“Got it,” he muttered, speaking to Wes, I figured, and turned to me, his face grave.

“What’s wrong?” I whispered. “Is Garret not here?”

“Oh, he’s here, Firebrand,” Riley said, his voice matching the look on his face. “Wes confirmed it on the security feed. But he’s not the only one.” He nodded to the door. “That’s a guard room. You need to pass through it to get to the jail block beyond. One problem, though. Guard rooms tend to be guarded.”

My skin prickled. “How many?” I asked.

“Two.” His expression darkened. “Both armed. They won’t be expecting us, but we’re going to have to be fast if we want to take them out before they sound the alarm. Think you can pull off another crazy ninja Viper attack? We’re not going to get another shot at this. Once I open that door, there’s really no going back.”

My stomach dropped. After a moment, I took a deep breath, steeling myself. Whatever it took, I would find Garret. Even though these new instincts freaked me out. Even though I wanted nothing more than to be done with this place, with its armed humans and dead dragons hanging on the walls. We were almost to the soldier; his life depended on us reaching him, and I wouldn’t let anything stop me now.

I glanced at Riley and nodded. “I’m ready. Let’s do this.”

Garret

Garret

One hundred and twenty minutes till dawn and counting.

The hardest thing about waiting to die is being torn between wanting more time and wishing they would just get it over with already. You can’t sleep, of course. You can’t focus on anything else. Your mind keeps tormenting you with questions and memories and what-ifs, until you wish they’d just do you a favor and knock you senseless until it was time. Maybe that was a coward’s way out, but I didn’t want to show up to my execution looking beaten down and exhausted. I would not beg, or cry or plead for mercy. If this was my last day on Earth, I wanted to end it well, facing Death on my feet with my head held high. That was all a soldier of St. George could hope for.

As I lay on the cot, unable to sleep, unable to stop the relentless countdown in my head, my nerves suddenly prickled, making my breath catch. It was faint, but I recognized it instantly. The same feeling I got when I was about to kick down the door to a target’s residence, or when I suspected an ambush lay just ahead and we were about to walk right into it. A soldier’s instincts, telling me that something was about to happen.