Ezer smiled.
This was the perfect place for winged monsters to thrive.
The Sawteeth could have been weapons themselves, each oneintent on stabbing the sky, and they stretched so high she couldn’t see their peaks for where the shadowstorm swallowed them up.
It churned above them, and rumbled the way the seaside storms always did: like a furious beast waiting for the moment to unleash itself. But the shadows did not strike inside the Sawteeth. They remained only on the perimeter, creating a barrier.
A safety net of magic that was untouchable for anyone who served the Five.
How did it know, she wondered, when someone defected? Did it count the darkness in their heart? Did it unfold for them, the way it had unfolded for Six?
Had Zey ever made it to this side?
She couldn’t picture anyone surviving past this point without a raphon.
The landscape beneath them was far more deadly.
Endless facets of black rock stretched on and on, so sharp even at the lowest points that it would have been impossible to pass on foot. One wrong step, and you’d spear yourself. One slip on the sharp, upward climb, and you’d be impaled to death.
There were no trees, no color at all beyond shadow black and snow white.
Flakes swirled in Ezer’s vision making her shiver, despite the runes on her cloak.
Kinlear coughed against her, sudden and violent.
‘Are you all right?’ Ezer asked him.
He kept coughing. Each tremor of his chest was a reminder of the time he was losing. How he would soon fade away.
‘I’m fine,’ he said as he uncorked his vial and took a sip of the medicine.
She didn’t know how long he had until that small vial ran out. He had only one extra, and now that seemed not nearly enough.
And then it was quiet again, as Six soared further north. TheSawteeth stretched on for miles and miles, an endless landscape.
‘There’s nothing down there,’ Kinlear said. ‘Not a single creature.’
But something had caught Six’s attention, for she suddenly banked to the left, then dropped into a fresh current of wind.
They were joyful, her movements, like she was exploring. Perhaps Ezer should let her lead.
Each wingbeat carried them deeper into the mountains, until they were surrounded by them in full, with two monstrous peaks on either side. For the first time, a bit of her hope waned.
They could search this harsh terrain forever and never find a trace of the Acolyte.
And the further they flew, the darker it seemed to become.
The plan felt silly now. A far cry from possible, until?—
Six let out a soft caw.
Ezer felt a jolt ofrecognitionswim through her from their bond.
‘What do you see, Six?’
The raphon picked up speedas they came around the first two peaks.
The world stretched on as far as the eye could see, every part of it split by black mountains capped in white. And right there in the very middle stood a peak no one could have seen from the Expanse, for it was smaller than the others, hidden right in the center.
