Chapter 12 Hannah #2
The castle towers loomed through the haze, their silhouettes jagged against the night.
Massive bolts streaked out of their heights, and I made out feathered arrows and barbed harpoons that trailed light as they struck the attacking wyverns.
The wyverns fell back, one beyond the city wall, but then they resumed their attacks, focusing on those towers.
The berserker in the street roared through clenched jaws, and the ones farther away answered.
Piercing shouts tangled with their rumbles as people ran through the streets.
My sightline was partly blocked by the wyvern and the buildings, but I caught glimpses of movement through the alley, cloaks whipping and faces smeared with soot and terror.
Guards and soldiers raced to what was likely their designated positions for the fight.
I looked down the street, and my mouth dropped open.
Entire sections of nearby houses had collapsed, beams jutting out at wrong angles, fires climbing greedily through broken roofs.
Motion dragged my focus back to the wyvern.
Dark shapes flared behind it and spread with a sound like thick fabric snapping in a storm. The shadows thickened and pulled together. The wyvern lurched as those shadows braced, held, and forced its massive body backward, inches at a time.
Kai stood beyond the wyvern, but now dark, sleek, shadowy wings spread from his shoulders and hooked into the stone street with curved wing claws, as if to help ground him.
My heart lurched, and I ran toward him.
He’d planted his feet wide in the torn street and locked his shoulders as if he were holding the world in place by force alone.
Dark tendrils streamed from his hands and wrapped tightly around the wyvern’s neck and jaws, straining toward the pulsing purple gem in its throat.
The air around him shuddered, dust lifting and swirling as if caught in a current that centered on his body.
He kept his gaze fixed on the wyvern like he believed he could intimidate it into compliance by will alone.
The pull in my chest intensified with urgency. My grip tightened on the knife I still held while my legs moved faster. My body leaned forward even as another part of me screamed to run the other way. I wasn’t there for him. I just needed to understand what was going on. That was it.
Olen’s voice cracked through the noise behind me. “Hannah! Listen to me! He’s actually acting like a decent king right now. He’s going to hold the wyvern until the area is cleared. We have to go now! There’s nothing you can do to help.”
He was right. Leaving would be the smart, safe thing to do. I didn't know how to help—I should go with Olen. But I didn’t usually do the safe thing. Besides, I’d never even seen a wyvern before.
I took another step toward Kai.
A scream cut through the night, so raw the chaos settled. I jerked toward it on instinct, ready for a brawl.
On the far side of the wyvern, half-hidden by its bulk, a woman knelt near a collapsed wall.
She looked close to my age. Soot streaked her face, and her hair hung in tangled waves around her shoulders.
One sleeve was torn, and her hands were bloody, her eyes wide and frantic as she shoved at the fallen beam.
A small hand pushed out from beneath the rubble with fingers tiny and trembling as they scrabbled at the air.
“My baby!” The woman’s voice broke as she strained against the beam. “Please—someone—he’s trapped in the cellar.”
The wyvern reared, snarling, and its claws ripped fresh grooves into the stone as it fought the shadows binding it. Fire flared along the rubble near the woman and caught spilled oil, creeping closer to where that small hand disappeared again beneath the debris.
I looked at Olen and waved him off. “Go on! I’ll meet you there!” I wasn’t certain where he was headed, but he’d given me enough details that I could figure it out. I didn’t want to put him in any more danger than he was already facing, especially after he’d helped me.
Bolting over the broken stone, I dodged the wyvern’s tail and skidded to a stop beside the young mother.
The flames were only a couple of feet away from her and building fast. She tugged at the beam, and I realized it was thicker than it had looked from a distance.
I moved beside her, set the knife aside, and said, “Let’s lift on three. ”
She looked at me and nodded, her lips pressed tight.
From inside the cellar, the child cried out, “Mother, don’t leave me!”
“I won’t leave you, sweetheart.” She grabbed the beam again.
I adjusted my grip. “One. Two. Three!” Together, we lifted.
Pain shot up my arms as I shoved. My muscles locked, and my teeth ground together as the wood scraped against stone.
The woman cried and shoved with me, her hands slick with blood and soot and her shoulders shaking as she leaned her weight into it.
The street shuddered, and stone cracked somewhere close by, followed by a heavy crash that rocked the ground.
The wyvern’s tail whipped past in a blur of black scales and slammed into a pile of rubble hard enough to send chunks of stone skittering across the street.
One struck my shin, and I hissed, nearly losing my grip.
Gritting my teeth, I pushed harder, breath tearing out of me in ragged bursts. The beam lifted a fraction, enough for the stones beneath it to shift.
The child’s hands clawed at the gap, pushing aside bits of rubble.
“Climb up!” his mother cried out.
“I can’t! It’s too high.” His voice broke as he started sobbing again.
The sound twisted my heart, and tears pricked my eyes.
I tried to adjust my grip on the beam and brace it against my shoulder, but it was too heavy.
We had to wedge it against something, or it was going to fall and crush all of us.
The fires spread across the rubble, the heat making the snow and ice melt and sizzle as it evaporated.
“Let’s wedge the beam against the wall. I’ll try to hold it up while you get him.” My shoulder already ached, but I braced myself. I refused to let this child die.
Together, we shoved the beam until we’d narrowly wedged it onto another broken beam on the wall. I staggered, bracing my shoulder against the wood to keep it from dropping. The heat spiked as fire crept closer, sparks snapping against my coat. “Hurry!”
She dropped to her knees and started clearing away the rubble as she reached for the child. “I’m coming, sweetheart. Stay calm.”
The beam shuddered against my shoulder as the wall behind it groaned. Stone ground on stone with a low, sickening rumble while dust sifted into my hair and collar. Hot grit stuck to my skin as the fire crept closer, and the heat and smoke stung my eyes.
Another roar tore through the street, setting my teeth on edge.
The wyvern thrashed harder and wrenched its body sideways, as if it were trying to tear free by force alone.
Dark smoke rose outward in billowing coils, the silver and black cords around the wyvern’s snout tightening and flaring in response, pulling taut.
The very air shuddered. The silver light brightened, with lines doubling back on themselves and knotting tighter as if drawn by unseen hands.
The shadows around the wyvern’s neck thickened, dragging it down one inch, then another.
More stones cracked, and the purple light pulsed out of the wyvern’s chest.
Kai staggered and dug his feet harder into the ground, his wings pulsing and the hooks of his wing claws grinding down deeper.
The darkness around him rippled as if struck by a gust. The tendrils at the wyvern’s throat brightened and darkened together, pulsing faster and squeezing around the gem.
The wyvern screamed through clenched jaws and slammed its tail again.
Stone exploded to my left.
The tail clipped the wall hard enough to send a cascade of rubble crashing beside us. Chunks of stone bounced across the ground. One struck the beam with a dull thud that jolted my shoulder. The wall I’d braced it against shifted, and the angle changed enough to make my stomach drop.
“No—no, no,” I gritted out, digging my rubber-soled sneakers into the rubble as the beam sagged.
The mother gasped and lunged for her child, her shaking hands clawing at loose stone. Flames surged closer, licking the base of the wall, and smoke poured upward in thick, choking waves.
“Hurry!” The word ripped from me as I shoved upward with everything I had left. My arms screamed, and my muscles burned as I kept the beam in place by sheer will. “You have to hurry! I can’t—”
The wall shifted again. I groaned and kept hold despite my vision blurring as heat rolled over us in suffocating waves. A pained cry rose in my chest. Then the plaster crumbled.