Page 150 of The Queens and the Kings
He protested. This process wouldn’t be pleasant, but it would make their desired outcome possible. If she survived so muchvenom at the Unseen Island, she’d survive it here. She clamped gently on his snout with her fingers and thumb.
“You want out of here alive?”
His wings slackened. He licked her with his forked tongue. With a loving smile, she returned her focus to the Keepers. The main question had more to do with their escape. Once freed, she assumed the wyverns would fly away. Would they leave her behind?
Too late, she realized she should have negotiated her own life. Did wyverns negotiate? If so, how? Too late to think about now.
Shaking the collecting questions free, she peered around the wyvern again. Two of the Keepers split away, heading north. One lingered. The other headed to the western doorway, which probably hid access to their water source.
Three Keepers down.
One to go. He lounged against a rock, arms folded over his chest, lazily scanning the area. Clearly, he was in no hurry to attend to his duties. Whatever those might be.
Denerfen, tottering off her shoulder with his nose in the air, nearly toppled to her waist. The wyvern that escaped with her hid behind a rock wall toward the western door. Undoubtedly, the Keepers would know something was amiss if that wyvern popped back up, having been set on a ship days ago. He glared at her, eyes slotted, as if to silently tell her to hurry up.
She stuck her tongue out.
The lounging Keeper yawned, straightened up, and shuffled to the side. Instead of leaving, he eased behind the rocks that hid the keys.
Rather inconvenient.
“Shite.”
The other Keepers, walking amongst the wyverns, lazily went about their routine. Food appeared. A few wyverns ate, but mosthesitated. This, too, didn’t appear unnatural. Then again, what would giant beasts do all day in the ultra hot sun? Britt sweated until, finally, the remaining Keeper slumped over, asleep. Not ideal, but her first opportunity.
She nudged her dragul. Denerfen perked up his wings, building the venom in his throat. Britt braced herself. “As much as you can.”
He protested again.
She gestured with a jerk of her thumb. “We have to get those keys and he’s asleep. If we’re quiet, we can make it work.”
The gentle snap of his teeth along her neck was a willing agreement.
Britt rubbed the back of her neck. “Grab as many keys as you can without making noise, then find the wyvern it belongs to. I’ll gather the rest. We have to be silent.”
He puffed, huffing as he accessed the venom from a pouch draguls kept in their gut. Britt cast one last glance at the rock area, saw nothing had changed, and braced herself.
“Now!”
His teeth grazed the hairs along the back of her neck, paused, then sank in all at once. She sucked in a sharp breath. The venom oozed into her skin like a gush of cold water. Invisibility began at the top and worked its way down.
Britt’s legs were still visible when she darted out behind the wyvern to cross a patch of dusty ground between rock piles. No wyverns sat here, which made the approach more difficult. The other Keepers stayed busy, and didn’t seem to notice her scuffling around. Heat and fire and energy buzzed in her veins. The whirling venom gave her an otherworldly sensation. Her heart raced with her expanding world.
Footsteps puffed in her wake as she sprinted, but the Keepers didn’t note. Two wyverns maintained a wary eye on her, but the rest pretended to doze, though their half-lidded eyes wereanything but sleepy. In fact, every wyvern seemed far more awake now than before.
Britt slowed as she approached the keys. The Keeper, snoring lightly in the persuasive sun, didn’t twitch when she paused three steps away. She peered around the edge of the waist-high rock. Next to the Keeper's stomach and stretching out in a row hung twenty different keys. They dangled from notches cut into the rock. The carefully created intricacy on each key spoke to painstaking details.
Britt reached for the closest one, pinched it between two fingers, and lifted it. It gave way without resistance. She held her breath as the Keeper twitched, but didn’t awaken. Britt swung it off the peg, handed it to Denerfen. He grasped it in his left foreclaw. She raised another one. Denerfen took that in his right foreclaw and jetted away, low to the ground.
She glanced over her shoulder. Because of boulders and a dip in the ground, this spot provided no vantage point to see the other Keepers.
With the venom coursing through her, she stole keys four, five, six, and seven without obstruction. When the eighth key clinked against the wall, the Keeper snorted and blinked awake. Britt froze, one hand wrapped around the ninth key.
The Keeper yawned, rubbed a hand over his face. Observing nothing, he readjusted his stance and slumped onto his folded arms. His eyes drifted up and down lazily, then closed. He breathed deeply.
Britt cursed in her head. The fool had covered up the last seven keys. Irritated, she snatched the rest of them off their pegs and stuffed them in her pockets. Denerfen returned, flapping near her ankles. She passed him keys twelve and thirteen. The Keeper’s soft belly covered the rest.
A swift kick in the backside would knock him out of the way, but it wouldn’t buy enough time to nick the remainingkeys undetected. Denerfen was too small to create a viable distraction, and anyway, she didn’t want him spotted.
