Page 574 - Fourth Wing

“I’m hunting the venin at the walls!” he answers.

“Deigh is fighting for his life!”
The heartbeat of terror squeezing my chest like a vise isn’t mine. It’s

Xaden’s. “If I leave, these civilians are all dead!”

We’re on our own. A quick glance at the field tells me every other dragon
is locked in its own battle.

Tairn’s tail swings out, slamming into the wyvern’s hindquarters, and

comes away bloody, but the fucking thing doesn’t release Deigh. Its claws
flex, burrowing deeper beneath the red’s scales.

“Deigh!” Liam’s scream is raw, his voice breaking at the end.

Tairn lunges, snapping at the wyvern’s shoulder and drawing blood, but
it’s not enough. He swings around to get a better angle on the wyvern, and

the force nearly costs Liam his grip, but the buckle holds.
Another riderless wyvern flies at us from the right. “On the right!”

Tairn whips his body faster than I’ve ever felt and rips out the throat of

the new threat, shaking the wyvern like a doll, then releases his jaws and
lets the thing fall hundreds of feet to the mountainside below.

Then Tairn dives to catch up with Deigh and the wyvern as they race
toward the ground.

Dread settles in my chest, ominous and heavy.

“We’re on our way!” Xaden says.
But he’ll be too late.

“Violet!” Liam shouts over the wind, and I rip my attention from the

gruesome battle alongside us as we spiral downward. “We have to take out
the riders.”

“I know!” I reply. “We will!” He just needs to hang on. They both do.

“No, I mean that’s the—”
Tairn lunges again, and we’re thrown sideways as he rips another hole in

the wyvern’s wings with his teeth, raking down its tail with his talons, but
the creature has Deigh in a death lock. Its wings are shredded now, but it