1
Bree
I sat on my ex-Centaur butt in a meadow filled with frantic people.
The afternoon was sunny and cheerful, but it had little impact on those surrounding me. Most were covered in soot, and livid burns laced their skin. Children were crying, their eyes wide with fear. And all I could think of was one thing.
Riggs had ason.
There are a lot of other concerns to be worried about here,the Gryphon trapped inside me stated emphatically.
He wasn’t wrong. I attempted to get my mind back in gear as Cara straightened. She locked eyes with the huge turquoise Dragon shifter that loomed over me.
“We need Ash. Tell him to meet us at my house.”
We need the Oracle?I sensed how uneasy that assertion made Caliel.
Tyrez’s eyes began to flash as Cara turned and threaded her way through the people injured by the volcanic eruption.
Riggs helped me to my feet. My legs trembled and barely held me.
“Lean on me,” he said, although I detected a subtle tremor in him, too.
Caliel muttered something I didn’t quite catch.What?I asked.
Nothing,he grumbled.
Tyrez caught up to Cara, who seemed to be heading for the gateway, which pulsed gently now that the evacuees had been brought through. She paused to place a hand on Bess, the other Watcher, who straightened from healing a young woman.
“Do you have this?” Cara asked. “Something’s come up, so I have to go.”
Bess glanced at us, and then back to Cara. “With Anna and Rafael helping, we should be good. I think the worst injuries are seen to. Anything I should know?”
“Not yet.” Cara moved away.
We followed her to the gateway, and she took us through.
The familiar lush garden greeted us. The scent of growth and flowers suddenly emphasized the stench of ash and sulfur embedded in my furred and feathered clothing. I sneezed.
We startled the little bearing beast, Grunt, who had been snacking on shrubs nearby. He bolted a few feet, and then stopped, turning toward us. Cara’s hand trailed over him as we went past, and I gave him a quick scritch.
The woolly creature followed us to the house. We left him eating more shrubbery outside, and Cara took us in. She gestured to seats in the kitchen.
“Sit,” she ordered Tyrez.
He stared at her with a marked degree of incredulity. “You can’t be serious. My mother and son might be burning up, and you want me to sit?” There was a note in his deep voice that had me examining him more closely. The aura of calm control that I’d come to associate with him as an instructor was showing cracks. Like the beast inside was awakening.
It was an unsettling thing, and it amped my own angst.
Cara’s mouth straightened. “Your family would have been at the palace for your brother’s coronation. They might still be there.”
“My mother will be unlikely to stay for the evening celebration.” Tyrez’s voice had calmed, just a bit. “She might go back to the lake resort with them.”
Cara looked at me. “Were there any references to the time of day in your vision?”
I thought hard. I hadn’t seen the outside of the building. But there had been impressions, gleaned from the one whose eyes I’d seen through.
Riggs’sson.
