Towering stalks—twice the height of a man—create corridors that shift with every breath of wind. Water pools at our ankles, reflecting fragments of gray sky visible through the dense canopy above. The air is thick with moisture and the sharp green scent of growing things.
Perfect ambush terrain. For both sides.
I pull Zara behind a cluster of particularly thick reeds, pressing close enough that the bond sings with proximity. Her shoulder brushes mine—lightning and water, generating steam we don’t have time to acknowledge.
“They’re here,” I breathe against her ear. “Six of them. Circling the perimeter.”
“How can you?—”
“Water.” I gesture to the ankle-deep pools. “Every ripple tells a story. They’re trying to flush us out, drive us toward the center where there’s no cover.”
“So we don’t go to the center.”
“We don’t go to the center.” I meet her eyes. “Can you fight without flying?”
Her jaw tightens. “Yes.”
“Good. Because this is going to get messy.”
The first hunter emerges from the reeds like a ghost materializing from mist. Male, mid-thirties, scales a darker blue than mine. I recognize him—Kellan, one of Caspian’s most loyal. His webbed hands already glow with gathered water magic.
“Torin Blackwater.” His voice carries the flat affect of someone who’s already judged you. “Elder Caspian offers clemency if you return the Sky-dweller alive and submit to trial.”
“Tell Caspian his clemency can drown.” I step forward, putting myself between Kellan and Zara. Water rises at my command, coalescing into a shield—translucent, rippling, harder than steel. “We’re going to the Citadel. To the High Elder. If you want to stop us, you’ll have to go through me.”
Kellan’s expression doesn’t change. “As you wish, traitor.”
The reed bed explodes.
They come from every direction at once—six elite hunters moving with synchronized precision. Water whips materialize in the air, lashing toward us. Pressure blasts rock the ground wherewe stood a heartbeat ago. One hunter shifts mid-leap, becoming sleek and deadly, teeth bared.
I fight like my sister’s life depends on it. Like everything I couldn’t save her from has distilled into this moment, this enemy, this battle I refuse to lose.
My water shield splits and reforms, blocking strikes from three directions. I send razor-thin water blades toward Kellan—not to kill, never to kill, but to disable. To create space. To buy time for Zara to?—
She grounds herself.
I feel it through the bond—her stance widening, her connection to the earth solidifying in a way I’ve never sensed from her before. Storm Eagles are creatures of air, of wind and sky and freedom. They don’t plant themselves.
But she does.
Lightning erupts from her hands—not controlled, not diplomatic, not the careful sparks I’ve seen before. Wild. Primal. The storm she’s been suppressing her whole life, unleashed in a desperate bid for survival.
It hits the mud and explodes outward in a crackling web of electricity.
Two hunters scream and collapse. A third leaps backward, barely avoiding the spreading charge. The reeds around us smoke and char.
But she’s shaking. Overextended. The lightning continues to spark uncontrolled along her skin, and I see the moment exhaustion starts to win. She can’t sustain this. She’s going to burn herself out.
“Zara!” I send a water tendril toward her, trying to short out the excess electricity, ground it safely?—
She blasts me.
Instinct. Panic. A bolt of pure lightning that should incinerate me where I stand. I don’t even have time to bring upa shield. The charge hits my water barrier square on, and I brace for the pain, for the burning, for death?—
Nothing.
The lightning strikes my water shield and—merges with it.
