Vi stared out into the rainy field surrounding the shack, looking for any sign of Taavin. Her stomach and jaw ached from Fallor’s unrelenting hold. She hoped Taavin was still running as fast and far as he could get. She’d tangled with the pirates once and survived—she could do it again. She would never forgive herself if he was taken captive, too.
Yet for all she wanted Taavin to look after himself, Vi knew he wouldn’t.
She was Yargen’s Champion, and if the elfin’ra got their hands on her they would use her blood to summon their dark god Raspian. But even if that weren’t the case… This was the man who had dared to escape his captivity, come to her, and nursed her back to health—he wasn’t going to leave her behind. Which left Vi with one option before he would do something reckless and expose himself again.
Magic was magic, he’d said once. Every discipline was merely a way to manipulate and channel it. So Fallor could stop her as a Lightspinner by silencing her, but without Adela’s terrible shackles, he’d never stop her as a Firebearer.
Closing her eyes, Vi sought out the spark within her. She imagined it springing forth, just as the light did. The only difference was that this power needed no words.
Heat shimmered against the rain, turning it instantly to mist. Fallor must’ve felt it, but he didn’t react fast enough. Tiny sparks ignited in a blink, forming a wall of flame that hovered a few inches off Vi’s skin and clothes. It pulsed out from her, forcing Fallor away.
She hit the ground. One hand slid out as Vi sought balance, slipping in the mud. It coated her side and she rolled with it. The taste of earth filled her mouth as she shouted, “Juth starys hoolo.”
A glyph formed around the men and the shack as she spoke. Vi squinted at Fallor, rubbing the mud from where it was running in her eyes with her other hand. There was a different shimmer of light surrounding the pirate, but she couldn’t make out what it was before the fire she’d unleashed caught the glyph she wrought, erupting in a white-hot blaze.
Screams from the bloodthirsty man who had been investigating the shack filled the air, solo. There wasn’t a chorus of cries as she’d expected—but then again, had she ever expected Fallor to go down quietly? Vi stared into the blaze, searching for his outline. The flames burned even brighter, and he was nowhere to be found.
Already ash, she hoped.
The cry of a bird of prey echoed off the cliffside as it rose higher on the updraft created by her flames.
“Vi!” Taavin’s voice broke her concentration in tandem with his hand clamping once more around hers. “We have to go.”
Vi remained still, staring at the burning hut with the pirate still inside. The screams were quieting. It was a terrible way to go, yet killing the man didn’t yield even the slightest bit of remorse or guilt, and that fact made her feel terrible.
All around her was darkness—outside, in the stormy night, and in the hollow of her chest, a chasm opened by betrayal. Dawn would come with the morning—but would light ever breach the inky depths that threatened to drown her?
“Fallor is coming.” Taavin yanked at her arm. “We have to go!”
“Fallor? I—”
An eagle’s screech interrupted her. The bird she’d seen take to the skies was in full dive, wings tucked. An odd shimmer of light surrounded it. At first, Vi thought the distortion was merely the firelight catching on the rain, but it was more than that. Reality itself rippled, as if nothing more than a reflection in a shimmering pool.
With a magic Vi had never even imagined, the bird was gone and Fallor was there—as if one had disappeared beneath the shifting waves of reality and the other had surfaced. Momentum propelled him through the air as he plunged both of his feet into Taavin’s chest, using the other man’s body like a springboard. As he pushed away, the same ripple was already beginning to surround him, but Vi didn’t watch this time as bird was substituted for man.
Her eyes were on Taavin. Agony singed through her, a silent cry caught in her mouth, left agape in shock.
Taavin wheezed, rolling in the mud, coughing and sputtering.
“Taavin!” Vi fell to her knees, sliding to his side.
“We have to go, on foot… They killed the horse.” He barely forced out the words. “More… come.”
Vi looked skyward. She searched the darkness and rain for any sign of the eagle, but there was none. With his strange magic, Fallor could be anywhere. In her mind, he was suddenly everywhere.
At any moment they would be attacked. If Fallor’s magic could transform him into a bird, she shuddered to think what else it could do. She had to fight back, had to think of a glyph combination that could thwart whatever power he was using. But facing a magic so foreign to her, Vi was armed with little but panic.
“Durroe sallvas tempre dupot. Durroe watt radia dupot.” Taavin repeated his earlier words and Vi felt the glyphs slip around them both, cocooning them in his magic. “We have to make it to the trees.”
“The trees,” Vi repeated, forcing her mind to continue to function. She couldn’t freeze up. Not now. Not after all she’d done to get here.
“Over there.” He pointed with his free arm as Vi lifted his other and placed it around her shoulders. “We have to get to the Twilight Forest.”
Twilight Forest. Her mental atlas flipped through its archives but came up empty. Not because she was panicked, but because she was now in a land she knew almost nothing about, running blindly into the night.
“Let’s go.” Vi pushed off from the ground.
Taavin was heavier than he looked and Vi hadn’t felt so weak in a long time. She ignored the signs of fatigue, pushing her feet into a run over the tall grasses that covered the cliffside.
