THE WIND WHIPPED MY HAIR INTO MY FACE, STINGING MY EYELIDS AND
cheekbones and the skin of my lips. The blade’s power thrummed through me, rising in my heart and pounding in my head. Igniting my lighte, which seeped through my blood, and sang in my soul like a
songbird.
Salty tears ran up my face as I fell, but I was . . . calm. This was right.
The blade and I were one. And everyone’s pain, everyone’s suffering, would all be over soon.
My final moments were with Kane. That was a luxury. A blessing. I only hoped—I only prayed—that he could find some happiness when of all this was finished. That one day he would wake in the mornings without blaming himself for my death or anyone else’s.
As I fell past leaves and branches and dark trunks of wood, it was the last thought in my mind.
And then I landed with a grunt on the sharp, scaled back of Lazarus. He jolted with surprise, a roar ripping from his reptilian maw—
His elongated, elegant neck swiveling to find me crouched along his spine.
Dry, punishing wind stung my face. I scrambled for purchase with my free hand and swung the blade into the air before plunging it down into his back.
Another ear-splitting, bone-rattling roar—
And a ricochet of glaring, golden lighte streaming out from the fine point of my blade and into Lazarus’s reflective, glasslike scales.
I strained to keep my eyes open against the brightness, shook with the force of my lighte leaving my body in huge, penetrating bursts, funneling through the blade—
Shook with the fear, with the raw power coursing through my muscles and limbs—
Why . . . why was nothing happening?
I swung the blade into the air to bring it down again, harder—much harder—this time, but it never made contact.
I was shoved forward, grunting with the force as my face was thrust into the piercing ridges of Lazarus’s scarred spine, my mouth tasting ash and wind and ice.
Halden propelled his body into mine again, attempting to use the angle to pry the blade from my hands. I drew my knees up, knotting myself until I had leverage to stand, and hefted the blade with all its might—a mere extension of my hand—out of his grasp and directly toward his head.
Halden ducked, barely catching his footing on Lazarus’s craggy back. We breathed heavily in unison, uneven pants drowned out by a wind that howled like it was in agony.
And Lazarus, beneath us, only sailed higher. Before I could discern why, Halden lifted his sword and it whined through the air toward me.
The blow missed by a mountain-sized margin as I feinted right and drove my own blade forward, narrowly nicking his rib cage.
I was better than him. Stronger.
More confident in my footing as Lazarus ebbed and bowed through air currents.
The Blade of the Sun—my blade—hissed pleasurably against my palm. “You don’t want to do this,” I yelled into the wind as Lazarus swooped
to the side, nearly knocking Halden off and sending him plummeting toward a dark green death.
“I don’t have a choice!” Halden spat back as we sailed up, up, up into the sky, the bright sun now blinding over the ledge and harsh wind making it impossible to see what was up and what was down.
Halden heaved his sword again, sloppy and haphazard, and I deflected the blow with my blade. My muscles throbbed sweetly, and I drew in a breath as I thrust once more, this time clipping his sword and sending metal splinters like ribbons into the air.
Lazarus was still moving. Heading for the lip of the island. Escaping, with us. With me—
One tentative foot after another, I maneuvered until I could grasp an outstretched wing with one hand, my blade firmly clutched in the other. I kicked Halden in the chest with all my strength, quads straining, pushing myself dangerously close to Lazarus’s narrow neck.
His neck . . .
His soft, penetrable neck—
Halden caught himself against Lazarus’s tail, sword dangling from his left hand. It was only then I noticed two things: the crudely healed burns that covered one side of his face in splotches from where I had lit his tent aflame back in Peridot, and his right hand.
Or rather, lack thereof.
A mottled stump was all that remained where his hand had once been. A hand that he had bitten the nails of in worry and irritation. A hand that had helped my mother wash vegetables for dinner. A hand that had caressed my face. Had seared hot iron into my flesh.
Now, gone.
“Halden,” I heaved, air funneling erratically in and out of my lungs. “Your hand.”
But he stayed silent, sucking in a lungful of air himself, his scowl both defensive and ashamed. Halden turned his sword on me.
“He did that to you? Punished you by . . . by amputation?” “I deserved it,” he ground out. “I let you escape.”
