Alina doesn’t even hear me.
She sprints across the lot, feet sure in the unstable dirt, dodging rebar, pipes, discarded pallets.
She drops to her knees beside the fallen man, hands already moving with practiced efficiency—checking pupils, airway, breath.
“Can you move?” she demands. “Anything hurt? Any numbness? We gotta get you away from the building. Come on?—”
A crack opens beneath them.
Not wide, not yet, but the promise is there. An ugly black mouth splitting the ground, hungrily testing its own teeth.
The man panics.
Alina shoves him away from the widening fissure and gets him moving toward open ground.
She doesn’t look at the crack.
She looks at the man.
She reaches back automatically to steady herself—and her boot heel hits broken asphalt right at the edge.
The world drops.
“Alina,” I roar.
She flails as the ground crumbles, gravel and tar sliding under her foot. Her center of gravity tips toward the dark. Instinct pulls the fissure wider, hungering for the one thing I cannot let it have.
Mine.
I move without thinking.
One beat, I am on the trailer steps. The next, I am at the edge of the rift, hand clamped around her wrist.
Her body swings into space, suspended over the gap, breath choking out in a startled gasp.
My wings rip free of the glamour in a burst of power, slamming open behind me. Feathers drag the air, anchoring us.
The crack snarls, trying to pull her down.
I pull harder.
She collides with my chest in a rush of warmth and curses, and I wrap both arms around her, hauling us back from the edge.
My wings flare, then fold, shielding her from the shift of stone as I will the earth closed again.
The fissure obeys me grudgingly.
The rumbling eases.
Alina clutches at my shoulders, heart pounding hard enough I can feel it through the layers.
“What the hell,” she gasps, voice shaky. “Did the ground just try to eat me?”
“Yes,” I say shortly.
“Rude,” she mutters.
Despite everything, a huff of air escapes me that might be a laugh.
