Aaaand just like that, Leslyn was completely flim-flammed into helping carry out the very plan he’d been dead set against.

Not because he held any particular affection for Erin, but out of that same outlandish sense of duty and valor that was constantly bubbling up within him every time something even slightly dangerous happened within his vicinity.

The sorts of things that never happened in Gerrit.

His former prospects of living out a quiet life back home, doing simple tasks like feeding chickens and picking cooking herbs, well… those things were beginning to seem downright ideal in light of that day’s events.

He’d only heard a little of the plan, but enough that he knew that everyone had been assigned a number of riderless griffins to release, and there was some kind of time limit to get it done. Erin had mentioned three of something, near the old linen closet. That must have been where her griffins’ apartments were.

Despite being called “old,” that particular closet was still used daily, its name used to differentiate it from a new linen closet that had been recently built elsewhere in the Aerie. Leslyn was grateful for its continued usage, taking the opportunity to pluck out a blanket and shake it loose. He quickly transferred Valiant from his shirt to the blanket and gladly put his own garment back on. The keets’ apartment had gotten quite warm, but the rest of the Aerie was less so.

He turned his attention to the nearby apartments, whose occupants occasionally whistled or roared, depending on whether the wyverns were going over or Wrath was carrying on again, starting a wave of angry griffin calls that quickly spread across the entire Aerie.

It was a simple matter to stand off to the side as he pulled each griffin’s door open, giving the animals plenty of space to bolt from their cages. As each one ran by him, he felt a twinge of guilt and fear. Would they perform as the recruits hoped, or would they just fly away? Was he helping to send them all to their deaths in the mouths of the wyverns?

“I wish you could speak,” he said to Valiant as he stooped to pick up the swaddled keet, “so you could tell me whether I’m as much of an idiot as I think I am for doing this.”

Valiant just looked at him intently with those pale blue eyes, and, not for the first time, Leslyn found himself wondering if the keet did actually understand him.

“Well, I suppose we should go see how the others are doing.”

He walked back across the Aerie, cradling Valiant in his arms and rocking him gently, like a manling baby. It was incredibly calming—for Leslyn, that is.

In fact, he felt so serene by the time he passed Wrath’s apartment that her insane-sounding bellows and screams were mere annoyances, hopefully soon to be forgotten once he rejoined the other recruits in the keets’ apartment.

Wait… Wrath? Wasn’t she supposed to be—?

The sudden squeal of sliding metal felt to Leslyn’s ears like the sound of shattering glass.

He barely had time to turn before his vision was filled with a massive blur of sky blue. Somehow, he got Valiant to safety by sliding the wrapped keet across the floor, but there was no time or room to get out of the way himself. The blur was there, and he instinctively reached out and latched onto it in the same instant it struck him. Instead of getting knocked backward, he clung to it with a death grip, trying desperately to keep his legs tucked up and away from the talons that repeatedly came at him with every step Wrath took.

The rythmic pounding of her deadly-clawed paws and the scraping of her wingtalons were in perfect sync with the jolting bounces Leslyn suffered. It was a race to see whether his neck would snap or his arms would give out first. A moment later, the jolts gave way to a rushing breeze and what felt like otherwise perfect stillness.

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Wrath had stretched her hind paws back behind her, and now that her talons were no longer a danger, Leslyn relaxed and let his legs hang. He made the mistake of looking down, and saw the Aerie, the grassy field around it, and dozens of people and griffins growing swiftly smaller below him. Mute with terror, he curled up tightly again, but soon recovered enough to start climbing.

From where he hung under Wrath’s chest, he made his way up the side of her neck, pausing to cling once when she suddenly shrieked, and again when a dracat swooped dangerously close. She seemed to be unaware of his presence, or didn’t care, for even as he neared the top, she didn’t try to fling him off. He took it as the greatest stroke of luck he’d ever had—that is, until he had climbed high enough to see why she was flying so smoothly.

Seated upon the crest of her neck… was Arlis.

The boy’s big eyes just about bulged out of his head when he looked down and saw Leslyn making his way up. Belatedly, he leaned and offered a hand, which Leslyn gratefully took.

When he was safely seated further down Wrath’s neck, just a short distance above her shoulders, he yelled up to Arlis, “What in the name of Ardor are you doing up here?”

Wind whipping through his clothes and hair, the boy shrugged. “I thought I could help.”

Leslyn hadn’t the time or patience to answer softly. “Help? How in the world can you help? You’re going to get yourself killed! Why didn’t you just follow the plan?”

“What about you? You didn’t follow it, either. No one was supposed to be in that corridor when Wrath came out,” Arlis shouted back. “I even waited a couple of minutes longer, to make sure everyone had time to get to their places.”

Leslyn opened his mouth in a loud, exclamatory growl and buried his face in the thick mass of blue mane feathers in front of him as he suddenly realized how utterly stupid he’d been.

That was what the countdown had been for.

To make sure everyone was out of the way when Wrath began her rampage.

He was expressly reminded of the reason for that rampage as Wrath suddenly banked to one side, bringing them right over the vast wings of the green wyvern. Each relatively slow flap made the monstrous creature’s wingsails billow and curve like undulating hills.

Wrath whistled long and loud, loud enough that Arlis covered his ears. Leslyn twisted to look back as a chorus of whistles sounded behind them.

Dozens of griffins flew behind Wrath, fanned out in a messy but recognizable approximation of the wedge formation he’d become familiar with.

Wrath’s screech pierced the air as she tucked her wings and dove toward the wyvern. Arlis and Leslyn both pressed into her neck, holding on as tightly as they could. The company of griffins cascaded behind her, following suit as she opened her talons, reaching for the wyvern’s flesh. One row after another struck the massive beast’s back and wings, each gouge but a pinprick, but repeating over and over again in the same small areas until pools of blood began to form across the wyvern’s body. The last griffins in the formation came up gruesomely splashed from their own attacks.

The wyvern tried to go into its own dive to escape them, but the griffins were so much faster, and the ground far too close. It was forced to either face the pain, or go in to land. It chose to stay aloft.

As soon as she’d climbed high enough above the wyvern, the blue griffin immediately moved into a second dive, but was foiled as the green wyvern’s peach-colored mate swooped in from above, teeth bared and ready to close on the first thing they could reach.

That was when Leslyn saw Captain Tannoran on his black griffin at the point of a diamond-shaped formation with eight other riders. They were trailing the peach wyvern, crossbows in hand. The captain was so focused on the enemy he chased that it appeared he hadn’t even noticed that a new formation of griffins had taken to the sky. His posse stuck to their target, quickly growing smaller with the distance the wyvern needed in order to turn back for another attack.

Meanwhile, Wrath had flown higher and higher, and was now leading her company in circles while waiting for the perfect moment to make her next move. Leslyn saw there were two griffins trailing behind that were catching up, a black and a gray.

With a gasp of surprise, he recognized Yardi, still saddled, but couldn’t see Liren on his back. He thought he recognized a few others, as well. They too wore saddles, but had no one sitting on them.

If each recruit had been assigned to release three griffins, as Erin had, there’d be less than fifty. A quick partial count proved there were far more than that in Wrath’s company, which looked significantly larger than it had when they’d started.

Griffins were coming up from the ground to follow her.

Without their riders.

Leslyn turned to Arlis, who looked back with a grim stare.

If they survived this, there was going to be a very serious reckoning for all of the recruits…