After crossing the noisy room in a half-dazed state, Erin barely registered it when the Aeriemaster gently squeezed her hand in congratulations. “My apologies. I should have expected this, and had you here at the ready. It seems that Wrath wishes to reward you for stopping the thief this morning and saving her keets.”

The girl started to speak, but couldn’t get the words out. She’d been hiding all evening, broken up over her tiff with Desmond. The truth was, she almost didn’t come to the apartment when it was time for the assigning. After what Desmond had said with Leslyn’s mouth, she almost gave up altogether. Almost.

Now she was inside Wrath’s cage, the immense blue staring her down with perked ears and eyes bigger than her hand. The mother picked up the gray keet in her talons, lifted it out of the nest, and placed it in front of the girl. That done, Wrath arched her neck and puffed her mane out.

Erin looked down at the keet, who blinked up at her with lovely orange-gold eyes.

“Hold out your hands, like this,” Gunu instructed, cupping his own and raising them toward Wrath. “You’re accepting a gift.”

She did as she was told, realizing too late exactly what was about to happen. Wrath had remained poised with her neck arched overhead until that very moment, when her eyes seemed to tweak off in different directions and she heaved a stream of hot, slimy red sludge into the girl’s waiting hands. The smell of sour iron was thick and exquisite.

Erin stared at the mound of jiggling gore in horror for the moment before she was hit by a flash of heat and started gagging uncontrollably. She could hear tones of offense in the voices that spoke up around her, but she was beyond comprehending their words. Then Gunu was there, keeping a steadying grip on her shoulder and holding a wooden bowl out. She leaned over it, but froze at an abrupt yelp from the Aeriemaster.

“The meat, girl. Drop the meat into it. If you must vomit, it belongs on the floor.”

She released the gelatinous sludge and didn’t even have time to wipe her hands before Gunu shoved the bloody bowl into them. His firm but gentle push guided her down to a crouch where she waited, holding the bowl between her knees. She was breathing through her mouth then, tears streaming down her cheeks, as the gray keet let out an excited chirp and plunged its beak into the bowl, then threw back its head and drank down a mouthful of the sludge.

In a frenzy, the other keets had begun to converge in a noisy, terrifying swarm of fluff and razor-tipped beaks, but Wrath stopped them by curling a wing about the rim of the nest, walling them in.

Somehow, Erin managed to hold onto the bowl long enough for the keet to feed with a desperate hunger, wolfing down the “gift” given by its mother. Afterward, it shook its head, spraying the girl with remains of its meal. Gunu took the bowl and touched her shoulder, signaling her to rise. As unsteady as she was, she was too slow for his taste to lift her bloody hands out of the keet’s reach, so he scooped both of them into his free hand and held them up, lifting her to her feet in the process.

One of the workers took the wooden bowl from the Aeriemaster and exchanged it for a basin of water and a wet towel. With unusually warm eyes, Gunu himself dunked Erin’s hands, carefully washed them with the towel, then took a new towel and moved on to the splatters on her cheeks and chin. The simple gesture was more than just the physical act of wiping the gore from her skin. There was something about it, she thought as she watched the Aeriemaster’s kind face, that felt symbolic.

In any case, the cleansing helped to wash away the horror, and when it was done, Erin looked down to see the keet waiting by her feet and gazing up at her with a loving, half-lidded look that she always associated with felines. Fitting, since they were part lion. She crouched down and stroked it on the head. It was the first time she’d ever touched any griffin, and the fluff that covered it was as silky-soft as it looked. The little creature leaned into her touch, tilting its head so her fingers scratched its cheek, all the while making a sound similar to the cooing of doves. At the same time, it was also very like the purring of a kitten. She laughed softly.

“Good, good. It’s already bonding well,” Gunu said. “As of this first feeding, it’s forgotten it ever had a mother.” He gestured toward an open space against the far wall of the cage. “Wrath is choosing her next candidate. Move out of the way, but don’t pick up your keet. Just start walking.”

