Page 106 of The Ballad of the Vampire Prince

I reach up to touch his face. “I have to see, please.”

I search for the man who helped me move flowerpots and massaged my head at night, the person who became a friend and comforted me in my woes.

A deep sigh lifts his chest and I know I found him.

“Are you afraid of heights?” he suddenly asks.

A strange question. I’ve never really thought about it.

“Not really,” I say, my eyes never leaving his.

“Good.”

I don’t get a warning or the chance to mull over his answer when he suddenly sweeps me right off my feet and propels us both to the sky.

Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods…

The view of the ground alone makes me feel faint. I’m too scared to scream but I hear the high pitch ringing all the same in my skull.He should have at least warn me.

It gets colder the higher we rise in the air. I count the beat of his wings to calm myself.

“Open your eyes,” he coaxes softly in my ear. “It helps with the nausea.”

No, it will not.I shake my head and burrow myself closer to his chest.

“We’re almost there.” I can barely hear him against the whistling wind.

He glides along the turbulent air current to land us over the bay, the maneuver causing my stomach to dip. The man gently eases my bare feet over a solid black boulder on the cliff.

We’re so near to the source of the sound, I can feel the vibrations on the rocks beneath my feet.

“I don’t think the bastard’s necklace can translate dragon’s screech,” he says, casting a glance to Kheirall’s charm hanging over his chest.

“It’s not screech…” I mutter, closing my eyes so I can hear them better. These creatures have a far more complex language system than ours with different dialects and accents. “They can communicate in faerie tongue.”

At least that was how I talk with my friend, Wren, a river dragon I met in Astefar. We spoke with each other through telekinesis.

Frustration overwhelms me as I glance down at the eerie, dark-gray water below. “I can’t see anything.”

Svenn steps beside me, casting a brief look at the ocean. “There’s a seadragon trapped in a metallic confinement.”

My eyes widen in surprise.

I take his hand in mine and begin tracing a prism pattern on his palm. “Does the cage look like this?”

Svenn merely nods.

I clap a hand to my mouth to cover my gasp. “It’s the Gamghat Death Coffin from the Serramande battle seventy years ago.”

My family and the Kashran clan invented it for Aelheim. Rainer ordered for their immediate removal after the war because it keeps trapping innocent sea life, but some of the ones that were missed must have floated here. Another haunting song echoes from the waters, as sad as a lone wolf’s howl.

Come back, please. I’m scared. I’m not even hungry anymore. Just come back and be with me.

Svenn arches a brow when I grab the large boulder next to his foot. “Rhianelle?”

I inhale a single deep breath before I leap from the edge and plunge into the abyss. The cold sea water embraces me, prickling my senses in its wake.

This is reckless, Rhianelle,the Un mutters but they continue to guide me.

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