I shook my head. I didn’t want to kill him. Somehow, after everything, still I didn’t. But I couldn’t fail now. Lazarus continued to beat his powerful
wings, carrying us farther from Hemlock Isle. I had to move— “I’m Fae, Halden. You can’t win. Please.”
“I picked my side. Perhaps it was the losing one. Either way, it’s the one I chose.”
“Anyone can be redeemed. You can join us.”
“You never changed, did you?” As if answering his own question, he shook his head. “Not anyone, no. Not me.”
Fat tears dripped down my face as the wind pummeled us. “I don’t want to kill you. But I will if I have to.”
I thought of Kane. Of how I had always assumed it was easy for him to take a human life. The bodies of all the men I had killed back in Siren’s Bay flooded my mind, their blood soaking the sand and rocks of the beach. And Killoran’s men, corpses bisected like meat in a butcher’s shop by the very blade in my hand—their bodies filled my vision, too.
And suddenly we weren’t so different, Kane and I. And I knew there was no other way.
Swallowing a ragged, heaving sob, I moved forward against the force of the wind and swung. Halden’s steel met mine in midair, but it was no match. His blade turned to liquid silver in his palm the moment it touched mine, raining down in droplets on Lazarus’s back. Shards of steel like hail, littering my hair, my hands—Halden’s eyes widened as he beheld nothing but a pommel in his hand.
This time, I didn’t hesitate.
I drove my blade into Halden’s heart. Through his flesh, his blood, his muscle, the blade sank. He screamed as pure white flames poured from the blade—a conduit for my lighte—and erupted from his chest. That itching, scorching sensation twisted again at my shoulder blades, and I felt it ratchet up my spine as the fire consumed Halden’s body whole in mere seconds, his last expression one of awe as he looked past my head toward my back.
When the flames cleared, there was no blood. Only the charred remains of my oldest friend turned enemy, as Lazarus abruptly tilted and the ashes fell unceremoniously down into the forgotten depths of Hemlock Isle.
And then I couldn’t help the tears as I wept for all that had become of him.
Of me.
And for what had to happen now.
I reached for Lazarus’s membranous, veined wing. Not polished and sleek like Kane’s. There was no beauty to the thick sinew under my palm, like the hide of a bull, tipped by a horned peak the color of stale blood. That talon alone was longer than my forearm, and I choked my grip higher up on his wing, reaching for it. I needed the stability. I only had one chance.
I climbed higher, lurching for his neck.
The underside, with its thin scales covering more fragile skin. That’s where I would sink my blade.
The air shrieked in my ears as we ascended, Lazarus still sailing for that lip of Hemlock. Soon we’d be soaring over the depths of Lake Stygian. Did he realize Halden was dead? That nobody stood in my way now? Would he deposit me in the deadly waters? Miles from shore, left to drown agonizingly slowly?
Faster then. I had to be faster.
Wrapping my knees around Lazarus’s back, holding on to him with every fiber of strength I had, no matter how he dropped and weaved, I raised the blade high into the air and moved to slice it along his throat.
But the edge never punctured the skin—
Lazarus spun violently, a near barrel roll, sending me and the blade flying down, down, down—
My hands clutched wildly at nothing, slipping through air as I plummeted after Halden’s ashes, the blade flying from my grasp—
No, no, no—
And again, that sensation in my shoulder blades, like points trying to break through my flesh, to hold me up in the air somehow—
But I couldn’t focus on it, couldn’t feel my lighte—
All I could hear was my own screaming echoing in my ears as my stomach flipped over and over on itself. Plunging, tumbling, I was free- falling—
Until I could see below me the gray wyvern with bloodred eyes dive past and extend one scaled palm open, waiting to catch me as I fell.
No—
Not to catch me—
His claw, sharper than any dagger, than any blade, positioned directly under my tumbling body.
To impale me—
I thrashed at the air, shooting my power out to call the still-falling sword toward me.
Tears ripped at my face with the effort. Reaching for it. For anything, please anything—
I heard Kane’s roar. Not a plea but a howl of pure agony. Of devastation.
Of loss. Of boundless, unending sorrow—
The last thing I felt was searing pain as Lazarus’s open, outstretched claw pierced through my stomach with a wet squelch.
