Page 31 of Until the End of Ever
SILVER
“We’re gonna die,” I announced, in case that wasn’t obvious to everyone here.
“Yep,” Barron agreed.
“Ninety percent chance,” François estimated.
“Obviously,” Isla pipped in.
Irwin, for his part, started to cry.
All six of us were hidden behind a boulder, but it was only a matter of time before one of the demons flying ahead in circles, searching, scanning the area with their keen eyes before burning it all to a crisp, spotted us again. Especially with the bloody sobbing.
I wasn’t one to kick someone while they were done, but if he got us all killed, he deserved it. “I swear to all the gods, if you give away our position, I am chucking you up in the air so they can snack on you while we run,” I hissed.
“Cheer up. It’s not that bad,” said Gideon, with a damned chuckle. “We’re all alive!”
Not that bad.
Not that bad!
“My hair’s burned to a crisp!” I reminded him. “And so’s your shirt.”
He looked down, as though surprised to find himself shirtless. “Oh. No, I removed it. It started to get hot out there.”
I kicked him. Maybe his “ouch!” would end up catching the attention of the predators, but it made me feel better anyway.
“They’re flying away,” Alden Stillwater whispered, peering from behind our poor concealment. “Still circling, though. I think we’re not who they’re looking for. Whatever they’re hunting, it’s their priority. I think they just wanted us out of the way.”
Great. My hair had been sacrificed as a mere warning.
Barron was the first to speak. “I say, let them have their prey.”
“Hear, hear,” I said, glad some of my fellow trainees packed some sense today.
François nodded. “Seconded.”
“Can we go home?” Irwin bawled.
I focused all of my attention of Gideon, hoping that my eyes conveyed what I had too much good manners to say out loud: “Please, fire him after this.”
Gideon shrugged. Coward.
“What if the prey is like, a unicorn?” Alden countered. “Or a chimera, a sphynx…”
I realized all these creatures were sacred to one god or another, and after the trip to Delphi, I took that fact a lot more seriously than I had last week, but… “Better them than the rest of my hair?”
I couldn’t understand why they sent only two protectors with a bunch of trainees to huntdragons.
Well, technically, all the other protectors had been on assignments when the emergency alarm had blasted, but really, what the hell were the six of us supposed to do?
Yes, Gideon was a badass, and Alden, with his fae blood, silent, fast, and deadly, but there were a dozen bloody dragons.
François was a transfer from the Paris Huntsmen. Apparently, he didn’t do well with night assignments, so he decided to try his luck in Highvale instead. He wasn’t too bad; out of the four trainees, he was the only one who could last more than twelve seconds on the training mat against me.
Barron aimed to become a runner, and that was all there was to say about him. He’d spend his life solving petty crimes and charging after kids who thought fire spells were a good practical joke.
When Isla initially joined the Guard, she intended to become an inquisitor, but I talked her out of it. She had a brain, the physical aptitude, and unlike me, a fair amount of magic. She was going to take the trials to become a protector, like me. Hopefully, we’d be paired together.
