Game of Towers and Treachery (The Shadow's Apprentice Book 2) by Harper Alexander

Author:Harper Alexander [Alexander, Harper]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-07-28T16:00:00+00:00

16

Snare and Slaughter

“Don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty. Those with delicate sensibilities are limited by what they are willing to do, what they are willing to expose themselves to. Embracing the grit of the world is part of what makes you untouchable.” – Tutelage passed from the Master of the Shadows to his apprentice.

*

The pegasus returned to the palace at Lady Verrikose’s summons, a raven-like speck against the distant slate-gray sky that rapidly morphed into a giant, regal mass of obsidian equine muscle. Its impressive wingspan sent a freezing gust into Despiris’s face as it drew up short at the last possible moment to land on the balcony rail. Delicately placing its hooves on the slight ledge, it stilled for Despiris to mount.

Already waiting atop the rail, Despiris strode toward the beautiful beast, ducking under its head and grabbing a fistful of mane to swing aboard.

Prancing beneath her seemingly to warn her to hold on, Keshgal took flight with a sudden, violent down-sweep of its wings. Gripping tight with her knees, Despiris twined her fingers deeper into the animal’s mane.

Then they were off, over the wall and into the city, the palace shrinking quickly behind them. The frigid wind of the heights stung Despiris’s cheeks, quickly numbing her face. But exhilaration warmed her from the inside, flying over the city from the back of a glorious winged steed not an experience she would soon forget.

They cut straight to the smithy, but there was no sign of Shangar. With little to go on, Despiris decided merely to scour the city by sector, hoping to get lucky.

What else could be done? She could only hope a rampant gargoyle running amok through the streets would be easy to spot from above.

Alas, she combed the city until dark, and then had to admit her bird’s-eye view no longer yielded more than vague shapes and flickers of shadow.

Cursing her luck, she urged her steed to return to the palace. She would have to regroup. Go out again on foot.

I think it’s time to admit you need to call on the royal guard for this. But would the king approve a widespread deployment into the city in the middle of a plague, when the quarantine order was in place?

Despiris couldn’t say. But the gargoyle couldn’t be left on the loose to continue his violent rampage, and she was sure the king would agree.

By an unexpected stroke of luck, however, it didn’t come to that. For when she arrived back at the palace, she found a gift waiting for her in the courtyard. Excessively chained as if he’d tangled himself in a huge steel spider’s web, the enraged, thrashing gargoyle was beginning to draw spectators.

Despiris dismounted in one fluid motion as Keshgal’s hooves touched down in the courtyard, cautiously approaching the bound beast. A knife buried up to its hilt in the beast’s chiseled thigh tacked a note to his form, the parchment half-soaked in violet blood.

A trio of guards had assembled around the spectacle

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