Chapter 17

Maevyth jolts awake to a cloaked, masked stranger looming over her, a blade pressed to her throat. Paralyzed and terrified, she locks eyes with his blazing, gold-orange irises before a swirl of black engulfs him and he vanishes. When the paralysis lifts, she finds blood on her neck, proof the encounter was real despite his disappearance.

As Maevyth searches the room, the egg beneath her bed begins to rock and crack. Silver light leaks from fissures until a small, black, scaled creature with silver claws, a toothed beak, crescent markings, and broad wings emerges. Curious yet wary, Maevyth lets the creature step onto her palm and examines its lizard-like tail and horned mandible.

When the creature nicks her, Maevyth realizes it is hungry. She slips to the pantry for bread and berries, only to watch the hatchling streak past, kill a rat, and feed, methodically skinning it and devouring the flesh and eyes. Recognizing its true diet, she abandons the bread and berries.

Maevyth notices the cut on her palm has already sealed without a trace, another instance of unnaturally rapid healing. She returns the satiated hatchling to a quilted nest under her bed, names it Raivox, and disposes of the rat’s remains to hide what happened.

As Maevyth heads back upstairs, the pleading voice from the vent resurfaces, and she covers her ears, retreating to bed. Shaken by the masked assailant’s vanishing act, Raivox’s ferocity, and her inexplicable healing, Maevyth fears the visions she has seen and the voice she hears mean something evil has infected her.