Page 562 - Fourth Wing

“Soleil found a sealed entrance to what looks to be a mine,” Xaden says.

“I need—”
Tairn turns abruptly, veering toward the mountains.

“—you to see if you can put down some cover so Garrick and Bodhi can

get the townspeople evacuated,” he finishes. “Liam is on his way.”
“On it.” My pulse leaps. “Tairn, I can’t aim.”

“You will,” he says like it’s a foregone conclusion. “Orders are being

dispersed amid the gryphons.”
“Dragons can speak to gryphons?” My eyebrows shoot up.

“Naturally. How do you think we communicated before humans got

involved?”
I hunker down across his neck as we dart above the city, passing over a

clinic, what looks to be a school, and rows and rows of an open-air market
that’s currently on fire. There’s no sign of the purple-robed venin we first

saw as we sail over the shriveled body of a gryphon and its rider near the

center of town. My stomach turns, especially when I see a wyvern circling
back toward them—and Sgaeyl is on an intercept course.

“She can hold her own,” Tairn reminds me. “And so can he. We have
orders. Focus.”

Focus. Right.

We pass families scurrying from their ruined homes, then over the city
walls, heading toward the opening in the side of the mountain where

Soleil’s Brown Clubtail swings its tail into the wood planks covering the

abandoned tunnel. There are a few outbuildings lining the road but not
much else.

Tairn pulls hard to the left as we approach, the strap digging into my legs

as my weight shifts in the saddle with the abrupt motion. Then he flares his
wings to hover in front of Soleil, facing Resson and the screaming crowd

that runs the hundred yards between the city walls and us, led by a pair of
gryphons and their fliers who continuously look behind them, scanning the