They came, roaring and whistling all around, and Linn wovethem around her and Kaïs, cocooning them in a spiral of currents. Their fall slowed; the ground rushed up to meet them, and within moments, they landed in a giant drift of snow.
Linn sat up, gasping and brushing powder from her face. “Kaïs!” she cried, pulling herself to her feet.
She heard his answering call from behind her; she found him sitting several steps away. He winced as he stood, shaking snow from his shoulders. Beyond lay the motionless body of their horse, half-buried beneath a pile of snow. Dead.
But Kaïs’s eyes lit up and he straightened, pointing. “Linn.”
She turned, and her lips parted.
They’d tumbled off a cliff into an open part of the Syvern Taiga, the trees spread thin. Above them, a shadow looming in the midnight sky, was a silhouette Linn would recognize anywhere, spires and cupolas carving out an absence of light, its edges outlined in faint silver.
“The Salskoff Palace,” she whispered. “We are there! Kaïs—”
But, spinning back to him, she realized he was leaning to his left, the edges of his eyes tight with pain.
“My ankle,” Kaïs said quietly, looking down. “It’s twisted.”
Linn hurried over to support him, drawing his arm over her shoulder. “I have strength enough for the two of us,” she said, though she could feel the ache of fatigue seeping into her bones. They’d traveled without stopping, stealing no more than a few hours of sleep each night, and since they’d found the tracks of Ana’s army, they’d ridden throughout the night.
Before Kaïs could reply, a huge explosion cracked across the night, echoing in the silence of the boreal forest. Light flared from directly ahead so that, for a brief moment, the SalskoffPalace was alight in the corals and crimsons of a fire, as though it were drenched in blood.
A chill ran down Linn’s back. “Do you think…?” she whispered.
Kaïs’s hand tightened around her shoulder as several more bright flashes lit the sky. “That is an attack on the Salskoff Palace.” A pause. “I believe it to be launched by Ana’s army.”
Cold crept through Linn’s veins, a shadow of dread twining around her heart so tightly that she could barely breathe. Possibility after possibility flitted through her mind, each worse than the last.
That the Imperial Patrols had handed the jade tablet to Morganya.
That Morganya had already found the Heart of the Gods.
That the mad Empress was going to destroy Ana’s resistance.
“We are too late,” Linn said. She could not stop her teeth from chattering.
“No,” Kaïs said calmly. He shifted his weight, hobbling so that he turned to look at Linn. His eyes were as peaceful as moonlight. He took her hands in his. “You must bring the map to her. You must tell her about the Heart.”
“But you—”
“—will slow you down,” he continued in that placid tone.
There was an ache deep in her throat. The shadow of the battle at Bei’kin had not yet faded from her memory, when she’d found him afterward on the cusp of death. “N-no,” Linn said. Her fingers tightened involuntarily against his.
Kaïs pried his hands from hers. His expression was open,tender, as he touched a finger to her chin. “Remember what the Temple Master said.”
A sparrow’s wingbeat may cause the biggest of storms.
Kaïs pressed his forehead to hers. “Action, and counteraction,” he said, and she closed her eyes, remembering the first time they had met on the highest tower of the Salskoff Palace. “I am glad to have found you and your warrior soul, Ko Linnet. And I swear to you, no matter where you are, I will find you again. Now, go.”
Linn cupped her hands around his face. In a future split wide open by ten thousand possibilities, she closed her eyes and whispered a prayer for the one where she would find him again.
Then, she turned away. Tapped a finger to her breast where the wooden token rested. Brushed her hands against the hilts of her daggers and broke into a run.
Be the sparrow, Ko Linnet.
She didn’t look back.
Blinding flashes lit up the sky as the Red Tigress’s army began to lay siege to the Palace. Ramson watched as they surged across the Kateryanna Bridge, Ana’s and Yuri’s flames shooting into the night and painting the entire scene—the statues of the Deities, the Tiger’s Tail roaring beneath—in a haze of crimson.
