Page 146 of House of Ashes
“Yes. Of all of us, I’m the one who could help her the most. And I owe her.” I held his gaze, unwilling to break contact for even a second. I wanted to help this girl find her House and bring it back to life. It was a pain I understood all too well.
His lips flattened slightly. “I will if I can, but she won’t be my ward for long. Now that Cyran’s gotten notions into his head, Pyrae will want to call her home, where she can keep an eye on her precious little spy.”
My next breath caught in my throat. “You can’t be serious.”
I hadn’t told Mykah anything of value to Pyrae—but I did not believe she was a spy, either.
Not willingly.
Doric gave me a thin smile. “Wait and see. I wouldn’t talk about any sensitive plans while she’s around, though.”
He gave me a perfunctory bow and strode away, leaving me staring after him.
“The draga who caught you?” Rhylan’s voice was quiet against my ear.
“Yes. She’s their ward, from a House of Ashes, but I suspect there’s quite a bit more to the story than what she told me.” I motioned for him to step beneath the harness, though he didn’t shift. “I’ll tell you the rest as we fly. I want to get out of here.”
“You finally see reason.” Rhylan touched my chin, bringing my face up. I rose on my toes, receiving the kiss I craved. “Little flea.”
He smiled against my lips, even as I growled. “Don’t start with me.”
I stepped back and allowed him to shift, taking extra care with the buckles over his fresh scars, and soon enough we were in the air, flying over the ruins of Zerhaln.
I slid to the eyrie floor, biting back a moan of pain as Viros rushed for us. “Thank the gods, you’re alive.”
The Eyrie-Master’s hair stood in a wild white nimbus, violet circles pasted under his eyes. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days.
He ran his hands through the corona of hair again, clearly a motion he’d performed a thousand times in the last few days, as Rhylan shifted to male form.
As for me…I wasn’t sure I’d be alive for much longer. The flight over the southern Krysiens, which had taken two hours before, had taken five in Rhylan’s weakened condition.
That was all well and good; I was perfectly content to settle against his back, telling him of what Mykah had told me in shouts between gusts of wind.
But the first pang had started an hour in. I’d ignored it at first, pressing a hand to my lower belly, and as the flight had dragged on, the sharp little pinches had come more frequently, and more viciously, with every passing hour.
By the end of the flight, the pinches had evolved into the sensation of white-hot hands reaching into my abdomen, squeezing everything in there with clawed fingers. Pain shot through my back, and down into my hips.
I’d broken out in a cold sweat that dried as soon as the wind touched it, and it had taken every shred of willpower I possessed not to let on to Rhylan that my body was threatening to tear itself apart from the inside out.
Was it sickness? Disease? Had the salve failed to clean out some contaminant from the tiny wounds that the wyvern’s claws had made? Food poisoning?
Real poison?
Leaving Viros to fuss over Rhylan, I staggered to the eyrie doors.
“Where are you going?” The dreaded line had appeared with prominence between Rhylan’s thick brows.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” I said with a gasp, doing my best to tear the door off its hinges to get inside.
I stumbled down the hall, pausing sporadically to lean on walls and pant for breath, doubled over as agony tore through me. The stairs to the next level of the eyrie were an obstacle course designed by a torturer. At the bottom I knelt, panting, a fresh coating of sweat on my forehead.
When I made it to my room, I managed to lock the door behind me before vanishing into the bathroom and collapsing on the cool stone floor, curling into a fetal ball.
Gaelin’s warning seemed to loom over me, a warning that I hadn’t heeded well enough. Doric seemed to believe the other Houses were planting spies…and it wouldn’t have been hard to slip poison in my food. I had been so exhausted, I hadn’t given so much as a glance to whatever was on my plate before I inhaled it.
The pinching agony returned, and I rested my cheek on the floor, letting it cool my face as another prickling round of sweat broke out on my skin.
I needed to get up. I needed Kirana, though she wasn’t here. I was going to die on a bathroom floor, poisoned by an unknown assassin, never to be avenged.