Kaelan led her to an outcrop where the trees had failed to take root in the rocky soil. It overlooked an endless canopy of gold and green leaves below.
Perched near the ledge was the tawny and red-tipped feathered beast of a bird with piercing yellow-ringed eyes and a beak big enough to swallow all of them at once. Damion hung back by the tree line, his swords drawn. His color had paled to something like ash.
Standing before the bird, Honey sang softly to it. The roc lowered its head, big as a bull elephant’s, and nuzzled Honey. The nymph stumbled back a bit, laughing.
“I’m not doing this,” Damion growled at Magda. “We can’t really mean to—”
Magda, who had been doing her damnedest to ignore her own fears, swallowed them back and moved closer.
The black and gold ring of the roc’s eye zeroed in on her. She froze, heart hammering.
“Anqa, these are my friends,” Honey said to the bird, still running her hands down its neck. The feathers there looked as long as the nymph’s arms. “I would like to ask you to take us all to the Petra Islands, the northern cluster across the gulf. Will you, please?”
Anqa cocked her head, her eye tracking from Magda to Kaelan to Damion.
She opened up her ungodly large beak and let out a call that brought fear-sweat out on Magda’s chest and left her ears ringing.
Honey clapped her hands and jumped up and down, grinning. “She said she will.”
A wave of dizziness overcame Magda as she gazed up at the bird and then beyond it, where the land gave way. Her chest squeezed around her lungs, cutting off the air. Her pulse skittered and fluttered.
What had she been thinking? She’d never flown—not once. Not even when the fairies would give the Pixie children rides through the garden. The children would squeal with delight, chubby Pixie feet knocking petals from the flowers.
“Magda?” Kaelan’s voice was right next to her.
She flinched, not realizing he’d drawn so close.
“We must leave soon,” Honey called. “Anqa and her mate are in the midst of nesting. She cannot allow more than a couple of days away.”
“That beast is mating?” Damion sneered.
The roc lowered its head, eye fixed on the warrior, and let out a low clucking in the back of its throat—not a friendly sound.
Honey patted Anqa’s neck again. “It’s all right. He is nothing more than a Pixie. You don’t need to worry about what he says.” She smiled brightly at Damion. “Although, if you insult her again, she might eat you.”
Damion growled and charged up to Magda, crowding her, sucking up her oxygen. She took a step back from both him and Kaelan.
“We cannot do this,” he said. “I won’t.”
Her breath was too short and shallow to respond.
Kaelan’s hand skimmed her bare arm lightly. A cool energy passed through her, calming. She managed to pull a deep breath that slowed the dizzy swirl in her head.
“Then you can stay here,” she said to Damion. “But if we don’t find the Enneahedron, we may as well quit now.”
“You don’t know—”
“It’s our best chance,” she said. “Do you think I want to”—her throat clenched, but she pushed through—“fly onthatto the Realms of the Throne?”
Kaelan’s fingers touched her shoulder gently, shaving away the lingering panic. “You don’t want to go,” he said. “So maybe... you shouldn’t.”
She shrugged his hand off and turned on him. “I have to go. And I can’t stop Honey from joining—”
“You can if it’s only the two of us,” he said. “I’ll take you.” His voice lowered to a whisper. “I know you don’t want to fly.”
“I thought you weren’t going to help me,” she said.
“If you don’t need Honey’s roc, then she won’t have any excuse to join you.”
