She nodded. ‘My hand is yours. Though … I can’t promise I won’t step on your toes.’
‘Step on them all you want.’ Kinlear’s voice was nervous. ‘Break them if you wish it. I’ll bear the pain, so long as you dance with me.’
He suddenly coughed and released his grip on her as he went for his vial.
So Ezer took a deep breath and faced the shadows. Dark tendrils spilled from the clouds like reaching claws, but the shadows were also thick between them – a true veil of living darkness.
They were ten wingbeats away.
She could tell Six to turn back, and she knew the raphon would listen. She could fly them somewhere far away, leave this war behind and start life anew.
But Styerra’s words came back to her. There could be answers about her magic on the other side.
‘Ezer,’ Kinlear said suddenly, just before they reached the shadowstorm. She turned to look at him one last time, with his hood now covering his face. ‘Will you go with me into the dark?’
But before she could answer him, before she could fully register what that might mean, she felt her hair stand on end.
The tip of Six’s beak reached the shadows.
The light collapsed.
It was so dark, she could barely see her own hands held before her, even with her scarred eye.
Six soared right into the Acolyte’s magic.
And thenthrough it.
It moved away – that dark veil of power. The shadows folded outwards around the shape of the raphon like the tendrils itself were told not to touch a feather upon her wings, nor a single tuft of fur upon her body. And as the shadowstorm cleared for Six, it cleared for Ezer and Kinlear.
Just as Kinlear’s intel had promised.
‘It worked,’ he breathed.
They were inside the Sawteeth, inside the Acolyte’s domain.
And Six …
She let out a victorious caw, and Ezer smiled as the darkness was whisked away. As light found them once more. She felt it in her own bones, her blood.
Six was finallyhome.
37
The wind died down the moment they passed through the veil of darkness.
She turned to look past Kinlear’s narrow shoulders, just in time to see the shadows fold back in on themselves, closing the gap where Six had just flown through.
She was surprised that she could still see the other side, a muted grey instead of snow white.
The Citadel was so far away, it was barely a speck on the horizon.
Incredible,Ezer thought to Six.You are incredible.
Hundreds of warriors had died trying to do what they’d just done. They had tried magic and might, all manner of onslaughts against the shadows …
But all they needed was a raphon.
So simple, the trick. Because the Acolyte had never needed to fear someone taking one of his own beasts, taming it, and flying it right back home.
