The pressure lifted from Gray’s throat. He crumpled to the floor, blind and breathless. His throat - his lungs - didn’t work.

Killian’s footsteps pounded against the carpet. The door crashed open.

‘ARMS,’ Killian bellowed. ‘GOBLIN STEEL.’

His bellow was taken up immediately, echoing throughout the Hall from a chorus of soldiers' deep voices, ‘Goblin steel. Goblin steel.’

‘TOWN SQUARE,’ Killian bellowed. ‘CIRCLE FORMATION.’

‘Circle formation. Circle formation.’

Killian was manhandling him. Binding his wrists together with rough rope. Throwing him over his shoulder.

Gray slipped into blackness.

And came to, with fresh air on his face, and his vision shadowed.

Chaos bombarded his ears.

The screams of the griffins clashed with the cries of panicked Lismerian and the deep shouts of northern. The ground shuddered as mossy tiles rained down. A roof had collapsed.

Cold cobblestones pressed hard against Gray’s cheek. Grit crumbled underneath the thin layers of his clothes. A metallic scent burned his nose.

His throat and neck hurt.

Gray was lying on his side on the old cobblestone ground of the town square.

A shattered roof tile lay inches from Gray’s bound hands. A soldier lay next to him. This soldier lay, too still and too pale, with a fleck of blood on his slack lips.

Gray’s breath caught in his throat.

Move.

Stay alive.

Gray staggered to his feet, off balance with his hands bound.

He pressed his back hard against the external wall of the Hall.

Soldiers in grey uniforms were in a tight circle in the centre of the town square. They hid behind a wall of glinting shields. Their alert gazes were trained on the sky.

Gray looked up through the dust and debris particles hanging in the air. His muscles locked.

The griffins.

There were so many more of them than he’d expected.

And they were huge.

He stood there, on the edge of the mayhem, his feet glued to the ground.

Their wings blocked the sun, shifting the town court into flashes of shadow and light as they soared across the sky. Their feathers gleamed brown and gold. The beat of their wings deafening - like the sound of being stuck inside a windstorm. It shattered windows and splintered timber doors. It buffeted people and stone.

They swooped and soared so fast that Gray could barely track them.

They landed on rooftops and their tails knocked over chimneys, sending bricks flying. They dug their claws into the sides of buildings and homes, ripping open stone walls as easily as tearing flimsy cardboard. Their talons grazed the ground, scattering people and carts and haphazard barricades.

One grabbed a stray soldier - he had been running, sprinting, flying across the courtyard to join the formation, and there was something wrong with the soldier’s hand because he couldn’t hold his sword properly, it was flailing dangerously as he ran, and he was shieldless and his uniform was shredded, the whites of his eyes exposed, his face pure terror, and Killian’s voice was cutting through the brutal noise, ordering him to stay, stay soldier, drop soldier, but he kept running - and then the griffin just lifted him right off the ground, claws bigger than a bear trap.

Gray’s heart stopped.

The soldier’s screams mixed with the awful screeching and then faded into the sky as the griffin soared with him behind clouds.

Gray wanted to run, but he couldn’t move and not just because his damn ankle would buckle. All he could do was think how small he - everyone - was compared to the griffins, like ants in the hulking shadow of something too colossal, too dangerous to grasp, a presence that loomed like a storm, raw and unstoppable.

One griffin tumbled and spun through the air - a whirl of giant eagle and lion, talon over wing over claw. It plummeted to the ground in an uncontrolled fall and barrelled into the perfect circle formation of soldiers.

Soldiers sprawled.

Cobblestones flew and the griffin shrieked, clamouring to right itself, and it flew back up with a huge gust of wind.

Gold and tawny feathers scattered through the air, catching the sunlight.

‘CIRCLE FORMATION. HOLD.’ Killian’s voice was a primal bellow that shuddered over the thunderous noise of the carnage.

The soldiers were scrabbling to regroup.

Back into a hastily formed circle formation, filling the gaps where men had fallen, snatching up dropped shields and swords.

Killian moved like a shadow in a nightmare.