Erin was delighted to find that when she stepped in that direction, the keet followed. As if tied to her ankle by an invisible rope, it kept pace step after step, refusing to be separated from her. As soon as she could, she knelt and pet it some more, already thinking of possible names for it.

Meanwhile, Wrath had selected the largest red keet and was staring down her circle of hopefuls. There was one male soldier with reddish hair that she seemed the most interested in. Erin wasn’t sure if it could be because his hair was close to the keet’s color, or maybe because he was the tallest and widest of the bunch. Perhaps both?

On hind legs, she approached the young man with slow steps, her wings gradually spreading above her until they nearly touched the ceiling. His eyes bulged as she loomed over him, but fear held him stock still. The female soldier next to him, a waif by comparison, touched his elbow. He began to shake, but he had the sense to put his hands together and hold them up, where they wavered like a flag in the wind.

Wrath tilted her head, and Erin could swear she actually sneered. The griffin bent and shoved him backward onto his rear with a thrust of her beak.

“Out, now,” the Aeriemaster barked.

The soldier scrambled backward on the floor and was helped to his feet by a studious yank on the back of his collar, courtesy of Koben. Gunu opened the door for him. Wrath let out a shriek of disgust to encourage him to go faster on his way out of the cage, but she needn’t have bothered. He was gone in moments, leaving the apartment entirely.

If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

With another tilt of her head, Wrath considered the small woman who’d tried to snap the soldier out of his freeze. This time, she sniffed the hopeful, her mane flaring with curiosity. The woman pressed her lips together as the griffin’s rancid breath blew on her face, but she held her ground. It seemed to be enough for Wrath, for she drew back and arched her neck in same way she’d done for Erin.

With a bright smile, the soldier held up her hands to catch Wrath’s awful “gift.” A few minutes later, after the cleansing of her hands, she joined Erin with her own keet, completely absorbed in tracing her fingers along the planes of its face and examining its stubby, featherless wings.

“A wise choice,” Captain Tannoran muttered thoughtfully to Koben. “It might have passable agility in the air with a rider that small.”

The prince just nodded, too focused on the goings-on to offer his own comments.

Erin didn’t think Wrath’s choice had anything to do with agility at all.

Next, Wrath singled out a middling-sized black. Right away, Kaleit stepped forward. That earned him an ear-piercing scream to the face—one that made nearly every person in the apartment jump. Erin and her keet were no exception, the keet emitting a frightened squeak and flinging itself against her leg. One of its flailing wings caught her shin with a talon, and she grunted in pain. It wasn’t exactly the way she’d have liked it to turn out, but she certainly agreed with the mother’s actions. “Idiot,” she huffed under her breath.

The blue leveled her lime green eyes with Kaleit, who stubbornly glared in return. Her beak inched ever closer to him, eventually forcing him to step back. After that, she ignored him completely, looking over the other candidates. He glanced over his shoulder at Gunu, who motioned for him to stay. Apparently, that was not a dismissal. Too bad, Erin thought.

As she looked around the semicircle of hopefuls, Wrath’s gaze fell on Leslyn. Erin felt a pang of worry, but stuffed it back down with a firm mental shove. What did she need to worry about that jerk for? It was just the beginning of the story. Wrath wouldn’t hurt someone as important as—

Erin stared off at nothing as she realized what she’d just been thinking. None of this was really real… was it? She regarded her keet, awed by the way it looked directly into her eyes with such intensity, as if trying to speak. She could almost hear it telling her it loved her. Her pant leg was stained with her own blood, and it transferred to her finger, warm and wet, when she touched it. The pungent stink of half-digested meat still hung on the air, so thickly that she could taste it if she accidentally opened her mouth and breathed in. It certainly felt real.

As if reacting to a sudden call, she looked out into the crowd and saw Queen Katharesa looking right back at her. There it was again. That odd, pulling sensation. She clutched the purple gem of her mother’s necklace, taking comfort from its familiar shape in her palm.

Erin instinctively shielded herself with her arms as Wrath bellowed once more, decisively ejecting another hopeful from the circle. She was definitely getting serious now, sending this one flying with a swing of her head.

