Selara lies before us. It’s a view no one has ever seen before, and it takes my breath away. Even those that have climbed to the top of Faros’s tallest towers and the highest cliffs have never been this high. From up here, I can see how unforgiving the land truly is. The Serath Desert stretches on seemingly endlessly, the vast sand dunes reduced to mere ripples at this height, like ridges on a great golden feather. In the far, far distance the Palador Mountains rise like a mirage, their craggy, forested peaks barely a silhouette against the sun-drenched sky.
The griffin flies towards the snaking River Mara, the glittering blue jewel flanked with strips of green. Faros and the cities along its banks reduce to dusty patches of brown amid the green, almost indistinguishable from the desert, only the temples rising in shining white marble above the dust.
It's shocking how small the palace seems from up here. How tiny and fragile all of Selara seems, more than a million people steps away from certain death at all times.
I wonder how small Nithyria would seem from up here if we could see beyond the mountains. I imagine it must look like the land swallowed us up, our miniscule structures nearly invisible beneath the dense canopy of the forest.
A gust of wind sends the griffin tumbling suddenly, her course veering sharply east towards the sea. My legs grip, but I feel Ronan slide behind me.
“Hold on!” I cry into the wind. My hair whips into my face like a lash as I feel Ronan scramble to keep his grip on my waist.
The griffin must feel his struggle because she fights against the wind, trying to right herself, and for a moment, he manages to regain his balance.
But then another gust comes, even more violent than the first. The griffin dives, looking for a place to land amid the cliffs. I cling to her neck, grabbing Ronan’s arm and trying to make him do the same, but I feel one of his legs fly up behind me as he loses his seat on her shoulders.
“No!” I shout, and I feel my power pressing into my palms. My shadows. I can feel them begging to be released.
I let them go with an anguished cry. They spill out from somewhere deep within me, somewhere vulnerable and full of terror. They don’t envelop us in darkness. Instead, they reach around us with whirring tendrils, binding us to the griffin.
They wrap around Ronan’s hips and push him down onto the griffin’s shoulders and forward against my body.
He wraps his grateful arms around me and around the griffin’s neck as her wings slow, the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea beneath us. She lowers us the final stretch deliberately, touching down with a softness that must be for our benefit.
My arms are numb when I pull them from her neck. The tendrils of shadow slowly retract, releasing us from their hold.
“Amazing,” murmurs Ronan, his mouth against my shoulder. I can feel the sweat on his skin, the thrashing beat of his heart against my back as he relaxes his grip.
He dismounts first then helps me down. We’re on a high cliff facing southeast, with the sea in front of us and to our left and Faros to our right.
Once we’re on solid ground, he takes me into his arms.
I jump up, laughing as my legs wrap around his waist. He laughs too, a relieved, shaking laugh that I feel all the way in my core as I hold him as tight as I can.
“See? We didn’t die,” he says, kissing my forehead firmly, like it’s the solid ground neither of us appreciated until this very moment.
“That was insane,” I say, my voice trembling.
Ronan slowly lowers me down to look at me. “But did you enjoy it?”
I nod, the energy flowing in my veins making it difficult to find the words. “A lot, up until the point you nearly died.”
“You saved me again,” he says, his hands still on my hips. “Although I don’t think she would have let me fall.”
The griffin is peering over the side of the cliff at the ocean below. She certainly seemed to be trying to help us. Maybe she really is as intelligent as Ronan believes.
“What’s she doing?” I ask, realizing that I trust him to interpret her feelings.
“Getting ready to hunt, I think. Shall we watch?”
I worry for a moment about whether she will return to carry us back—or how we’re even going to get her to carry us back, considering our communication with her is one-way—but when she dives to the crashing waves below, she returns with a large fish in her lion’s paws before I can even finish the thought.
She looks at us, and I could swear she’s offering us some. “No, thanks,” I say. I’m getting a bit hungry, but not enough for raw fish.
“See? She’s trying to take care of us. I know you can’t feel her, but you can tell, can’t you?”
He does seem right about her, I have to admit. Maybe it truly was Kerensa’s hand that led her to us instead of to any of the others, all of whom would have taken her life instead.
“I’m glad it was us,” I say. She begins to tear into the fish, and Ronan leads me to a boulder far enough back from the cliff’s edge that I feel comfortable taking a seat on it.
