I dropped a sheet of air and fire between us and the wyvern, inversing the light of the fire to create an illusion of pure black. I layered the inside with my fire shield. Holding two spells weakened both, and I prayed it was the right decision.

  Wetherill wobbled, or perhaps he trembled. My own knees wanted to knock together in terror. Even behind the illusion, neither of us shifted more than our eyes. The wyvern had set its sights to our right, and as it pulled up to fly over the hangar’s roof, it unleashed a cloudburst of ice. Thick maple planks near the roof cracked and exploded, spraying crystalized splinters into the air. A rain of ice peppered my shield, evaporating in the flames. Using a soft puff of air, I redirected the splinters rather than risk the chance of smoke attracting the wyverns’ eyes.

  When our attacker disappeared over the roofline, I searched the sky for Quinn. He flew high above us, zigzagging like a lion-size hummingbird with two wyverns on his tail. My heart lodged in my throat. A Thilorier’s frosty assault might not be as deadly to a gargoyle as it was to a human, but if Quinn were frozen midflight, the fall would kill him. So could a well-placed blow from a wyvern’s talons.

  Quinn dodged and wove haphazardly, but when a wyvern blasted frigid saliva from its powerful jaws, he plummeted as fast as the stone creature he was, avoiding the deadly stream. Seconds later, Quinn caught himself and whirled toward the dome, escaping through the elemental mesh. The wyverns slammed into the ward, bellowing their frustration into the early-morning air.

  The other two wyverns hadn’t abated their attacks on Grant, bombarding him with a frenzy of claws, fangs, and icy blasts. Without Quinn distracting them, the thwarted wyverns turned their wrath on Grant too. Fire blazed from Grant’s palm, driving one wyvern aside. A hastily erected shield protected him from the blast of another. Rather than sprint to the safe side of the dome, Grant strode into the open. The wyverns swarmed him, the downdraft of their wings whipping his uniform against his body as if he stood in the midst of a hurricane. The dragon-like predators attacked in concert, never giving Grant a breather. Blades of fire slapped aside wyvern snouts as fast as they struck, flashing like fireworks in the air, never quite incapacitating the deadly reptiles.

  Grant couldn’t keep this up forever. Where was the rest of his squad? Or O’Hara?

  Quinn dove from above, slamming into the smallest wyvern’s shoulders. The beast careened away from Grant, and Quinn launched himself in the opposite direction, flapping past the dome to safety before the wyvern recovered. Grant used the microscopic lull in the battle to amplify his next shout.

  “Run, Kylie!”

  I realized he was no longer progressing across the field. No longer coming for me. He had heard my warning and changed tactics, using himself as bait so I could escape.

  My heart thundered in my ears. The earlier terror of playing cat and mouse with basilisks or even the last frantic rush to the door paled in comparison to the thought of abandoning the shelter of the hangar’s shadow. But I trusted Grant. I wasn’t going to let his and Quinn’s heroics be for nothing.

  “Come on.” I tugged on Wetherill’s waist, dropping the illusion hiding us.

  “This is madness,” he moaned, but he tightened his grip on my shoulder and took the first hobbling step.

  Fire ignited in my calf. I gasped and clenched my teeth when the next step stung worse than the first. Wetherill groaned and cursed, pressing the barest weight to his injured foot before hopping. Curse, hop, groan. Curse, hop, groan.

  “Come on, you can do it,” I urged, not sure which of us I was encouraging.

  The lawn stretched endlessly before us, the edge of the dome a lifetime away. My shoulders hunched, as if I could bend low enough to avoid the wyverns’ detection. A phantom weight pressed against my spine, the looming threat of the phoenix pushing against my back.

  “Faster,” I panted.

  Hidden divots in the dew-slick grass tripped me and hampered Wetherill’s already glacial speed. My breath rasped in my throat and my thighs burned, my fatigued limbs running low on energy before we even began to sprint. Wetherill tugged us in the direction of a distant mansion. It meant shoving through a low, squared-off hedgerow and skidding through a gravel pathway. I mentally berated Wetherill for his greed and stupidity. Greed for having such an immense property, and stupidity for not positioning convenient trees and buildings to serve as shelter during an aerial assault. I refused to acknowledge that the open field made sense in front of an aircraft hangar and wyvern den.

