‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
She wasn’t certain if thatsorrywas for Six or for herself, for all she’d endured.
The beast huffed out a warm, stinking breath.
And a vision stole her away.
This time it was a true vision. A memory, perhaps.
She saw the Eagle’s Nest.
The trees and the lush springtime forest, and when she looked down, she could just barely see the tip of a curved black beak and two awkward, too-large raphon paws, Six’s paws, as the beast climbed across the treetops, leaping and bounding like only a cat could.
From branch to branch, the raphon went.
Ezer recognized the memory as the day Six broke out.
The day they first met.
It felt like ages ago, now.
Six reached the domed edge of the Eagle’s Nest, where the runed glass was all that stood between her and that harrowing drop far below.
She could hear the war eagles screeching, could hear the Sacred calling out as they tried to give chase. She had seconds, maybe, before they caught her.
But she couldn’t tear her eyes from the sky behind the glass.
A boom rattled the world.
She felt it in her body, through her paws and all the way to the tips of her lovely black wings.
Lightning illuminated the storm that hung over the Sawteeth. Shadows swam through that infernal cloud, like stretching fingertips. They danced down the mountainside, a web of darkness that none could pass. And beyond the shadows, beyond the Sacred Knights and golden eagles …
She saw the raphons.
Her own kind.
They soared from the Sawteeth, a flock of dark feathers and fur.
She could hear the wind calling to them as they rose, even from here.
It danced past her hearing, whispering that the path for the raphons was safe, that the shadows spilling down from the clouds would not harm her kind.
Each rider was held expertly between their raphon’s wings.
There were no saddles. No bridles. Only a beautiful, unbreakable bond between darksoul and raphon, and when they reached the curtain of darkness, alive and swarming down from the mountaintops …
They passed on through.
And dove into the war, ready to kill.
Ready to claim all in the name of the Acolyte.
The vision broke.
Ezer pulled away, lifting her eyes to the raphon. Six’s beak was wet from her tears, her jagged white scar shimmering in the torchlight.
‘You aren’t to be gentled, are you?Broken.’She growled the word, like Zey had. With disgust. ‘Not in their way.’
