Page 5 of A War of Crowns

Thud. Thud. Thud.

The sound of a crash from down below sent Hedley’s heart to leaping into his throat again. Hands trembling, he scrambled to uncoil Alyx from around his shoulders so he could fit the harness to her.

Each of his breaths rattled loudly in the darkness of the Roost. His clammy fingers fumbled with the buckles meant to strap the harness around an usuru’s wings. Alyx hissed when he pinched her feathers between the strips of leather by mistake.

“Who are you?” Master Eldrede’s voice trembled up the staircase—thin and frail. “What areyou—?”

A wet gurgle preceded another thud as the Keeper was cut off mid-sentence.

Hedley leapt toward the nearest desk, accidentally knocking over a pot of ink. Cursing quietly to himself as the dark liquid soaked into the edges of the nearest piece of parchment, he grabbed a quill, dipped it into the spreading pool, and haphazardly wrote upon the marred sheet:

Fort Mysai under attack. Arath—

The thud of two pairs of boots coming up the staircase saw him abandoning further details in favor of just grabbing the still wet note and stuffing it into the case now strapped to Alyx’s back.

His time was up.

“Ah, there he is,” a woman purred from somewhere in the darkness behind him. Her voice was warm. Intimate.

Hedley whirled to face her, his arms wrapped protectively around Alyx’s sinuous form.

Two silhouettes lingered in the deep shadows of the Roost—one male, one female. Both were far taller than he was. But it was the one on the left who gave him pause.

The woman.

There was something queer about her eyes. Somethingoff. They seemed to glow in the dark like a cat’s eyes, molten in their golden gleam.

Hedley swallowed hard and took a step backward. The little usuru in his arms hissed out a warning to the approaching strangers.

His ma had told him stories about women with those sorts of eyes. Stories he thought had just been stories meant to keep him and Dane from misbehaving when they were young.

But here she was—one of his childhood nightmares in the flesh.

“You’re a…” Hedley began, his throat dry, his voice hoarse. Swallowing, he tried again. “…a…awitch.”

Within the feeble light trickling through the nearby window, he thought he saw the woman smile. “So they tell me,” she cooed back to him, earning an annoyed-sounding hiss from the man with her.

“Hand over the usuru, boy,” the man demanded.

But the woman drew a dagger from the sheath at her hip. It slipped forth soundlessly, its blade as dark as the ink staining the nearby desk.

Though he was sure it was simply a trick of the eye, that small knife seemed to absorb what little light existed within this part of the Roost, making the space around the weapon’s edge all the darker for it.

Hedley tightened his grip on Alyx, sending the sleek usuru to squirming in protest. He knew he would have only one opportunity to do this—only one opportunity to win Alyx’s freedom so she could carry her message home, to Elmoria.

“He’s going to misbehave,” the witch rightfully surmised in the split second before Hedley threw himself backward into the bookcase just behind him. The pain in his left shoulder jolted froma dull throb to a hot, searing agony when he inadvertently forced the arrow embedded there even deeper with the movement.

Glass shattered and spilled across the floor like motes of stardust when the corner of the bookcase toppled into the window, giving him the opening he needed.

“Fly, girl! Fly!” Hedley screamed to Alyx as he twisted his body and tossed the usuru toward the broken windowpane. Though the large Arathian lunged for her, the winged serpent slithered her sinuous body through the yawning maw of broken glass and into the starless night before the man could grab hold of her escaping form.

She was free.

Bracing his own hands against the window’s ledge, Hedley breathed a sigh of relief when Alyx’s silhouette climbed fast into the night—a streak of shadow and little more.

Within a single breath, his relief frosted back into a heart-wrenching fear when another body suddenly crushed itself against his back and something sharp ripped its way into his chest.

Eyes wide, Hedley tried to breathe, but he no longer had any breath. He tried to move, but he no longer had any strength.

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