“All of you, move back from the nest,” the Aeriemaster warned. “She’s becoming territorial. Either she’ll start choosing quickly to get it over with, or she’ll slow this to a crawl to be absolutely certain of her decisions.”

For a time, she did move things along much faster, starting with getting rid of all of the hopefuls who didn’t meet her standards. Not one more keet was given away until only eleven men and women remained. From there, she handed them out like candy, almost as if it didn’t matter who got which keet.

At last, only three keets remained: the second red keet, the first-hatched black, and the yellow wind-egger, who lay motionless on its side against the far rim of the nest. Waiting to claim two of those keets were Kaleit and Leslyn… just Kaleit and Leslyn. Judging by the many sad or dismissive looks others were sending in its direction, Erin was not the only one who suspected that the littlest keet didn’t have much time left.

After some consideration, Wrath brought forward her red keet. She looked off above Leslyn and Kaleit without even giving them so much as a glance, scanning the crowd once more. After several minutes, she began to creel and pace, searching the same areas over and over again, but finding no one worthy of her child.

Suddenly, Kaleit stepped forward again. Wrath instantly turned, her eyes flashing. With a snake-like movement of her neck, she lowered her head and stalked toward him. When they were face to face, she issued a deep growl of warning, mane rising along her spine. The room was utterly silent but for her rumbling.

Kaleit took another step.

Wrath opened her maw wide in a hiss, revealing the upper row of teeth that lay behind her sharply-curved beak before snapping it shut with a loud clack, inches from his nose.

“Kaleit, stand down,” came Gunu’s tense voice.

“I’ve waited four years too long for this,” Kaleit growled through bared teeth. “I want it more than anything else.”

When he dared speak, she drew up to strike, but something made her pause, a ripple running through her flared mane. She waited.

He glared up at the griffin, sweat on his brow and fists clenched into tight balls. “Choose me, Wrath. I’ll prove to you that I am worthy. I’ll make your keet into the strongest alpha griffin you’ve ever seen.”

Whether it was his words or the behest of her own inner thoughts, by the slowest of degrees, the massive griffin began to relax. Her creased face still conveyed rage and mistrust for the youth, but there was something that felt different in the way she beheld him. A recognition that was not there before. Was it respect? Approval?

While Erin found Kaleit’s desperate expression terribly fierce, she thought his father’s eyes were ugly, as was his smile: bright and wicked with the assumption of victory. But that victory did not come.

Wrath became unsettled again, a groan rising from her gut as she began to pant in extreme distress. She whirled away from Kaleit and paced the length of her cage.

With the immediate danger of his opponent so suddenly removed, Kaleit’s shoulders sagged, and he stood still for several long moments, watching her with a stunned look on his face.

Abruptly, Wrath spotted someone in the crowd. She rushed to the bars, thrusting her beak through.

Gunu hurried to see where she was looking, then beckoned the young man to the door. Pale with fear, the man came to meet the Aeriemaster. No one expected Wrath to charge them, crushing the chosen one carelessly beneath her talons as she bolted through the newly-opened door. Gunu barely ducked aside in time to avoid the same treatment.

Screams split the air as the gathered observers threw themselves from their seats and standing places, stampeding to the opposite side of the room to avoid the beast’s flailing wings. Wrath ignored them all, making straight for the exit as if her tail had caught fire.

When she was gone, no one moved.

After a moment’s hesitation, Captain Tannoran joined the Aeriemaster where he stood over the still form of the young man, and knelt to check on him. “Dead,” he announced. Someone in the crowd cried out for their lost one. “Gunu, Koben, with me. General Xavara, Captain Esmor, to our griffins.”

He commanded the audience to stay put, then the three Guard officials fled the room with the Aeriemaster and prince. Erin shouted for him to stop, but Leslyn followed them anyway, keeping pace with an equally-determined Kaleit. She might have chased after them but for the infant griffin who clung to her leg.

She couldn’t help but look again at the mauled lump that had once been alive, now resting in a red pool by the cage door.

She fervently prayed that no one else would have to meet the same fate.