Ayla stood silently next to Hope, her hands opened as she Gave the force of nature they needed to move the huge metalvehicle. The silver metal of the twin’s eyes shone against the rising sun, and Hope couldn’t help but remember how Ayla used to suffer pain in her eyes whenever the inner scale of her magic was unbalanced.
Now, not only would Ayla not go through blinding pain ever again, but she also could use as much magic as she wanted without worrying about the magical scale tilting inside of her. Ayla had access to every panom power except Taking, since she had donated the South Petal of her mark to Lenna to help her recover her panom powers. What Ayla had instead, though, as well as only Hope and Jake in the whole of Terrha, was the Fifth Power.
A power so strong and devastating, literature considered a curse and a blessing. A power they had given everything for, even though they hadn’t yet put it to use. A power that surely would be required in whatever the future brought them.
The metal of the navia crashed violently against the shore, sand flying in every direction as many of the crew lost their balance. It took Hope one second to glance backwards to assess the situation.
The situation was that they were fucked.
The sangins had further sped up, and they were not half as far as Hope had expected them to be. No—they were too close, and that meant they had less time to get out of there. She momentarily crossed stares with Ciaran and saw a reflection of her growing, unusual fear on his clenched jaw.
“Everyone please disembark,” Hope shouted while her hands copied Jake’s incessant ones and started Harming sangins. “Panoms, moure two people to the Crystal Clear Safehouse in Corentre, then return to moure more until everyone is safe.”
Ayla nodded, holding Nina’s hand and calling Indianna as she started disembarking. The instructions were simple, and Hope had no doubt that the moment they were on the beach, Ayla’shands would touch the back of the other’s necks, and they would be gone, landing straight on Ciaran’s guarded safehouse in the middle of the island.
The sangins had finally reached them, and they were huge. The bodies of the black-feathered creatures were approximately as tall as Ciaran’s waist, with sharp talons on their front and back claws and piercing, wholly black eyes that didn’t falter.
These beasts were programmed to eat, destroy,kill.
Jake continued Harming, cutting the beasts in half, their black blood pooling around their feet. Ciaran choked the sangins with shadows around their necks and wings, immobilizing them before cracking their bones. Hope Harmed with one hand and sliced the closest sangins with a dagger in the other, decapitating them with the metal of her blades.
Even as bodies of sangins piled up quickly on the platform on the navia, black blood splashing their faces and leathers, it was more obvious than ever—the dark cloud of beasts approaching in the sky was never-ending. They wouldn’t be able to kill all of them. They had to escape. Retreat. And they were running out of time.
“Lenna, take them with you. You have to moure awaynow,” Hope begged.
Lenna swallowed, looking at Jake as she bit her lip so hard it bled. “Sasha, Brendon!” she called, taking her golden, tearful eyes from the man with black hair swirling as he Harmed. Lenna disappeared from Hope’s sight when she started climbing down the navia. Brendon aimed to follow Lenna, pulling the hand of a panicked Sasha as she covered her black-curled head to keep the sangins at bay.
It wasn’t enough.
One moment, Sasha was letting Brendon lead her. The next, five sangins were approaching her at the same time from different angles. Hope roared as she threw two daggers withone hand, one after the other, straight into the right eyes of two sangins. With her other hand, she drew consecutive, vertical slices as she Harmed, wishing for the bodies of the creatures to break in different ways.
The first slice cut a sangin in half. The second decapitated another. By the time she finished the third slicing movement, though, the talons of the fifth sangin were coming out the other side of Sasha’s chest. If it could even be called achestany longer.
It was a tangle of destroyed organs, bloody skin, and torn clothes.
Hope Harmed the winged creature, but by then, there was nothing left of Sasha’s chest that could be remotely repaired.
The world seemed to freeze around Hope as she stepped closer, shaking her head slowly. The sliced head of the murdering sangin lay still on the platform, unmoving. The shining blackness of his eyes seemed to see the broken, destroyed body of the woman they had killed. The absolute terror in Sasha’s eyes was more painful to see than her ripped-apart body.
Hope kneeled down, her hands shaking as she closed Sasha’s eyelids.
5
Lenna
Lenna’s shaky hands let go of the metallic ladder when her shoes stepped on the wet sand of the East Petal shore. It was only a matter of time until the hundreds of sangins attacking the people atop the navia realized they had other targets—way more exposed, unprotected targets—waiting for them on the ground.
Hope had been so right. They had to moure away as soon as bloody possible or they would end up like sangin-beaten pulp. But where the hell were Sasha and Brendon, and why the damned fuck was it taking them so long to disembark the navia?
Without a second thought, Lenna sent a handwritten message with her golden ink, the color of her magic and her panommark, which would reach the recipients’ forearms in less than a fraction of a second. The recipients being Sasha, Brendon, Jake, Hope, and Ciaran.
Lenna’s brow furrowed deeply as, even after a while, there still wasn’t a single soul disembarking the vehicle. What sort of carnage was happening upstairs that they couldn’t even send her an inked message back as a reply?
After more uneasy silence from the others, and fiercely muttering “For Fifth’s sake,” Lenna was about to climb up and throw Sasha and Brendon down if need be, as long as she could moure them away from the army of flying, hungry beasts.
A warm hand on her shoulder stopped her, and Lenna snapped her head back so sharply her neck cracked.
“Cardinals, Ayla, you scared me.” Lenna covered her forehead with a hand as she briefly closed her eyes, trying to let go of the shitting-herself feeling when she thought the sangins had found her. When she opened them, the silver metal of Ayla’s eyes stared back at her, her twin’s bottom lip trembling.