  Quinn dove through the dome, knocking into a wyvern’s wing, sending it careening, but not before the infuriated beast jerked its head around to blast ice into the air. Quinn dove under the plume, missing being hit by inches. He landed, galloped several strides, then flapped hard and fast for the dome, a different wyvern on his tail. I hooked my fingers into Wetherill’s belt loop and hoisted him against me, urgency lending me strength. Farther away, Grant deflected claws and ice with gouts of flames. Even as he fought two Thiloriers, he flicked the third in the tail with fire, yanking the predator’s attention away from us. His distraction almost got him skewered, but he rolled aside at the last second.

  The fourth wyvern pursued Quinn to the dome, slamming into the magical barrier with its legs. Flipping, it shoved itself away from the ward and speared straight for me and Wetherill. Quinn spun to give chase. His wings beat frantically, but he wasn’t going to be fast enough. Wetherill cursed and fumbled for magic, forming a weak, flickering shield of fire. The wyvern’s barrel sides expanded on an inhale, the sacs behind its jaws inflating. Another flap, and it was in range. Its fanged jaws opened.

  I slapped a wall of fire in its face. The wyvern roared and ducked aside, talons slashing through my magic. Wetherill jerked in my grasp, nearly dislocating my shoulder when he attempted to dive aside. I propelled him forward, craning to check over my shoulder. Quinn shot past overhead, ducking and weaving as the wyvern turned its malice on him.

  Movement higher up snagged my eye. The first streaks of sunlight glowed on the horizon, brightening the sky enough to make out a winged figure circling the dome. I recognized it in a split second, the half-shorn wing and off-kilter cant of its flight impossible to mistake. Zipporah had found me.

  I wanted to laugh. Or maybe crying would be more appropriate. Spinning to face forward, I hoped to spot the dome’s edge within reach. My curse came out on a sob. We were only halfway across the infernal field.

  Maybe this was a nightmare, one from which I would never wake.

  My boot hit ice, and my leg splayed sideways. My fingers snapped free of Wetherill’s belt loop. I slammed to my back hard enough to choke on my own exhale. Helplessly, I slid across the ice patch, the frozen lawn slicing through my thin shirt and into my flesh like barbed sandpaper. I screamed when my momentum spun me in a slow, torturous circle. Then, mercifully, I fetched up against wet grass. Tucking my hands to my chest, I rolled off the Thilorier-blasted ground and lay on my side, panting. Blistering pain radiated down my back. I couldn’t feel my butt. I needed to get up, but I couldn’t summon the energy.

  Wetherill hadn’t stopped. Coward. Hobbling with remarkable agility, augmenting his wounded leg with a prop of solid air, he scurried toward safety. Cowardly bastard. Where had that magic been when I had been hauling him around?

  I shoved an arm under myself, willing my body to rise. Quinn shouted, his words lost beneath a wyvern’s shriek. I sought him out through tear-blurred eyes. He speared across the field, high above me, a wyvern hot on his tail.

  A burst of air came out of nowhere, punching the wyvern in the jaw. Its head snapped sideways, and its body pitched to follow. Spiraling out of control, it crashed hard enough to shake the ground, sliding to a stop at the edge of the pond. Ice crackled across the water’s surface on the wyvern’s exhale, then exploded in jagged spikes as the entire pond froze in a lightning-fast rush. The wyvern attempted to rise, floundering due to one wing hanging broken. Its pained cry sent chills through my body.

  Grant had been fighting to distract, not kill. Why had he—

  “Kylie, watch out!” Quinn shouted, fighting his counter-momentum to fly toward me.

  I spun, expecting another wyvern. Instead, Zipporah dove through the dome, coasting over the hangar.

  With a negligent pulse of magic, she punted Quinn across the field. He tumbled through the air, struggling to right himself before he slammed into the trees on the far side. I had a second to realize it had been the harpy who had bludgeoned the wyvern—not to save Quinn, but to get the Thilorier out of her way.

  Then the hangar exploded.

  I reacted instinctively, throwing a shield up between Zipporah and the explosion, shoving her past the hangar. A prodigious fireball ballooned from the building, catapulting hunks of flaming wood against my shield. Slapping earth and water around solidified air, I formed a crude protective spell on the fly. Heat seared my magic, burning into my brain, but it held.

