Total pages in book: 222
Estimated words: 210715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1054(@200wpm)___ 843(@250wpm)___ 702(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 210715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1054(@200wpm)___ 843(@250wpm)___ 702(@300wpm)
“If you lose consciousness before you land, the drezmur will fling you off their back and devour you,” Solentine said.
I turned to Everard.
He nodded. “Luckily for us, I have a lot of magic.”
Now the exhausted Solentine from a few days ago made sense. He’d said he had to go around a thunderstorm, which added three hours to the flight. It must’ve drained his magic reserves to nothing.
Everard’s face had a speculative look, as if he had just thought of something. “Would you like to ride her?”
Oh wow.
“We can go for a short test flight above the sea.”
Under no circumstances must you allow him to get you onto a drezmur.
Saying yes was out of the question, and if I took a step back, he would grab me and pull me onto this creature. I had no idea how I knew it; I just sensed it. I held perfectly still.
“You’re not taking my cousin onto a drezmur,” Solentine said. “It’s one thing for you and me to risk our lives, but there is no need for her to flirt with death. Come on. You’re wasting the moonlight.”
Everard’s eyes said Come with me.
I opened my mouth. “Safe journey, Your Grace.”
He sighed and raised his hand. A barely perceptible curl of dark smoke shimmering with green slipped from his fingers and sank into the pale feathers.
The drezmur raised her head and crouched.
The sound of hoofbeats came from the shadows. A man walked out of them, leading a big stallion. The horse was the color of smoke, and its face was pure white.
Hello, Villain. We meet again.
The drezmur let out that high-pitched purr again.
Villain stopped and blew air out of his nose. The man pulled on the lead. The stallion snapped at him.
“Foul temper,” Solentine told me. “Like his master.”
Everard walked over to his horse, took the reins from the man, petted the stallion’s face, and walked him to the side, where a narrow wooden crate waited. I hadn’t even noticed it until now.
Everard pulled the blinders over Villain’s eyes. The stallion stopped again.
“Come on. We’ve done this before,” Everard told him.
Villain huffed, stepped from foot to foot, and then walked into the crate. Everard secured the ropes leading from the harness, tying them down inside the crate, and shut the door, locking the big horse inside. There was a chain attached to the crate, looping under it, and another on top . . .
“Are you going to fly him to Selva?”
Everard looked at me and grinned. “How else would he get there in time?”
“But he’s so heavy, and the crate and the chain must weigh so much . . .”
“I once saw a drezmur pick up a trader boat fully loaded with cargo,” Everard said. “Trust me, this is nothing.”
He strode to the drezmur, then turned.
“Will you give me a kiss for luck, my lady?”
“Absolutely not,” Solentine said.
“I didn’t ask you,” Everard told him.
He was pulling out all the stops, huh.
“Come back safe, without getting poisoned, and you will get one.”
Ramond turned and stepped on the drezmur’s forepaw. The beast raised it, and he climbed onto her back.
“Wait for me,” he called out.
“Maybe,” I told him.
The drezmur reared. Her wings snapped open, blocking half of the sky. She thrust her beak into the loop of the chain on top of Villain’s crate. It slid over her head onto her neck, the crate dangling from it like a locket. The giant beast spun toward the cliff, sprinted, leaped, and soared into the night.
“Thank you, Divine.” Solentine exhaled. “Finally.”
CHAPTER 35
REDBERRY 5
I can’t smell it.” Shana sniffed the small block of soap and put it back on the kitchen table, next to the other six bars.
“We can’t put any more in there,” Clover said. “The soap won’t hold.” “That settles it. No honey.” I crossed honey off the soap additives list. It had been a long shot anyway. In our world, I would have used honey fragrance oil, but there was none to be had here.
Everard had been gone for five days. The house felt strangely empty. I wouldn’t know if he had survived for another fifteen days, possibly longer.
I had done everything I could to warn him.
“Yes, you did,” Shana said.
I hadn’t realized that I had spoken that last part out loud.
“His Grace is very intelligent,” Clover said. “He won’t let himself be poisoned.”
“Clover is right,” Shana told me. “People have been trying to kill him since he was a boy and he’s still here.”
Kaiden dashed into the kitchen. “There are guards outside.”
“What guards?” I asked.
“City guards.”
“Teal tabards?”
Kaiden nodded.
“What do they want?”
“To talk to you.”
Why would the guards want to talk to me? Were they looking for Everard? I couldn’t think of any other reason, unless the Filderon thing had come back to us, but so much time had passed . . .
I got up and marched to the front door.