One second he was there, the next he was gone. He was too fast for the eye to follow. He was by the barricade that shielded a group of townsfolk. He was scaling the lattice work up to a Hall balcony.

He was on the edge of the soldiers’ circle.

His gaze was locked on the biggest griffin - the one busy tearing into a prone soldier’s body and shredding it like it was wet paper.

Gray pressed harder against the wall, his back scraping through the thin layers of his clothes, his breath stuck in his throat.

There was something wrong with the way Killian moved.

It was too smooth, too sure, too calm, as if this wasn’t madness to him.

As if he belonged in it.

There was no hesitation.

He wheeled from one griffin to the next, disrupting and scattering their attacks.

His sword sang from speed.

The griffin's screams went from rage to something stronger, something sharper.

Cold, creeping discomfort clawed up from Gray’s stomach.

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Killian was scaring them.

He wasn’t just fighting. He was playing some kind of calculated game, making them startle into the air. They’d launch off in frustration, in rage, in panic. Their wings thrashed and their claws scraped against stone. They landed on rooftops, sending moss-covered tiles crashing to the ground.

Gray watched, his mouth sand.

Killian was giving space for his men. A chance to recover, just for a second. Every moment he kept the griffins unsettled, every moment he made griffins scatter was a moment his men strengthened their position in the circle formation and righted their injured comrades.

Gray shivered, testing the bonds of the rope around his wrists.

Soldiers and townsfolk lay, scattered and dying.

Had Gray done this?

Had he called the griffins?

He must’ve. Somehow. He hadn’t meant to, but -

Killian was in front of Gray, breathless.

A deep gash marked his cheek. He blinked blood out of his dark gaze. His face, his body, was steel.

Killian’ scarred hand was on the rope on Gray’s wrists, checking the knot was secure. He clasped the scruff of Gray’s neck.

‘WEDGE FORMATION,’ Killian shouted, dragging Gray through the chaos of griffins, debris, and the injured.

The soldiers shifted seamlessly.

Killian pushed Gray forward, inside the group of soldiers, and to the front, to the point of the wedge.

Killian’s mouth was against Gray’s ear. ‘Get the leader to leave. The rest will follow.’

His fist was hard and damp on the back of Gray’s neck.

Get the leader to leave?

When Killian shoved Gray out of the front of the wedge, to stumble out in front of the biggest griffin he ever could’ve imagined - the griffin picking at the intestines of the disembowelled soldier - it became clear.

This griffin was the leader of the pride. He had to be.

Gray could feel it, feel him. The weight of his presence was heavy and the world narrowed as Gray stood before him.

His wings could block out the sky. His claws were like swords, crushing into the ancient cobblestones underneath as his weight shifted. He owned the ground he walked on.

He growled as he ate the soldier, low and deep, vibrating the air. The sound crawled up Gray’s spine.

The griffin didn’t notice Gray right away. Or, maybe, Gray didn’t register as a threat.

The griffin was busy eating the sprawled innards of the soldier.

Then, it clocked a bright gold eye onto Gray and pulled itself up to its full height.

Gray looked up, up, up.

Someone - probably Killian- had had a decent go at him already. The feathers in his left wing were askew, and one of his legs dripped blood from a deep cut. His beak was outlined in gore.

Gray stared into the bright gold gaze.

There was no connection in his eyes, no understanding. Just a glittering and dangerous intelligence, like he was looking through Gray and could see his next move, and his next, and none of it mattered or made any difference - not to him.

Gray stumbled back.

A hard hand on his shoulder shoved him back.

‘You brought them here,’ shouted Killian. ‘Now, make them leave.’

Gray’s stomach burned.

He whirled around, staring at the steely face of Killian and the wall of overlapped shields of the soldiers in formation. Their swords were held ready, balanced. Near the peak of the wedge formation, peering desperately over the top of his shield, was the rookie. Russet. His rabbit eyes bored into Gray, whites exposed and eyebrows high.

A townsperson lay close, in as much danger of getting trampled by the soldiers’ boots as the griffins, blood pooling from her side. Gray knew her auburn hair and crow tattoos. The butcher.

