Then the storm rapidly recedes. The entire tornado retracts, disappearing so quickly that I lurch to the ground, my hands slapping the cold rock now that the wind is no longer pushing against my body.
The silence is loud in my ears.
I can’t hear Gallium falling.
I can’t hear anything except the blood pounding in my ears and Thaden’s soft breathing as he holds me close.
“Gallium!” My cry echoes around me as I shove myself from Thaden’s arms, fighting his hold so hard that his grip loosens.
“No, Tamra!” Thaden’s alarmed cry washes over me as I race to the edge of the cliff, heedless of the danger of the waiting darkness.
“Brother!” My cry falls into the terrible silence below me.
The darkness is so thick that I can’t see a thing, even with my enhanced eyesight.
Oh, please…
Just as I prepare to scream into the darkness, a flash of lightning bursts across the air, streaming in from my right.
Amethyst-colored energy explodes through the air, dazzling in its intensity.
A mighty bird with inky-black feathers and a dark-purple beak soars across the darkness, swooping downward, the lightning surrounding its body lighting up the space around it.
A fae thunderbird!
And there, finally, I can see Gallium’s falling body, his form lit up within the explosion of light.
He’s throwing his daggers upward, the metal they’re made of extending like ropes from his fingertips and forming hooks at the end, but they scrape uselessly down the side of the rocky cliff face. He can’t slow himself down.
The thunderbird spears toward him in a near-vertical dive, its rider a mere silhouette clinging to the bird’s back with impossible strength.
I recognize this bird, and my heart leaps.
Her name isConcord. She belongs to Elowynn of the Dawn, Queen Karasi’s fierce and formidable Champion, who commands the fae army.
Gallium rode this bird when he went with Elowynn to bring Asha back to Karasi’s castle.
As another burst of lightning explodes around Concord’s body, I can finally make out Elowynn on her back.
Elowynn’s hair is the darkest black, with deep-purple highlights, and her violet eyes gleam in the amethyst energy bursting around her.
The immense strain is visible on her face as she clings to her bird.
Concord is plummeting so fast that I barely hear Elowynn’s scream. “Gallium!Reach for me!”
He retracts his weapons, the copper metal streaming back to his arms as he stretches to his left, his hand reaching,reaching…
My heart is in my throat.
I can’t do anything but watch as they drop for another heartbeat… and another… and another…
And then, with a scream, Elowynn throws herself off her bird’s back, leaping into the space between her and Gallium, her body arching with the force of her jump.
Finally, her hand closes around Gallium’s.
Her momentum knocks him sideward.
Concord sweeps her wings and somehow—impossibly—carves across the air beneath them.
