Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 59723 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 299(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59723 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 299(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
I place a hand on each aklo. Again, no internal shredding. But the poison is working fast; it’s more potent. I call up the antidote and funnel it to their inner organs.
Not enough. They need five, six times that dose.
I’ll be drained of the essential herbs soon.
How many others need help?
I scrunch my eyes shut and pour magic into their bodies. One life at a time. I still have my Poison Halting Miracle; still have my mask.
The aklos wake simultaneously, hauling in hard breaths, coughing. Their coughs turn into sobbing gags as they see their dead comrades.
“Take the boat,” I order. With wyverns congregating at the gala, the scholars’ quarters will be safer. “Bring as many bodies as you can to the apothecary.”
I press onwards. Dozens of abandoned stalls line the top of the bank. Help any wounded. Stay on the periphery of the fight, safe as possible. Being dead won’t help anyone.
Wind howls, carrying the metallic tang of blood. Magic collides in bursts of crackling light, each impact shaking the ground.
And beneath it all—the frightened cries of children.
They’re close. I creep around a row of stalls—
A group huddles under a table. Florentius stands protectively in front of them, one hand pouring healing magic into a bloodied child sprawled on crimson-streaked grass; the other struggling to maintain a flickering shield against a lone water wyvern.
My heart rams against my ribs.
He must have—
His shield sputters.
The wyvern soars upward, wings slicing the air. It twists mid-flight, then plunges with lethal precision.
His protection won’t hold.
I don’t know sentinian spells. But . . .
My eyes dart around the surrounding stalls. Brooches, scarves, umbrellas.
I lunge for an umbrella with a sharp metal tip and hurl it, spear-like, with desperate force. It pierces the liquid body of the wyvern and snaps open as it bursts apart.
It won’t stay gone for long.
I sprint toward Florentius and the children. “Focus on the shield,” I shout. “I’ll help the boy.”
He barks out instructions and my magic funnels seamlessly into the child as Florentius extracts his and thickens his shield.
The boy needs stitching up, urgently, but his poisoning is just as urgent. I keep my spell steady. Carefully pluck out my poison halting miracle. Pop it into his mouth.
The spell floods through him, freezing the poison.
Florentius grunts at another hit, buckles under the force of it. “Not strong enough. Can’t last much longer.”
I sweep my gaze around the stalls, the queen’s palace a hundred yards away. The canal is thirty. But I can’t be sure the boat is there, or that wounded wyverns aren’t recovering in those depths.
I shudder. Only one choice. “We must get to the palace.”
A vicious screech.
The boy whines and opens his eyes. He panics and scrambles to his friends under the table.
“We need to get you behind thick walls.”
They cuddle their arms and legs harder.
“Can you be brave for each other?”
One rocks on his heels and crawls out. “My mummy’s inside.”
The others follow his lead, crying for their mothers too.
“Hold hands, follow close.”
Down the long aisle of stalls we race, toward the palace. Florentius retreats with us, struggling to hold his shield. His breathing is hard, laboured. Audible over the sniffing of the children.
Close to us, to the north, the sky swarms with a dozen wyverns.
Don’t notice us.
One is terrifying enough—
It bashes against Florentius’s weakening shield and he staggers. Claws rip through the magic.
He lets out an agonised cry and falls to his knees, forcing all his power into the shield. “Get the children to safety. Wyvern water touched them.”
I whip my head towards the trembling children. Not only shaking with fear, but with the effects of poison.
Florentius is injured too.
Fear claws at my insides. I look from Florentius to the wyvern above, writhing wickedly towards us.
We’re a few dozen yards from the palace. Too far.
We have to try anyway. I urge the children into a run.
Magic blasts behind us—Florentius trying to give us a chance—
Another wyvern dips and soars between us and safety.
A shield, a shield . . .
The children scream as I pull them behind me and cast a measly green-hued shield.
The wyvern squalls, hail shooting from its mouth. Wingtips like ice-daggers slice the air—
The doors of the palace swing open. A female figure leaps out and twirls in the air, skirts and hair billowing as she throws a glittery silver shield. The wyvern smashes into it and splashes apart, and our saviour punches her shield towards the north.
She throws out another blast of magic. The wyvern before Florentius is hurled through stalls.
She turns to me. Big eyes, upturned nose, the gentlest of faces. Recognition, despite my mask.
A hundred feelings throttle me at once.
I nod and Veronica nods back, questions, curiosities, everything pushed aside.
“Come with me,” she says. “Your mothers are inside.”
They run, with her protection, into the palace and I return to Florentius, skidding on my knees to catch him as he loses consciousness. His body is heavy and limp. His right arm has been clawed but his organs are all intact. Poison is heading rapidly for his heart, exertion moving it faster. At most, he has fifteen minutes.