I hesitate to tap my heels into Furia’s flanks but worry the stallion might take off at a canter and spring right off the stone esplanade. Unlike Morrgot, Furia isn’t outfitted with wings, and unlike purelings, I’m not quasi-unkillable.
“Should I get off?”
When I receive no answer from our merry leader, I turn in the saddle, my spine cracking from the abrupt movement. Morrgot One and Two are nowhere to be seen.
They better not have abandoned me in theirbirddom . . . I’m two-legged and two-armed, and far from skilled with either set of limbs to scale mirror-smooth pillars.
“Morr—” The last syllable of his name gets lost in the deafening grind of stone against stone and the shuddering vibrations that shoot into every pillar.
Into the ceiling and walls they hold.
Into Furia.
Into me.
Fifty
Iscream for Morrgot, certain the pillars are about to crumble and his dwelling to fall, certain I’m about to be crushed beneath it all.
At my scream, Morrgot One and Two shoot out of the trench like fireworks, dragging twin contrails of black smoke in their wakes. The crows slam into each other like percussions, and I swear it makes the entire mountain shudder harder.
“Wh-what’s happening?”
Furia’s ears are pricked up and flipping back and forth, but otherwise, the stallion isn’t perspiring from every pore like I am. I clutch his mane as water shoots out from beneath the esplanade and courses down the trench, liters upon liters, as though the mountain has siphoned up the entire ocean.
Relax, Fallon.
“Relax?!” My tone is strangled. “The whole damn mountain just trembled, and you’re telling me to fucking relax! What did you do, Morrgot?”
I restored nature’s balance and bought us more time.
Droplets spray upward, glittering like tossed tinsel against the brightening sky. “How exactly have you bought us more time?”
By flushing down our tail.
It takes my addled brain a moment to understand what he means. What hedid.
My face must go as white as the blouse glued to my flushed skin because Morrgot adds,Your prince will be fine. A little wet, but he’ll live. After all, pure-blooded Fae can’t die from drowning.
“What if there are halflings down there?Theycould drown! And horses? You may not care about my brethren, but you care about animals, don’t you?”
The horses know how to swim, and no half-bloods are riding with Dante. The prince, like the king, doesn’t allow runts in his regiment.
“Because purelings have an unlimited supply of magic. Not because he deems them better fighters!” I yell over the unceasing rumble of stone and water.
Of course.
Morrgot’s mocking tone isn’t lost on me. I glower as he sweeps around me, fluttering my hair with a beat of his wings. Silence films the air between us, thick as the humidity.
“If you murder Luce’s future king—”
You have my word that your princeling will be unharmed. Does that settle your nerves?
I suck in breath after rickety breath as the trench fills and fills, as water as clear as air flows down. “What about the humans living in Rax?”
What about them?
“This’ll flood the forest.”