  Zipporah flailed head over tail above me, wings akimbo. I had a second to relive the wyvern’s horrible landing and pained cry, envisioning the same for the harpy. It would be no less than she deserved for the torment she had inflicted on me. She had freely admitted she planned to kill me. Painfully. Slowly. But a harpy was the last person I wanted to emulate. Using the last of my strength, I cushioned Zipporah’s landing with a pillow of air.

  My shield collapsed. The shrapnel it had blocked fell in a heap a dozen feet from me. Heat gushed over me, blowing my hair from my face. A beautiful flaming bird shot through the ruined hangar’s roof, arrowing into the sky. Enviously graceful only seconds after its birth, the eagle-size newborn spiraled through the superheated air. Black bands circled its red-gold chest, and as it gained altitude, its wings cooled, until only a trail of smoke marked its passage. After a lap around the ruined hangar, the phoenix tilted its beak to the heavens. Singing a high-pitched note of pure exhilaration, it burst through the dome, looping and twisting jubilantly as it continued to climb into the night sky.

  Tears leaked from my eyes, and I fell back to my elbows. My head rang from the explosion and from using too much magic. My body was spent and throbbing with alternating dull and sharp pains. But in that moment, my heart soared with the phoenix. Its birth was violent and fearsome, but its joy to be alive ignited a fierce happiness inside me.

  Zipporah landed hard atop me, snapping my focus back to my own survival. The harpy’s talons gouged the sod on either side of my ribs, and her fetid fumes swamped me.

  Bending, she pressed her face close to mine.

  “My wayward heiress,” she hissed, drowning me in a carrion exhale. Golden hawk eyes glinted in the morning light, triumph gleaming in their depths. “You smell like breakfast.”

  17

  Eyes watering, I shrank from Zipporah, wincing as rocks hidden in the wet grass gouged my tormented back.

  “Grant,” I croaked.

  I intended his name as a warning, not a summons, but gratitude swamped me when a blast of fire-laced air tuned in Grant’s magical signature knocked Zipporah aside without so much as shifting the tendrils of hair resting on my forehead. The harpy deflected the worst of the attack, flapping to an awkward landing ten feet away. Grant stalked past me, planting himself between us.

  I soaked in the sight of him. From my prone position, he looked larger than life, his muscular body coiled with tension. Mud and grass stains coated his gray uniform, though the spelled material repelled any moisture that might have otherwise soaked into the garment. A rip cut across his left shoulder, another at his right thigh, but if he was wounded beneath the slashes, it didn’t show. More mud spiked his dark hair, and a line of grit bisected his cheek. None of it detracted from his formidable expression. Power and anger radiated from him, and if it had been directed at me, I would have cowered in my boots. Zipporah sneered.

  “She’s mine,” the harpy declared. “She gave her word.”

  “You tricked her.”

  Zipporah shrugged her shoulders. It was a human’s gesture, one that caused her naked breasts to jiggle grotesquely and noxious fumes to waft from her oily feathers.

  The ground shuddered, and Quinn skidded to a stop next to my hip. He dropped his nose to examine me, then stepped forward, straddling my stomach. His huge stone body and protectively extended wings effectively blocked my sight of Grant and Zipporah. I ran my fingers down his foreleg, surprised when my hand trembled at the effort. He appeared whole and unharmed. Relief flooded me. I wanted to curl around him and hug him to me, but we weren’t out of danger yet.

  I rolled to get a view of the field, searching for the wyverns. Any moment, they would swoop down—

  A net of magic pinned the largest Thilorier. The spell was a simplified version of the dome, and it effectively caged the wyvern in place. A second layer of darkened elements wrapped the wyvern’s head. The hood appeared to soothe the massive beast, proving that despite its fierce attacks, it was a tamed and trained wyvern—as tamed and trained as any apex predator could be.

  I twisted further, rolling against Quinn’s stone legs to track down the other wyverns. Two curled passively inside similar elemental cages, hooded and deceptively docile. If Grant had been able to capture the wyverns all along, why—

  A team of people in FPD uniforms surrounded the fourth, injured wyvern. Ah. Backup had arrived, just in time. Or, more likely, had been summoned by Grant. It wasn’t his squad either. I recognized Anderson from O’Hara’s squad first, then the rest of her team. They worked in tandem to restrain the pain-wracked wyvern as their team healer, Xinh, mended its broken wing. All five were linked, but O’Hara stood to one side, his gaze focused on the drama unfolding at this end of the field.

