Ausmane had left the house for the rest of the day—there went my plan to make him a thank-you meal—and returned only when we planned to go to my parents’ house. It was a few hours past midnight, and the streets were eerily empty. I couldn’t see much either except the occasional streetlight passing, which was a bummer since I’d been curious to see where exactly the countryside met the main city.
Little specks of light over the lake shaped the Srylian bridge, and I remembered what I’d seen in the darkness of the footage on Darian’s phone. Two objects had flown over the bridge, like two fighting birds, yet they both crashed onto land. One surely wasn’t normal. The animal. The volyr. The other was a Guardian.
My breath caught at a sudden miscalculation. How had they both been in the air?
“H
