“Ezer,” Kinlear said. “Get her airborne or we die.”
Not like this!his mind screamed. He couldn’t draw his eyes from the shadow wolves’ claws. How they curled, how they were so sharp, even the snow seemed tosplitbeneath them, as they left a dragging path behind.
And if they died tonight?
Then it meant Kinlear’s dreams were lies. Their future would be gone in an instant and Lordach...would it cease to exist, without them? They were the only ones who could sink beyond the Acolyte’s shadowstorm.
“Six,” Ezer said. “Fly.”
The trees were at their back now. They were skittering towards the cliffside, where death, sure as the grave, was ready to welcome them home.
Kinlear wasn’t sure what would be worse: to die by shadow wolves or to fall from great heights, the way he had so many times in his dreams.
To fall and to keep falling, only this time...
It would end intruedeath.
No sooner had thought it that something in Ezer’s posture shifted. Six inhaled beneath them, deep and steady, as if...
Something has passed between raphon and rider.
Something hadclicked.
“Fly,” Ezer commanded Six.
The beast turned towards the cliffside, her paws rooted deep against the snowy ground.
Kinlear had no time to prepare, no choice but to hang on as Six pushed off, taking three bounding steps...
Before she leapt into the open sky.
She flew.
She wasflying.
The wolves chased after them. For a moment, Kinlear feared that they would catch up, but then Six flapped her wings, and they were so much larger than the wolves’, so much stronger. They burst into the sky until the wolves were but a speck on the oncoming snow.
Kinlear screamed in victory.
For a moment...
It was exactly as he’d dreamt it would be.
Six was glorious, and she was rising higher, higher, and he howled with laughter as he realized he had never needed to doubt their future for a second. Because Six was made for this,Ezerwas made for this, as they tore across the snowy sky together.
Together, they were?—
The shadows erupted.
Across the Expanse, a boom split the night as the wolves turned back and the war began. A gust of wind crashed against them, a cold and biting surge that felt like it had come straight from that shadowstorm itself.
Six dipped in the wrong direction, like she didn’t quite know how to recover yet, or how to glide instead of fall.
And fall, they did.
“Higher!” Kinlear said in Ezer’s ear, as the ground began to take shape beneath them. As the treetops closed in, and he knew,oh gods,he knew they were going to crash. “She’s got to go higher, or she’ll clip the trees!”
It was too late.
