I tucked Neave close to my chest and jumped over the flying roots, ducked under them, wove through them—until one caught my shin and sent me tumbling. Neave flew out of my arms and into the underbrush. I scrambled after her, yanked her back into my arms, and tore off through the ruin of trees just as the earth split open right where I’d been standing.
And then, only a few hundred yards later, the first of my pursuers finally attacked.
One of the avian chimaera—with mottled naked flesh and great batlike wings—dove down from the canopy and slashed open my back with its claws.
The pain was like fire. I lost my footing and fell—blinded, gasping—but when the beast circled back to make another dive at me, I was ready. I spun around and kicked it right in its soft underbelly, but I was in such furious pain that my kick was wild, my balance off. When my boot hit the creature, knocking it hard against a nearby tree, the impact cracked my leg.
I collapsed with a sharp cry, pain shooting through my body like a knife, but I held tight to Neave, gritted my teeth, and pushed myself back up. The avian chimaera was a dead heap in the dirt, but others were right behind it: a bearlike beast with paws the size of my head; a monstrous lupine creature with scales mottling its coat and plates of bone protruding from its back.
The latter bounded toward me through the trees and reached me first. I held Neave tight to my chest, bowed my head over her, and ran toward the beast, turning at the last moment to ram my right shoulder into its ribs. It yelped in pain and collapsed, its chest caved in, but not before one of its paws caught me across the back, right over my fresh wound.
I fell to my knees once more, stars bursting across my vision and the pain nearly making me lose consciousness. But the bear chimaera was nearly on us, and I had to move. I couldn’t kick it, couldn’t ram into it. I didn’t think my battered body would be able to withstand another hard impact so soon.
The only thing to do was turn and run—through the writhing trees, toward the distant shore. Each time I put weight on my broken leg, blinding pain surged up my body. But I couldn’t stop. If I did, Neave would die or fall back into Kilraith’s hands. If I stopped, I’d never start again.
All I could do was keep breathing, though even that was painful. Each breath I sucked in burned my lungs. Muscles all over my body throbbed, teetering on the edge of seizing up. And each second brought my attackers closer. I could feel their hot snarling breaths against my nape. I could hear the furious roaring of their blood.
“Child, you are in such pain,” Neave murmured, tucked safely against my chest. Her voice was odd. It seemed split in two. “Soon your bones will shatter. Do not fear. Come and find her. Come and find me. I will find you.”
I couldn’t spare the breath to shut her up. The woodland was denser now, slowing me down. And with my strength so sapped, I couldn’t simply break a new path through the trees. All around me, their branches hissed and snapped, lashing my skin and Neave’s, though I tried my best to shield her from it.
Please, help me.My prayer was a frantic, automatic compulsion, my mind scrambling for some sense of hope. I’d prayed to Mother before, and she’d come for me and Gareth. She could do it again. I didn’t care about how dangerous it would be for her; I wanted nothing except relief. I prayed to her, to my father, to Gareth, to the gods as I’d imagined them in childhood, to the ruined trees splintering on either side of me. Cold sweat poured down my body. There were maybethirty miles left to the shore. I’d never make it. That, too, became my prayer.Please, help me. I’ll never make it. Please. I won’t make it. They’ll kill me. I’ll lose Neave. I’ll lose everything. Please. Please help.
Tears streaming down my face, I focused on the fading light of my power; it was the only thing keeping me moving. I could barely feel my own body. I was no longer legs and sinew and flesh; I was a firestorm of pain. Something cracked, but I was too far gone to name it. All I knew was it slowed me down; my gait stuttered, my knees close to buckling. I had a faint sense that something was protruding from me that shouldn’t have been.
And then, the most remarkable thing: to my left, through the trees, a white brilliance burst into life like a star come down from the sky. Even more remarkably, it kept pace with me.
What new menace was this? I glanced over at it, watching it race through the tangled trees. It grew brighter as I watched, and then came a low humming sound like a sigh, like a song.
At the thought of Farrin, I nearly fell apart. Memories spun through my mind: Gemma’s baby fist squeezing my finger. Farrin’s voice singing us both to sleep. Little Gemma, deft with blooms, teaching us how to braid flower crowns. Farrin, holding me fiercely to her the night before the Warden came to take me. Gemma had curled up against my back that night, trying valiantly not to cry.We will always love you, Farrin had whispered into my hair.Always, always, always.
I clung to the images of my sisters with a desperation that felt like hanging onto a crumbling ledge. The world around me was fading; my vision sparkled, turning the trees and Neave and the brilliant racing star into a blur of spinning light.
Do not fear, came a voice—an odd voice that I could barely understand. It was human, it was avian, it was like nothing I’d ever heard.
“Do not fear,” Neave echoed in my arms.
Come and find me.
“She will find you,” Neave answered. Then she drew in a shocked, shuddering breath, went stiff in my arms, and said something in a language I didn’t know.
Gareth would know it. That was the only thought left to me, the only one I could hold on to. Hewouldknow it—he held dozens of languages in his mind—and he would hate this. He would hate what was happening to me; it would kill him to see it. I was glad he wouldn’t.
Distantly I heard roars of pain behind me. Cracks like lightning zipped through the air, sizzling against my skin.
Then, at last, only a few miles from the port city of Rithia, my body gave out. My leg shattered. The burning pain of my ruined back swallowed me whole.
I fell hard and waited for the end, for darkness to take me, but it didn’t come.
Instead, a great light shone behind my closed eyelids, forcing them open. At first all I could see was brilliant white tinged with gold. My soldier’s instincts still had some life left; I imagined pushing myself to my feet, clenching my fists, turning my body into a battering ram. If this was death, I would meet it with one last burst of defiance.
But I couldn’t move. Instead, the light came to me.
“Do not be afraid,” it said, in a voice I was starting to recognize. A musical voice like Farrin’s but also odd, inhuman. A voice that belonged to something ancient and Olden.
I squinted through the light and caught a glimpse of two brilliant blue eyes, then a fall of hair like cascading fire. Violet and gold, brilliant white and fiery orange. A flash of wings; a woman’s regal, benevolent smile. Familiar. Incandescent.
Impossible.
