That has always been the most powerful weapon. And I have been too selfish to wield it.
Until now.
My eyes fix on a new target. I shift my angle, lower my shoulders, and explode with a final burst of strength as Kartok lifts his blade.
I slam into his ribs before his sword arm slashes down. Not grappling for control of the knife or wrestling him to the ground. My eyes are focused on the railing.
And the expanse of sky beyond.
Air bleats from the sorcerer as I drive him back. He struggles, his long limbs clawing and grasping, but this timeIcaughthimby surprise.
“You don’t know what you’re doing!” he howls.
But he’s wrong. I’m becoming the commander—the sister and cousin and daughter—that I always should have been.
Splinters of wood spray into the air as we smash through the balcony’s decorative rail, and then I’m weightless.
Tumbling.
Falling into a chasm of jagged rocks and shadowy unknowns.
Kartok’s screams echo off the peaks, filling the sky with his fury. But I can hardly hear him over that glorious song, still playing in my ears. Only now, with the accompaniment of the wind and the thundering rhythm of my heart, I can finally hear the words.
I’m no longer falling through the sky, but seated in my parents’ music room, listening to the harpsichord trill, watching my father close his eyes and wave his glass of vorkhi like a conductor’s baton. “Sing, Ghoa!” he insists.
I shake my head. “Why would I sing when you could perform the piece with twice as much skill?”
“Icouldsing,” he agrees, “but that would deny you the opportunity. Sometimes the greatest fulfillment lies not in who could do it easiest or best, but in who can improve the most. It’s only through that off-key fumbling that we truly appreciate the beauty of the perfected piece. And it’s only through that show of vulnerability and courage that the singer reaches their full potential.”
From across the gilded music room, my mother looks up from her embroidery and smiles. Her face is the same as I remember, yet changed entirely. She is both woman and goddess. Two beings, but of the same mind. Possessing the same unfailing love.
“Bravo, my girl,” she says softly.
I tilt my face skyward and see Ivandar’s face in the whiteness of the swirling fog. I feel Serik’s heat in the warmth of the eternal sun. And it’s Enebish’s arms that wait for me in the darkness below. Making me unafraid to fall.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
ENEBISH
EVERYTHING HAPPENS IN A BLUR—KARTOK SCREAMSZEMYA’Sname and bears down on Father Guzan. Sunlight glints off the sorcerer’s blade. His face gleams with morbid ecstasy.
A cry tears from my throat and I break into a run. The gods would never allow the Zemyan sorcerer to murder them. They wouldn’t! But the Lady of the Sky lies dead in a pool of blood and Father Guzan stands there, letting Kartok come.
I sprint faster than I ever have, but I’m too slow to intervene. Too skies-forsaken slow, thanks to my injuries from Nariin.
I scream again, braced to watch Father Guzan die alongside the Lady of the Sky. But then a streak of chestnut hair flies past me. Ghoa hurls herself at Kartok, slamming into his side with all the rage and speed she carries into battle. Her momentum drives him across the platform, toward an intricate railing that’s purely decorative—as curled and wispy as the veil of cirrus clouds.
“What are you doing?” I shout at her, but it’s muffled by a thunderous crack.
Ghoa and Kartok break through the fence, and for several inexplicable seconds they seem to skate across the sky: arms whirling, feet skidding. As if Ghoa somehow froze the air itself.
Kartok screams with rage, but Ghoa remains completely silent—her eyes closed, her head tilted back. A shaft of light breaks through the fog and paints a contented smile across her suntanned face.
Then they plummet out of sight.
Tortured wails echo between the mountain peaks, and it isn’t until I run out of breath, my throat blistering and raw, that I realize the screaming voice belongs to me. Not to Ghoa. Or to Kartok. My feet have somehow carried me to the edge of the balcony, though I have no memory of taking another step, and my fingertips are bloody from dragging my hand across the splintered shards of what used to be the railing.
It’s the same out-of-body sensation that overwhelmed me the first time I was thrust into true combat. I’d been training with the Kalima for nearly a year and had accompanied them on plenty of missions. I’d sat on the sidelines of the most horrific battles. I thought Iknewwhat it meant to take a life. I thought I was prepared. But nothing can prepare you for the feeling, theessence,that spills from someone’s body along with their blood. How it stains you and spatters you, but since you can’t see the gore, you don’t know how to scrub yourself clean.
