Sentinel of Time by Lindsay Buroker

Author:Lindsay Buroker [Buroker, Lindsay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Romance, Paranormal, Humour
Amazon: B0D9KPL4RL
Goodreads: 216546843
Publisher: Lindsay Buroker
Published: 2024-10-12T07:00:00+00:00

18

By the moon’s silvery glow, shadows stark and long, the hunt begins.

~ Dainbridge III, the playwright

Kaylina awoke before dawn with her heart hammering and her mind whirling with fear. She lurched upright in her bed and peered around the dark room, her hand diving under the pillow for the knife she’d started sleeping with.

It was still night, with the city quiet, and she didn’t hear anything. Nor could she pick out any alarming shadows in her room—no assassins crouching to spring at her. She liked to think the castle—the plant—would protect her if someone skulked toward her room with the intent to kill, but she didn’t know for certain that she was safe within these walls.

With the knife in hand, Kaylina slid out of bed and unshuttered the window, revealing fog that had crept in during the night. From the second floor, she could see rooftops over the courtyard walls and streetlamps burning at intersections in the distance, but everything was indistinct from the haze. She almost missed spotting one of the taybarri sleeping on the river trail, still guarding her.

She wiped her damp palm on her pajama bottoms. If Levitke and the other taybarri were snoozing, maybe nothing was wrong. Maybe some dream—or nightmare—had plagued her sleep, and she couldn’t remember it.

Lingering at the window, she listened for long seconds but heard nothing except the jangle of a horse harness as a wagon making an early-morning delivery passed. She stepped back, about to close the shutters and attempt to reclaim sleep, but a distant roar sounded, one that she instantly recognized as belonging to the beast.

“Vlerion.” Kaylina leaned out the window and looked in the direction the roar had come from.

The park where the assassin had accosted her earlier. Had he returned to camp there again? And had Vlerion—the beast—been waiting?

She bit her lip, worried because that roar had sounded more like one of pain and fury than a battle cry. What if the sage assassin had set a trap and was getting the best of the beast?

The roar came again. Her fingers curled around the stone lip of the window. The beast was in pain.

Going out there at night would be foolish, especially when he was a threat to her as well as others, but if he was wounded, she couldn’t leave him to fend for himself. What if he collapsed in an alley with blood streaming from his injuries, and he fell unconscious, as he always did when he turned back into a man? For long minutes, he would be unable to defend himself, completely vulnerable to an assassin’s blade.

Terrified for Vlerion, Kaylina hurried to dress. She belted on the sword as well as her sling and knife. Only after she ran out the back gate did she wonder if she should have told Frayvar where she was going. If she got herself killed… Well, there wouldn’t be anything he could do. He would find out when the authorities came to report her death to him.

Grimacing, Kaylina jogged up the river trail in the direction of the park.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.