The wind howling through the canyons of the Southern border was no longer the warm, jasmine-scented breeze of the Sun-Drenched territories. It had become a shrill, harmonic whistle, a sound that grated against the nerves like a diamond scratching across a pane of glass. High above, the drakes beat their wings in a frantic, uneven rhythm. Argentis, usually the most stoic of the Great Drakes, shivered beneath me. The silver-furred beast could feel the violet leak from my palm, the cold, crystalline hunger of the Glass-Sisters that was currently using my own unborn child as a beacon.