  Wetherill was nowhere to be seen.

  “I will take my payment, or I will take Harriet Kylie Grayson,” Zipporah announced.

  “What would you accept in payment?” Grant asked.

  “After she attacked me? Retribution comes to mind.” Her mouth smacked, and putrid fumes blew into the air with the sound of feathers rubbing together.

  “Self-defense is not an attack.”

  I tapped Quinn’s side to get his attention. When that didn’t work, I grabbed his extended wing and used it to lift myself enough to wave a hand in front of his face. “Let me up, please,” I whispered.

  He shot me an anguished look. I thought he might argue, but after searching my eyes, he stepped aside. Rolling to my hands and knees, I crawled to my feet, biting the inside of my cheek to choke off a whimper. Quinn tucked his wings to his back and stepped closer, offering his body as a prop. I leaned against him in silent gratitude, then forced myself to step away.

  It had been excruciatingly tempting to remain prone and allow Grant to handle Zipporah’s demands. I was wounded, exhausted, and about to be bowled over by an avalanche of spent adrenaline. The shaking in my hands was likely as much due to shock as it was relief. Lying in one place until my head stopped reeling seemed like the smart decision.

  But Zipporah was my problem, not Grant’s. I had gotten myself into my dreadful deal with her. I would get myself out of it.

  “Basilisks.” I dropped the word into Zipporah and Grant’s argument.

  Grant whipped around, his eyes clouded with emotion I couldn’t read. Zipporah squinted at me suspiciously, but the threat made her wary enough to stop speaking.

  “In the hangar. There were at least two. I don’t know if they survived the hatching, but there’s a big hole in the side of the building . . .”

  Grant formed a message, barked a warning into it, and sent it rocketing to O’Hara. Seconds after the message reached the investigator, two warriors peeled away from the wyvern. They molded mirror illusions in front of their faces and sprinted for the hangar. In minutes, the gaping hole in the side of the hangar was blockaded with a similar ward, the mirrored side pointing inward. Satisfied we were safe from accidental paralyzation, I turned my attention to the harpy.

  I had to word this just right. I wasn’t going to get another chance. For the first time since I had landed in Zipporah’s debt, I had an idea how to save myself.

  “Beldame Zipporah,” I said, giving her the honorific she preferred.

  Grant’s hand shot out to stop me when I stepped forward. I gripped his steely forearm, my fingers brushing his everlasting seed where it wrapped his wrist like a bracelet. The black-and-white discs were smooth beneath my fingertips, shifting slightly as Grant flexed his arm. I stroked my thumb along the line of skin between his sleeve and bracelet, taking comfort in Grant’s warmth and the protective aura radiating from him.

  Then I gave his arm a squeeze and stepped partially in front of him, facing Zipporah. Quinn shifted to stand beside me. With Grant at my back, my bravery was largely symbolic. He could step in at any moment to defend me. But I was signaling to him that I wanted to do this on my own.

  Shockingly, Grant didn’t protest.

  “I did not attack you,” I said, looking the harpy square in her eerie avian eyes. Pain throbbed from my calf and back, but I didn’t let it show on my expression. At least standing straight kept my shirt from rubbing against my ice-burned flesh. “I saved you.”

  Zipporah squawked in disbelief.

  I took a deep breath, then announced, “My debt is served. I no longer owe you anything.”

  Zipporah chuffed and shook her head. “Oh, little girl, you’re brave when you’ve got the captain at your side.”

  “Look.” I pointed behind the harpy. A wall of jagged wood and melted metal protruded from the ground, embedded in a distinct line where my shield had spared us both from being impaled.

  “That’s not the payment I had in mind.” Zipporah hopped forward, closing the distance between us to loom over me. Menacing magic vibrated the air around her.

  I mentally braced myself for an attack—physical or elemental—but I didn’t flinch, and I didn’t erect a barrier between us. After the night I had been through, the harpy’s attempt to intimidate me barely raised my pulse. Even though I stood within striking distance of Zipporah’s deadly talons, with Grant and Quinn beside me, I was the safest I had been all night.