Page 16 of Vicious Is My Throne

“Fine. But if he bites off your head, don’t come crying to me,” I warned.

“Your concern is touching, wife.” But Tavion pursed his lips, looking like he was having second thoughts as he fingered the point of his blade. “I’m not really hurting him. Barely enough to roust him.”

“Yeah, good luck explaining that when he’s chewing your face off.” I blasted a semicircle around Tristan’s bulk then shook out my frozen fingers. Another few minutes and he’d be engulfed. “Fine. We’re out of options, but Tristan’s tiny little lizard brain will never grasp that fact.”

I walked the entire circumference of our little sanctuary, shoving Corvus’s blight back, cutting a wide, deep channel around us like a moat around a castle. Then I bent over, gasping for air. “That was everything I had.” I met Tavion’s gaze. “I’m out.”

“Here goes.”

Everything happened so fast. Tavion plunged his knife into the wyvern’s flank. Tristan burst up off the ground and lunged straight into the blighted darkness. He would have, if I hadn’t stepped right in front of him, arms spread wide, flinching away from those fearsome teeth.

“Oh gods, please don’t eat me. Tavion’s the one who stabbed you.”

Tristan’s diamond shaped head snapped around like a snake’s, a flicker of flame leaking out between his curved teeth as he stared Tavion down.

“You were stuck in some kind of stasis.” I talked fast, having no idea if Tristan could even understand me. “Raziel and Zor are safe, but they’re unconscious. We need to get out of here.” I pointed to the encroaching blight. “We’re out of time.”

The wyvern stomped around the perimeter of the small area, taloned feet digging holes into the ground, sniffing at the blight, jerking back at the foul odor. “There’s no other way out of here except to fly.”

I pointed to the stormy sky. “You can carry us, one by one.”

“Two at a time,” Tavion corrected me. “One of us holding Raz or Zorander.” Tavion sized me up. “I’ll take Raz; he weighs more.”

“Can you do that?” I asked Tristan softly, running my fingers down his neck, the scales changing color beneath my fingertips. “Carry us two at a time?” I glanced around the small clearing. “You won’t have much room to take off. We’d need to reach Nightcairn, but it’s not far.”

“Five miles.” Tavion pointed north. “That way.”

Tristan purred, pushing his giant head against me, and I ran my fingers along the sides of his face. “Is that a yes? Because we really need it to be a yes.”

He chuffed as if to say, of course it is.

Tavion pointed to the wyvern. “Climb on and I’ll hoist Zorander up. You’ll have to hold onto Tristan and keep Zor from sliding off. Can you do that?”

“You could stab them, too, and yank them out of their comas.” I winced, not believing I’d actually suggested such a thing.

But Tavion already had his knife out, wickedness glinting in his eyes as he raised it over his head. “I’m telling them this was your idea.”

“You are such an arsehole.”

I gagged when the knife went into Zor’s thigh, but his eyes flickered open a few seconds later, then Raziel was awake, both of them in a stupor, but mobile. I stuck a knife into my boot then secured my extra set of leathers over my shoulder with a belt.

Tavion lifted me onto Tristan’s back and helped Zorander on behind me, his shaking arms wrapping around my waist, the cloak barely covering his bare legs. Once we got into the air, the temperature would plummet.

“Hang on tight, Zor.” I clamped my hand over his and grasped one of Tristan’s spikes, my fingers too numb to work properly, rain and wind lashing my raw face.

I nearly spilled off one side when Tristan lifted off, the tops of the trees growing closer then gone, the ground receding at a furious pace until Tavion and Raziel stared straight up at me, huddled in the center of that tiny speck of untouched land.

Then I lost sight of them, barely able to hang on as the full force of the storm slammed into us, rain and wind and thunder powerful enough to rattle bones.

“Fuck, I should have set down another perimeter.”

But now it was too late because we were soaring over the thick forest. From up here, the destruction was clear and terrible. A swath of blackness stretched from the creek bed all the way north, disappearing into the foothills of the Taranth Mountains.

I expected that black crossed the Pale and crawled along the edge of the High Barrens all the way to the Hammer, where Corvus spewed out his corrosive magic like poison. “Fly faster, Tristan,” I urged, my heart lurching in my chest.

Nightcairn stood directly in his path.

If this blight had taken over Tavion’s home, was Lucius safe? What about Dane?

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