I Abandoned My Beast Cubs for the Protagonist... Oops?-Chapter 142: The Burning Sky Arrives

The basket smelled like old feathers and spoilt food.

Zhen had catalogued both of these things in the first thirty seconds, along with the dimensions of their prison (too small), the weave of the reeds (tight, but not perfect), and the fact that Tao Zi was sitting in the far corner pretending he was not scared.

She was also pretending she was not scared.

They were both doing a very good job.

"Where do you think they’re taking us?" she asked.

"Their territory." Tao Zi’s voice was flat. "Vultures nest high. We’ve been moving upward."

She had noticed that too. The sway of the basket, the thinning of the sounds below, the way the air had gotten cooler and sharper. She pressed her eye to a gap in the weave and saw treetops. A lot of treetops. Very far below.

She moved away from the gap.

"Have you been here before?" she asked.

"No."

"Have you heard of it?"

A pause. Slightly too long. "Stories."

"Good stories or bad stories?"

He looked at her.

"Okay," Zhen said. "Bad stories."

The basket lurched as they landed, a rough, jolting impact that sent them both sideways. Tao Zi caught her before she hit the woven wall, his hand on her arm, quick and automatic, and then he let go immediately like he hadn’t meant to do it.

"Thanks," she said.

He said nothing.

~

The vulture clan’s nest was not what Zhen had imagined, though she was not sure what she had imagined. It was built into the crags of a high cliff face, platforms of twisted branches and packed mud jutting out from the rock at uneven intervals. It smelled like something that had been dead for a while.

There were a lot of vultures.

Zhen kept her chin up and her eyes moving, the way her father had taught her. Never let a predator know you’ve seen the worst-case outcome, Han Shān had told her. Calculate. Plan. Show them nothing.

She was showing them nothing.

Inside, she was showing herself quite a lot.

They were dumped from the basket onto a platform, which was at least flat, and the basket was taken away, which meant no hiding in it. Two vultures in half-shift, wings folded, stood at the only visible exit.

Tao Zi landed on his feet. Zhen landed on her feet also, which she felt was important.

"They are going to sell us," Tao Zi said quietly, not looking at her. Scanning, the way she was scanning. "That’s what they do."

"I see." She said quietly.

"Except—" Tao Zi stopped.

Two vultures nearby were arguing. Zhen watched them from the corner of her eye and listened, because listening was something else her brother had taught her.

"—can’t sell that one," the shorter vulture was saying. "Look at her. White hair, purple eyes, those are the Thousand Fang markings—"

"All the more reason. High value—"

"High risk." The shorter one shook his head, agitated. "You know who her mother is. You know what she did to the last group that touched one of hers."

A pause.

"So we don’t sell her," the taller one said. "We use her."

"Use her how?"

"Bait."

Zhen kept her face still.

Beside her, Tao Zi’s hand had gone very tense.

"Don’t react," she murmured.

"I’m not reacting."

~

They did not wait long.

The sound of heavy wingbeats announced him before he appeared, and the other vultures moved aside, which told Zhen everything she needed to know about where he sat in the order of things here. He was enormous, the largest vulture she had seen, and he had not bothered with a half-shift. He was fully himself, all dark feathers and cold eyes, and he crossed the platform toward them slowly.

He stopped in front of Zhen.

He looked at her for a long time.

She looked back.

Up close his eyes were pale and she could see the places where old scars crossed his feathers, fights he had survived, things he had outlasted. She thought about what her mother had said once, about old enemies: the ones who are still angry after years are the dangerous ones. They’ve had time to plan.

"Bai Yue’s daughter," he said.

His voice was the slow kind.

Zhen said nothing.

"Your mother had my brothers killed." He tilted his enormous head. Just slightly. "Did you know that?"

She had not known that specifically. She knew her mother had fought vultures. She knew her mother had fought many things. She had always been slightly proud of this.

She was still proud. She was also very aware that this was not the moment to say so.

"She protected her children," Zhen squeaked.

"Yes." He did not seem angry about this. "She did. And I have been waiting to return the consideration."

His hand, enormous, wrapped in dark feathers, reached for her.

Pain, sudden and sharp, at the back of her neck. Her feet left the ground. He lifted her like she weighed nothing, and he held her there, and his pale eyes were completely calm.

"I will kill you," he said, almost conversationally. "And she will know why."

Zhen’s hands scrabbled at his grip. Her vision was going spotted at the edges. She thought about her bracelet in the mud. About how she had pressed it down carefully, face up. About how Mama found everything.

Come fast, she thought. Please come fast.

Something hit the vulture’s hand.

Hard.

Teeth.

He roared, recoiling, and Zhen dropped, hitting the platform and rolling. She came up gasping, her throat on fire, and looked back.

Tao Zi had his teeth buried in the vulture’s hand and his eyes were absolutely feral.

The vulture shook him loose like a fly. Tao Zi hit the platform hard, skidded, and was on his feet in an instant.

"RUN!" he shouted.

She ran.

She ran and it was immediately clear there was nowhere to go because the platform ended at a sheer drop. The vultures were moving from three directions and the exit was blocked. When she turned, back to the edge, Tao Zi was beside her in the next second, both of them breathing hard. The lead vulture advanced, taking all his time, while his hand soaked with blood.

Zhen grabbed Tao Zi’s wrist.

He grabbed hers back.

From somewhere below, a sound.

Then a scream. One of the younger vultures, high and sudden and terrified.

"DRAGON!"

The sky went gold.

She felt him before she saw him, the pressure of it, the way the air changed. The temperature climbed ten degrees in an instant. The shadows on the platform shifted.

Dà Jiāo Huǒ came over the cliff edge like sunrise.

He was enormous. He was always enormous, she knew that, she had climbed on his back a hundred times and fallen asleep on his chest. But like this, like this, wings spread wide and golden and blotting out the actual sun, eyes blazing with molten fury.

He was the most terrifying thing she had ever seen.

She had never loved him more.

The lead vulture looked up.

The Burning Sky looked down.

"That," Tao Zi said, very quietly, beside her, "is a big dragon."

"That’s my grandpa," Zhen said.

A beat of silence.

"Oh," said Tao Zi.

Dà Jiāo Huǒ opened his mouth and roared.

It shook the cliff.