eyed Tybold with curious interest—and whose purrs had Sorae unsheathing her claws.

“Claim him,” I whispered. “Show them he’s yours.”

Sorae’s eyes darted to me, then to Tybold. Her tail thrashed wildly back and forth, echoing the feud playing out in her head.

By the time Arilloc, the Meros gryvern, soared down from the ink-dark sky, a crowd had gathered. On one side, members of the various camps watched in wary, exhausted silence. On the other, curious palace residents huddled in glittering, colorful groups, their gossipy whispers carrying on the breeze.

Arilloc was strong and large, undeniably a formidable force in battle, but his temperament was more scamp than serpent. He paced like a proud tomcat and affably bunted his head against each of the female gryverns, lingering against Sorae at the sound of Tybold’s growl. His black-tipped tail flicked against Tybold’s snout, drawing a hiss from the Ignios gryvern that sent the crowd shuffling back.

“I’m beginning to think,” Luther murmured in my ear as Arilloc lounged lazily against Sorae, “that the real reason the Crowns kept the gryverns apart had more to do with their libido than their tempers.”

I felt his gaze on me, scouring my face in fervent hope for a laugh or a smile, even a crinkled eye—some sign that I had not been another casualty of the morning’s slaughter.

That was reassurance I could not give.

Vexes, the Sophos gryvern, was the last to arrive. The sound of his sluggish, unsteady wingbeats had everyone, even the gryverns, frowning up at the sky. When he finally crossed the palace roof, it seemed as if his wings could not hold his plump weight for one second longer, and he tumbled to a hard landing on the soil.

He didn’t lift his head or turn his eyes to mine. Claw marks had been gouged down his haunches and his neck was bruised in the shape of a vicious bite. His battered body gave a shuddering exhale, and his wings, blood-soaked and misshapen, fell limp against his sides.

Sorae let out a quiet whine.

I walked down the steps and knelt at Vexes’s side, stroking a hand down his snout. “You did what you could,” I murmured. “You couldn’t have stopped him.”

An ocean’s worth of guilt soaked the bond we shared, its tide surging in both directions. Shame, too—that he’d been too small and too weak to save the people of his realm. And anger—at me, his Queen—for not being there when I should have been.

A small amount of my magic had returned since the battle, and I pushed it into Vexes to heal his wounds. I was glad to be free of it. The fondness I’d once developed for my godhood was hard to recall. Its thrumming presence in my blood was now a brutal reminder of what I’d done.

I reached to stroke Vexes’s muzzle, but he jerked his head away. He dragged himself to his feet and lumbered to the end of the gryverns’ line, as far from me as he could get.

Rosha paid him little mind as he shuffled by. Her efforts to woo Tybold were still going strong. She cooed as she brazenly leaned in to groom his fur.

Tybold let out a sudden snarl. He snapped his jaws around Rosha’s neck until she whimpered and lowered her head in submission. When he let her go, orange fire glowed behind his fangs, and Rosha scurried away to Vexes’s other side.

Sorae noted it all. When the Meros gryvern twined his tail around her leg, she pulled it free and shifted closer to Tybold.

As I stared at the line of gryverns, I wished, as I so often did these days, that I had more time. Time to help Sorae and Tybold mend their rift. Time to get to know them—what they’d been through and how they felt, what they thought of the war, what lives they wanted for themselves.

But perhaps those were things I was not meant to know. These creatures were never meant for this world.