Killian shoved Gray back again - a hard jab to his chest with the handle of the sword - and Gray fell, skidding on the - uurgh, he didn’t want to know what the heck he just skidded on.

Killian darted forward, grabbed Gray in a tight grip, and used Gray as a shield to step close to the griffin.

Closer.

‘You ride off on that thing,’ said Killian, his voice furious and hot in Gray’s ear, ‘I will hunt you to the ends of the land and rip you limb from limb. I will find you, and I will kill you. Got it?’

Gray gave a tight nod.

Another hard shove, between the shoulder blades. Gray stumbled before the griffin.

There was a scuffle behind Gray, as Killian stepped back to the head of the wedge formation.

‘MAKE HIM LEAVE,’ bellowed Killian. ‘NOW.’

Gray stared at the griffin. It was fluffing its feathered wings. It was pecking at the dead soldier’s eye-

Gray collapsed to his knees and heaved.

The smell.

He was sick again, hunched over himself.

Behind him, pandemonium crescendoed. The screams were unending.

Gray wiped his face with a trembling hand.

He couldn’t just stay here and die, kneeling and throwing up. And he couldn’t let the townsfolk be rampaged by a group of griffins any more than he could let them be terrorised by these soldiers.

It had taken three mages to clear off one griffin last time.

No - two sorcerers and one mage.

He’d just seen Killian fight. Killian was deadly. A predator playing with his very dangerous prey.

But, even he couldn’t kill them.

There wasn’t one single dead griffin amongst the fallen.

Only people.

People Gray knew, people that shouldn’t have died.

Fighting against the griffins with force wasn’t going to work.

His heart in his mouth, and against every instinct in him, Gray staggered to his feet.

Breathed slow.

Slower.

The griffin glared down at him.

Immobile.

Behind him, the screaming of the griffins was quieting. The clash of steel slowed.

But, Gray didn’t dare turn away from the fierce glare of the griffin to see what was happening.

The griffin tilted his head.

Gray didn’t blink.

Didn’t move.

Neither did the griffin.

And because he couldn’t speak, he couldn’t fight, he had no other options, with a shuddering breath, Gray - carefully, slowly - lifted his bound hands.

Touched the griffin’s beak.

His beak was as smooth as polished stone under Gray’s palm. Like battle-warmed steel, hard and with edges sharp enough to cut. The griffin didn’t move - just let Gray inch closer as the power behind the stillness of the griffin made his heart pound a tattoo in his chest. His hands glided up.

The heat of the griffin’s breath surrounded Gray's fingers, his skin.

This griffin could snap Gray’s hands off with one move, and there’d be nothing Gray could do to stop it.

But there was something else, too, beyond the power of the griffin and his smooth-as-stone beak and hot breath. Something ancient. Like touching a weapon that had been in the battles of the Ancients.

Gray’s fingers tingled, half with fear and half with something beyond his understanding. Like maybe, inch by slow inch, breath by breath, the griffin was letting him in.

Accepting not just his touch.

But, him.

This was … amazing.

An awed smile tugged at Gray’s lips.

He pushed down to the urge to let out a shout of wonderstruck laughter.

Maybe, he could - if he wanted - fly off.

Maybe, he could go anywhere.

Everywhere.

The world was theirs to explore and admire.

The quality of the griffin’s gaze was subtly changing, and slowly - so, so slowly - there was a connection there, in the griffin’s fierce gold eyes. It was just like a bond with a beloved wise and old dog, like that of a brother or sister, a best friend with whom you’d grown up together for ever and ever, like a warmth of souls meeting and knowing each other from end to end and beginning to beginning.

A protectiveness.

Like plunging into the feeling of home.

Then, the griffin twitched. He blinked.

The movement was tiny.

But, the connection between Gray and the griffin shut off.

As sudden as it had come.

It ripped apart, and it - the loss of it - hurt.

Gray physically buckled from the force of it.

And he saw, as though in slow motion, the griffin rear up onto its back legs, the lion’s claws digging into cobblestone and the dead soldier. It lifted one giant claw.

As big and as deadly as a bear trap.

It slammed Gray, and it threw him hard against the cold ground, its claw pinning him in a lethal cage.