My throat was so choked up, all I could do was nod.
“Damn,” Dani whispered. “I hate it when Ash is right.”
Around the pool, seven others were all in the process of writhing their way to beasts. Three were Dragons. The other four took a little longer to change, but I already knew what they would become.
Wyverns.
My erstwhile friends finished their transformations and crouched around the pool, fastening murky-green eyes on Victor.
He was facing away from us, staring up at the landing ledges to the private quarters. From where we hid, I could see the privacy walls had only been partially activated. No doubt to let in the breeze from the courtyard.
Unfortunately, it would also let in something else.
“Are they up there?” I whispered to Dani.
She nodded. “The Matriarch is still awake, working on something with her eldest daughter in her private quarters.” She paused. “The room is on the upper story, third door from the north end.”
“And the other daughter?” Riley asked.
A pause as Dani consulted Ash. “She’s asleep in her own quarters,” she said. “Two down, the first one along, upper level.”
Riley worked her way between the shrub and the wall, letting it shield her from view. She stared intensely at the third-story landing ledges, while we nervously watched Victor.
He wasn’t fully human any longer. His frame was thickening, the muscles writhing as scales the color of flame erupted over his body.
I swallowed. For this to work, we needed to let Victor start the fire. But what if the Matriarch walked close to the opening at the wrong moment?
Riley returned to us. “I’ve got it,” she whispered. “I can jump to either ledge.”
“You sure you got a good enough visual?” Rafael asked.
“Yes.”
Cara had told us Riley needed to see a place, in order to jump there.
This is the problematic part,Caliel stated.
It’s all problematic,I corrected. What good would her being able to jump to the ledges do, if they were on fire? My eyes dropped to the pool. When I looked up, Riggs was watching me.
The only solution for fire, was water. My stomach twisted painfully into a knot. But the pool didn’t contain nearly enough to douse what Victor would throw at us.
We all flinched when the Dragons took off, followed by the Wyverns. The Fire Drake was now fully transformed, its claws hooked over the edges of the arbor roof. Licks of flame appeared and disappeared.
Then Victor’s entire body erupted in fire, so bright that I couldn’t look directly at him. A column of pure flame shot from him to engulf the ledges above.
Everything it touched—melted. Trees, wood, metal, stone. The arbor went red-hot and collapsed beneath him. Steam came off the surface of the water.
He sent it across the building’s entire western face, and the ledges disappeared in a wall of fire.
There was no way out of those rooms, except via the courtyard ledges. Unless Riley could get to them, everyone up there was condemned to die.
My heart was in my mouth as I watched the ledges to the private quarters vanish.
Everything now hinged on Victor’s desire to escape detection. Including our own survival…
We backed rapidly up the hall as the Fire Drake spun, sending a wall of flames all around the courtyard.
“Here!” Dani called, and we gathered around where she stood at the base of a pillar. And then she pushed on the columnssupporting the ceiling. They creaked, buckled, and brought a section of the ceiling down.
