Page 141 of The Queens and the Kings
Towardthe Siren Queens.
No wonder the wyvern flew so high! The storm clouds here were relentlessly thick and miserable and terrible, casting a gray, withering deluge.
As they flew, a physical shock ripped through the wyvern. He screamed. Jostling to the side, the wyvern corrected to the left, then right. He flapped harder, bellowing as if attacked. Britt clutched his spiny neck and prayed he didn’t buck her off. After twenty seconds of teeth-jarring fighting, he calmed.
Through the pounding chaos, an ethereal, vague song drifted on the air.
Oh,whata song.
Melodic, dramatic, torn from the depths of soul. Both majestic and horrifying at the same time. The music reached into Britt’s soul and gripped her, taking control. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Her mind turned to mud. Denerfen cried out, as if in pain, and plunged under her arm to hide his ears.
The song wound through the sky, weakened by the thud of wing and roaring wind. The wyvern banked to the right as soon as the song began. Drunk with the sound, Britt swayed on the wyvern’s back. When Denerfen shrieked repeatedly, the Wyvern King’s head snapped around. His sharp eyes narrowed on Britt’s.
“Is that,” she whispered, “a Siren Queen?”
Darkness rushed up to her at once.
Britt jerked awake, sucking in a breath so quickly she coughed. In between passing out and waking up, the world had dramatically changed. The previously choppy flight was easy and smooth. An utterly still sky, flung fluffy clouds from side to side.
Quiet.
Stillness.
“So this,” she murmured, “is what it’s like to truly fly.”
The previous experience was torture in comparison. Denerfen nibbled on her ear, tugging. He made a sound in his throat that confused her. A quick survey confirmed that he appeared . . . weak. Exhausted. His slow, labored blinks roused concern.
“Den?” she whispered.
He nipped at the pad of her thumb, which he always did when hungry.
Britt straightened.
Wherewerethey?
The sun stood directly overhead, so either hours had passed, or an entire day. Her muscles ached, her throat thickened from thirst. She scrubbed a hand over her eyes, remembering a storm. A song.
The Siren Queen’s song.
She caught her gasp as the weary wyvern lowered out of high clouds with half-hearted wing beats. Familiar land waited. The steep-pitched cliffs of Klipporno. The expansive wharf and ships dotting the ocean.
Had they traveled all the way from the Westlands without her realizing it? The Siren Queen’s song had sent her into an unconscious oblivion. Daunting. She snorted. They thought the wyvernscouldn’tfly for very long. This Wyvern King more than quadrupled expectations.
He angled them lower, passing over land toward the not-so-distant confines of the wyvern pen. Her heart rose into her throat, along with her stomach, as their altitude dropped.
“Take it easy!” she cried.
Open air morphed to plush fields and rocky hills. They soared over the alpine peaks of the giant wyvern pen and into utter stillness without a wing flap to betray their presence. No Keepers were visible as the wyvern descended.
Denerfen stuck his head out of her hair, nostrils opening and closing. Eagerness thrummed through him like an energy current. She reached up to touch him, finding calmness in his presence.
“Returning to their arena is either a good thing or a very bad thing,” she murmured.
Denerfen agreed with a tiny burst of sound from the back of his mouth. The wyvern stopped flying to hover near the outer pen edge. Dirt skittered. Like shifting shadows, wyverns emerged from the deep, dark dens. Their spying eyes sent a shiver all the way down her spine. Ten, twelve, fifteen, nineteen wyverns emerged in a circle.
Every eye trained on her.
She swallowed her rising fear.
