I found him.
He was running down the back lawn toward the river. My breath caught when he slipped in the mud and fell face first into the slop. But he wasn’t alone; his friends from the university were with him, helping him back to his feet. I started flying after them, heedless of anything but him. What was herunningtoward? He should have been in the house, or at least with some Upper Army soldiers or beguilers from the transference—some kind of defense,anykind.
Squinting through the storm, I found my answer.
Lady Fontaine stood near the edge of a cliff, ankle-deep in mud. Not far from her, the roaring river poured over the cliff into the canyon. She was fighting a trio of stone nymphs, returning the rocks they hurled with some of her own.My mother is a stone elemental, Gareth had told me as we’d sparred at Rosewarren. A stone elemental and a captain in the Upper Army—but now, years later, she was a sloppy, unfocused mess. Her aim consistently went wide; a nymph’s hurtling stone caught her on the shoulder and sent her tumbling into the mud.
The fool. If she wasn’t careful, what with all this rain and mud, and the river roaring so close by—if she didn’t stop scooping up boulders so near the cliff’s edge—she’d cause a landslide and bury herself insludge. I didn’t like the woman, but I certainly didn’t want Gareth’s only remaining family member to die.
I’d almost caught up with him when a voice rang out.
Mara.
The sound was so loud it felt like it was coming from inside me. I stopped, hovering above the ruins of a shattered pine. No one around me seemed to have heard the voice. The battle raged on undisturbed.
Mara, I need you.
My heart sank. I knew that voice. It belonged to Ankaret.
I looked back toward the river. Upper Army soldiers had engaged the nymphs, drawing them away from Lady Fontaine. Gareth and his friends were still running toward her through the storm. Stupid, brave, dear Gareth, with his shirt plastered to his skin and his trousers coated with mud. The back of his neck was bare and unprotected; the sight of that little patch of skin tugged at my heart. He didn’t even have a sword.
Mara, hurry.
Ankaret’s voice was more urgent now, a note of panic inside it. I couldn’t ignore her. Gareth would never want me to abandon the larger fight. He would never even think me capable of it.
You’re so full of goodness that you lift up everyone around you simply by existing.
My brave Mara.
I’d seen him, just as I’d wanted to. That would have to be enough.
I turned away from him, hardly able to swallow around the tight lump in my throat, and flew through the Mist toward the sound of Ankaret’s voice.
Chapter 42
I’d never in my life flown faster than I did that day, soaring through the Mist and across the canyon like the finest arrow shot from the finest bow.
Hostiles burst out of the Mist to bar my path. A harpy even larger than the doomed Nerys swiped at me with her foot-long talons. I dodged the blow and whipped my own talons across her belly. The thin black cyclone of a wind titan lashed out at me, trying to knock me off course, but my wings were stronger than he expected. I rammed my way through the swirling wind and shattered his cloud-cloaked skull with my own.
Nothing and no one would stand in my way.
I was a Rose, and I was Kerezen’s daughter. The Warden had spent years forging me into a weapon, and with my mother’s blood in my veins and the triumph of the anchors’ destruction still buzzing in my fingertips, all the most Olden parts of me were flaring to life. The Mist urged me on, whispering against the slick feathers of my wings. It knew me; it welcomed me.
Suddenly the glow of fire bloomed up ahead, burning a hole through the Mist.
Ankaret.
I picked up speed. The sooner I reached her, the sooner I could help her and fly back to Gareth. Not even all this gorgeous power streaming through my body could quell the terrible acid feeling brewing in the back of my throat, like I was going to be sick. With every beat of my wings that carried me farther away from Gareth, the feeling intensified, threatening to choke me.Something bad is happening.That was all I could think.Something bad, something bad.
Then, without warning, I burst out of the Mist and into darkness; the air was clear, but there was hardly any sunlight, even though, beyond these canyons, it was a bright winter morning. I stopped short, hovering at the Mist’s edge while I took in the scene before me.
On a flat plain of red dirt and scrubby pines, surrounded by a ring of roiling Mist, Kilraith had Ankaret pinned to the ground. He was massive, easily twice the size of the entire priory. His dark wings stretched across the sky, crackling with storms and blocking out the sun.
Ankaret was sizable herself but still dwarfed by him. Her brilliant light shuddered like a flame in harsh wind, shadowy talons trapped her wings, and at the heart of this battle of light and darkness was another, smaller one. Two pale figures, human in form and comically tiny compared to their larger selves, dueled in a clash of swords so bright it hurt to look at. The blades crackled like lightning—one wreathed in flame, one tinged with darkness—and one clearly outmatched the other.
As I watched in horror, Ankaret’s knees buckled. She fell hard into the dwindling inferno of her fire. And she didn’t rise again.
The world moved slowly then, as if it knew what was about to happen and wanted to delay the inevitable, maybe out of some warped sense of pity for the creatures wriggling in its grasp. Kilraith brought his sword down toward Ankaret’s neck; the great dark bird above him raised his wings as if ready to dive toward its prey. Ankaret was pleading with him, her voice faint:Not like this. Look at me. Don’t you remember?
